The Oxford Handbook of Spanish Politics 9780198826934, 0198826931
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Cover
The Oxford Handbook of SPANISH POLITICS
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
About the Contributors
Part I: INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Democracy in Spain
1.3 Decentralization of Economic and Political Power
1.4 Representation and Political Parties
1.5 The Internationalization of Spain
1.6 Structure of the Handbook
1.7 Bibliography
Part II: PAST AND PRESENT OF SPANISH POLITICS
Chapter 2: Spain in Comparative Perspective: contributions of the spanish case to comparative political analysis
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Contours of this Case and the Selection of a Comparative Frame of Reference
2.3 Macro- and Micro-Level Contributions on the Spanish Case: Methodological Challenges
2.4 Spain and the Comparative Study of Regimes: Conceptual Contributions
2.5 A Common Thread in the Thematic Terrains Discussed Here
2.6 Bibliography
Chapter 3: Spanish Democratization: transition, consolidation, and its meaning in contemporary spain
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Background Conditions of Democratization
3.3 Preliminary Remarks on the Transition
3.4 From the Dictatorship to the First Elections: Mobilization and Reform
3.5 Consensus and Constitution-Making
3.6 Consolidation
3.7 The Meaning of the Transition to Democracy in Contemporary Spain
3.8 Bibliography
Chapter 4: MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Architecture of Forgetting
4.3 A Wealth of Explanations
4.4 The Political Uses of Forgetting
4.5 Shifting Political Calculations
4.6 Bibliography
Chapter 5: Decentralization in Spain: federal evolution and performance of the estado autonómico
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Institutional Design and Evolution
5.2.1 Origins and Evolution of Institutions in Comparative Perspective
5.2.2 The Degree of Decentralization in Comparative Perspective
5.2.3 Change and Reforms of the System: Drivers, Scope, and Frequency
5.3 Existing Explanations of the Territorial Model: From History and Structure to Actors and Dynamics
5.4 Territorial Dynamics and Politics: Centrifugal and Centripetal Tendencies
5.5 Visions and Perspectives on the Estado Autonómico and its Performance
5.5.1 Contrasting Visions and Debates
5.5.2 Assessment of Results in Governance, Diversity Management and Democratic Quality
5.6 Conclusion
5.7 Bibliography
Chapter 6: Terrorism in Spain
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Waves of Terrorism
6.2.1 ETA
6.2.2 Jihadism
6.3 Counterterrorism: From ETA to Jihadism
6.3.1 Against Jihadism
6.4 Conclusion
6.5 Bibliography
Chapter 7: Economic and Social Changes Since the Restoration of Democracy
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Path to the Second Demographic Transition
7.3 The Unexpected Migration Boom
7.4 The Change in the Sectoral and Occupational Structure of the Economy
7.5 Conclusion
7.6 Bibliography
Chapter 8: The Causes and Legacy of the Great Recession in Spain
8.1 Introduction
8.2 From Boom to Bust
8.2.1 The Reasons for Success
8.2.2 The Shortcomings that Led to the Crisis
8.3 The Responses to the Crisis
8.4 The Impact of the Crisis
8.4.1 Unemployment
8.4.2 Precariousness and Lower Quality of Employment
8.4.3 Increasing Inequality
8.4.4 Poverty
8.4.5 Political Impact
8.5 Conclusions
8.6 Bibliography
Chapter 9: Europeanization of Political Structures and Public Policies
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Theory and Background
9.3 Spain in the EU
9.4 Institutional Adaptation Processes
9.4.1 The Impact on the Legislature
9.4.2 The Impact on the National Executive
9.4.3 The Impact on the Judiciary
9.5 The Implementation of EU Legislation in Spain
9.6 The Impact of EU Membership on Market-Making and Economic Public Policies
9.7 Conclusion
9.8 Bibliography
Part III: INSTITUTIONS
Chapter 10: Political Institutions in a Comparative Perspective
10.1 Introduction
10.2 A Parliamentary Monarchy
10.3 Sovereignty without Europe
10.4 The Federal-Proportional Trade-Off
10.5 A Biased Electoral System
10.6 Single-Party Minority Governments
10.7 Weak Separation of Powers
10.8 Competitive, Non-Institutional Federalism
10.9 A Non-Territorial Senate
10.10 Partocracy
10.11 A Blocked Political System
10.12 Bibliography
Chapter 11: The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design: assessing its outcome
11.1 Under Three Main Influences
11.1.1 Europe as an Ideal
11.1.2 Economic and Geostrategic Constraints
11.1.3 A Tight Balance of Forces
11.2 Facing old and new Challenges
11.2.1 Towards an Unexpected Constituent Process
11.2.2 Tackling Old Problems
11.2.3 New Issues
11.3 Assessing the Constitutional Performance
11.3.1 Original Commitments and Actual Implementation
11.3.2 Looking Forward: Between Reform and Rupture?
11.4 Bibliography
Chapter 12: Executive Politics in Spain
12.1 Introduction
12.2 The Centrality of the Core Executive
12.3 The Predominance of the Prime Minister
12.4 Ministerial Autonomy and Elite Recruitment
12.5 The Limits of Party Government
12.6 The Multilevel Executive Politics
12.7 Changing Patterns in Spanish Executive Politics
12.8 Bibliography
Chapter 13: Legislative Politics in Spain
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Las Cortes Generales in Spain’s Constitutional System
13.3 Representation
13.4 Internal Organization
13.5 Law-Making
13.6 Executive–Legislative Relations
13.7 Conclusion
13.8 Bibliography
Chapter 14: Multilevel Governance in Spain
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Multilevel Governance, Democratic Accountability and the Case of Spain
14.3 Information and Attribution of Responsibility
14.3.1 Do Spanish Citizens Know Who Does What?
14.3.2 The Economic Crisis and the Centralized Drift in Responsibility Attribution
14.3.3 Variation across Groups of Regions
14.4 The Role of Political Sophistication and Partisan Bias
14.5 The Politicization of Multilevel Governance
14.6 Conclusion
14.7 Bibliography
Chapter 15: Public Administration and Its Problem-Solving Capacities
15.1 Introduction: The Context and the State Capacities
15.2 A Civil Service under Challenges to Deliver
15.3 An Organizational Machinery in Search of Rationalization
15.4 A Centralized Decision-Making System Isolated from External Support
15.4.1 The Core Executive and its Coordination Capacity
15.4.2 The Analytical Capacity of Central Government: Inward rather than Outward Looking
15.5 The Delivery Capacity under Strain
15.5.1 The Digitalization Agenda
15.5.2 The Managerial Approach
15.6 Conclusions
15.7 Bibliography
Chapter 16: Judicial Politics the constitutional court
16.1 Introduction
16.2 The Institutional Design of Constitutional Review in Spain
16.3 Accessing and Activating the Court
16.4 Judicial Behaviour
16.5 Conclusion
16.6 Bibliography
Chapter 17: The Spanish Armed forces
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Being in the Military Profession
17.3 Occupational Assessment
17.4 When and How They Act
17.5 Cognitive Dissonance
17.6 Future Prospects
17.7 Conclusions
17.8 Bibliography
Chapter 18: The Quality of Democracy
18.1 Introduction
18.2 State of the Art
18.2.1 Spain from a Comparative Perspective
18.2.2 Which Definition of Quality of Democracy?
18.3 Quality as Voice and Political Equality
18.3.1 Extension: Political Equality
18.3.2 Intensity: Further Opportunities for Voice?
18.4 What if Democracy was Something Else?
18.5 Conclusion
18.6 Bibliography
Part IV: PARTIES, ELECTIONS, AND VOTERS
Chapter 19: Political Culture in Spain in the Twenty-First Century: symptoms of a crisis of representation
19.1 Introduction
19.2 The Evolution of Political Attitudes in Spain
19.3 Political Trust and SWD from a Comparative Perspective
19.4 Analysing the Reasons for the Decline of Political Trust and SWD in Spain
19.4.1 Explanatory Variables
19.4.2 Control Variables
19.4.3 Results
19.5 Conclusions
19.6 Bibliography
Chapter 20: Parties and Party Systems
20.1 Introduction
20.2 The Development of the Spanish Party System(s)
20.2.1 The Early Years: The Creation of a Moderate Pluralist Party System (1977–1979)
20.3 Party System Stability (1982–2014/5)
20.4 Party System Transformation (2015–?)
20.5 Indicators of Change and Stability in the Spanish Party System
20.5.1 The Electoral/Parliamentary Arena
20.5.1.1 Volatility
20.5.1.2 Party System Format and Electoral/Parliamentary Fragmentation
20.5.1.3 Ideological Polarization and the Dynamics of Party Competition
20.6 Party Organizations between Society and the State
20.7 Conclusion
20.8 Bibliography
Chapter 21: Elections in Spain
21.1 Introduction
21.2 From Past to Present
21.3 Founding Elections and the First Electoral Earthquake
21.4 Parties, Divides, and Anchors
21.4.1 New Voters, New Parties
21.4.2 Deactivating and Activating Social Divides
21.4.3 Anchors of Voting
21.5 The Second Electoral Earthquake
21.6 Conclusions
21.7 Bibliography
Chapter 22: Determinants of Voting Behaviour
22.1 Introduction
22.2 Determinants of Voting Behaviour in Spain
22.3 Voting decisions in Spain: Recent Evidence from Four Elections
22.4 Conclusion
22.5 Bibliography
Chapter 23: The Spanish Electoral System
23.1 Introduction
23.2 The Origin and Components of the System for Election to the Congreso de los Diputados
23.3 The Proportionality of the System for Election to the Congreso de los Diputados
23.4 The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Two-party System (bipartidismo)
23.5 Main debates on the Spanish Electoral System
23.5.1 Governability and the Electoral System
23.5.2 Malapportionment and its Critics
23.5.3 The Excessive Weight of the Regional Parties
23.5.4 Closed Lists and the Robustness of Democracy
23.6 Other Electoral Systems
23.6.1 Autonomous Parliaments
23.6.2 Local Councils
23.6.3 Spanish Seats in the European Parliament
23.6.4 The Senate
23.7 Conclusions
23.8 Bibliography
Chapter 24: Turnout
24.1 Introduction
24.2 Electoral Participation in Spain
24.3 The Determinants of Voter Turnout
24.3.1 The Paradox of Voting
24.3.2 Individual-Level Factors
24.3.3 Aggregate-Level Factors
24.3.4 Empirical Analysis
24.4 The Consequences of Voter Turnout
24.4.1 Theoretical Arguments
24.4.2 Empirical Analysis
24.5 Conclusions
24.6 Bibliography
Part V: CIVIL SOCIETY
Chapter 25: Interest Groups, Business Associations, and Trade Unions
25.1 Introduction
25.2 A Brief Glimpse at the Origins of Civil Society
25.3 Democracy and the Setting of a Modern System of Interest Intermediation
25.4 Democratic Consolidation and the Social Partners: The Gradual Decline of Corporatism
25.5 Democratic Consolidation, Associations and Interest Groups: Is There an Upward Trend?
25.6 Conclusions
25.6 Conclusions
25.7 Bibliography
Chapter 26: Migration Politics: the end of spanish exceptionalism?
26.1 Introduction
26.2 From Emigration to Immigration
26.3 Macro-economic Turbulence and Back to Emigration
26.4 Immigration Policy in Spain
26.5 Labour-market Competition (or Lack Thereof)
26.6 Ideology, Nationalism, and Centre-Periphery Conflicts
26.7 Supply-side Explanations and Political Competition
26.8 Conclusions
26.9 Bibliography
Chapter 27: Social Movements
27.1 Introduction
27.2 The Rise of New Social Movements in a Belated Western European Democracy
27.3 Spanish Movements Enter the Twenty-First Century
27.4 The Rise of the Indignados
27.5 Changes in the Field
27.6 Conclusions
27.7 Bibliography
Chapter 28: Spanish Nationalism Since 1975
28.1 Introduction: What is Spanish nationalism?
28.2 From ‘Nation of Nations’ to Constitutional Patriotism
28.3 The Internal Other
28.4 Is Spain Still Different?
28.5 Pluralism and the Idea of Spain
28.6 The Nation of the Right: A Neo-Centralist Drive?
28.7 The Nation of the Left: In Search of ‘the People’
28.8 Conclusion: Back to the future?
28.9 Bibliography
Chapter 29: Regional and National Identitiesin Spain
29.1 Introduction
29.2 Peripheral Nationalism, Regionalism, and the Origins of Regional Identities in Spain
29.3 The Estado de las Autonomías: A Promising Solution to the Centre–Periphery Conflict
29.4 How Territorial, National, and Regional Identities Have Been Modelled
29.5 The Breakdown of the Territorial Pact and its Consequence Over Identities
29.6 Catalan Secessionism and the Polarization of Identities
29.7 Conclusion
29.8 Bibliography
Part VI: PUBLIC POLICY AND POLICY-MAKING
Chapter 30: Public Policies transformations and challenges
30.1 Introduction
30.2 Four Decades of Transformations in Public Policy: Logics of Continuity and Discontinuity
30.2.1 1977–1982
30.2.2 1983–1986
30.2.3 1987–1995
30.2.4 1996–2004
30.2.5 2004–2010
30.2.6 2011–2018
30.3 Processes of Agenda Setting in Spain
30.4 Processes and Models of Policy Production: Policy Style and Policy Networks
30.5 Policy Making Processes in Spain: Is There a Policy Style, or Are There Different Governance Networks?
30.6 Towards Innovative Agendas: The Challenges of Policymaking in the Spain of 2020
30.7 Bibliography
Chapter 31: Welfare State
31.1 Introduction
31.2 The Spanish Welfare State from a Comparative Perspective
31.3 The Consolidation and Recalibration of the Spanish Welfare State
31.4 The Great Recession: Welfare Retrenchment in a Multilevel System
31.5 The Difficult Post Crisis
31.6 Conclusions
31.7 Bibliography
Chapter 32: Social Inequalities
32.1 Introduction
32.2 Trends in Income Inequality and the Quality of Employment
32.3 Risk of Poverty and Social Exclusion
32.4 Social Position and Educational Inequalities
32.5 Gender Differences
32.6 Differences Across Generations
32.7 Conclusions
32.8 Bibliography
Chapter 33: Economic Policy-Making in Contemporary Spain
33.1 Introduction
33.2 Fiscal Policy in Democratic Spain: Contained Spending, Weak Revenues and High Cyclicality
33.3 Regulatory Policy
33.4 Economic Policy-Making in action: Managing the Great Recession and its Aftermath
33.4.1 The Asset Bubble
33.4.2 The First Response: Fiscal Stimulus
33.4.3 Fiscal Consolidation and Recovery
33.5 Economic Policy-Making from the Supply Side: Policy in a Straitjacket?
33.6 The Demand Side: A Diffuse (and Unsustainable?) Fiscal Policy Consensus
33.7 Conclusion: Towards Economic Policy Through Other Means?
33.8 Bibliography
Chapter 34: Employment Policy in Spain: Policy and Governance perspectives
34.1 Introduction
34.2 The Emergence of Employment Policies in Spain: 1950s–1990s
34.3 The Limited Expansion of the Spanish Employment Policy Regime: 1950s–1970s
34.4 The Pillars of the Democratic LMP Regime: Late 1970s–1990s
34.4.1 Flexibility on the Margins
34.5 Activation in Spain: 1990s–MID-2000s
34.5.1 Governance Reforms in the Era of Activation
34.6 The Great Recession
34.7 Conclusion
34.8 Bibliography
Chapter 35: Education Policy
35.1 Introduction
35.1.1 A Late but Successful Modernizer: Education in Spain in Comparative Perspective
35.2 Educational Reforms in Spain: Politics and Policies
35.2.1 The Spanish Education System Before 1970
35.2.2 The Modernization of Education in Spain in the 1970s
35.2.3 Reforms and Political Noise Since the 1980s
35.3 An Evaluation of the Spanish Education System
35.3.1 The Changing Educational Composition of the Spanish Population over Time
35.3.2 The Quality of Education
35.3.3 What Continues to be Dysfunctional in Spain?
35.4 Conclusion: The Cost of the Politicization of Education in Spain
35.5 Bibliography
Chapter 36: Gender Policy
36.1 Introduction
36.2 The Spanish Gender Regime
36.3 State Feminism and Gender Equality Policy
36.4 LGBTI Policies
36.5 Irreversible or Dilutable Change?
36.6 Conclusion
36.7 Bibliography
Chapter 37: Corruption and Transparency
37.1 Introduction
37.2 Analytic Framework
37.3 Corruption: Nature and Consequences
37.4 Policy Change
37.5 Conclusions
37.6 Bibliography
Part VII: THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA
Chapter 38: Spanish Foreign Policy
38.1 Introduction
38.2 Spain’s Foreign Policy-making Structures
38.3 Spanish Foreign Policy from the Transition Years to the Felipe González Government
38.4 Spanish Foreign Policy under José María Aznar: The Quest for Great Power Status
38.5 Spanish Foreign Policy under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: A Middle Power Anchored in Europeanization and Multilateralism
38.6 Spanish Foreign Policy under Mariano Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez: Continuing Multilateralism under the Shadow of Economic and Political Crises
38.7 Conclusion
38.8 Bibliography
Chapter 39: Security and Defence Policy
39.1 Introduction
39.2 The Internationalization of Spain’s Security and Defence Policy
39.3 The Transition from ‘National Defence’ to ‘Security and Defence’ to ‘National Security’
39.4 The Financial, Industrial, and Military Bases
39.5 Theoretical Debates on Security and Defence Policy from a Comparative Perspective
39.6 Future Security and Defence Policy Choices
39.7 Bibliography
Chapter 40: Spain in the Eupreferences, policy process, and influence in brussels
40.1 Introduction
40.2 The Political Basis of Spanish EU Membership
40.3 The National EU Policy Formulation and Coordination System
40.4 Madrid’s Priorities in Brussels
40.5 Spain’s Evolving Role and Influence in the EU
40.6 Conclusion
40.7 Bibliography
Chapter 41: spain and latin america: from a special relation to detachment?
41.1 Introduction
41.2 What we Know about Spain–LAC Relations
41.3 Ideas, Interests and Institutions: The Dynamics of Spain-LAC Relations
41.4 Spain and Latin America during the Twentieth Century: From Rapprochement to a Special Relationship
41.4.1 The Early Steps Towards a Special Relationship
41.4.2 The Consolidation of the Special Relationship
41.5 From Apogee to Disappointment in the Special Relationship
41.6 Conclusion
41.7 Bibliography
Index
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 01/21/2020, SPi
t h e ox f o r d h a n d b o o k o f
SPA N ISH POL I T IC S
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 01/21/2020, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 01/21/2020, SPi
The Oxford Handbook of
SPANISH POLITICS Edited by
DIEGO MURO and
IGNACIO LAGO
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 01/21/2020, SPi
1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2020 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945705 ISBN 978–0–19–882693–4 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cr0 4yy Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 01/21/2020, SPi
Contents
List of Figuresix List of Tablesxv About the Contributorsxvii
PA RT I I N T RODU C T ION 1. Introduction
3
Diego Muro and Ignacio Lago
PA RT I I PA ST A N D P R E SE N T OF SPA N I SH P OL I T IC S 2. Spain in Comparative Perspective: Contributions of the Spanish Case to Comparative Political Analysis
15
Robert M. Fishman
3. Spanish Democratization: Transition, Consolidation, and its Meaning in Contemporary Spain
32
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca
4. Memory and Politics in Democratic Spain
47
Omar G. Encarnación
5. Decentralization in Spain: Federal Evolution and Performance of the Estado Autonómico62 César Colino
6. Terrorism in Spain
82
Diego Muro
7. Economic and Social Changes since the Restoration of Democracy Miguel Requena
100
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vi contents
8. The Causes and Legacy of the Great Recession in Spain
116
Sebastián Royo
9. Europeanization of Political Structures and Public Policies
132
Javier Arregui
PA RT I I I I N S T I T U T ION S 10. Political Institutions in a Comparative Perspective
153
Josep M. Colomer
11. The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design: Assessing its Outcome
171
Josep M. VallÈs
12. Executive Politics in Spain
190
Juan Rodríguez-Teruel
13. Legislative Politics in Spain
210
Bonnie N. Field
14. Multilevel Governance in Spain
224
Sandra León and Ignacio Jurado
15. Public Administration and its Problem-Solving Capacities
241
Salvador Parrado
16. Judicial Politics: The Constitutional Court
258
Nuno Garoupa and Pedro C. Magalhães
17. The Spanish Armed Forces
276
Rafael Martínez
18. The Quality of Democracy
297
Joan Font
PA RT I V PA RT I E S , E L E C T ION S , A N D VOT E R S 19. Political Culture in Spain in the Twenty-First Century: Symptoms of a Crisis of Representation
315
Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann
20. Parties and Party Systems Mónica Méndez Lago
331
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contents vii
21. Elections in Spain
349
José Ramón Montero and Andrés Santana
22. Determinants of Voting Behaviour
372
Marta Fraile and Enrique Hernández
23. The Spanish Electoral System
389
Agustí Bosch
2 4. Turnout
410
Pedro Riera
PA RT V C I V I L S O C I E T Y 25. Interest Groups, Business Associations, and Trade Unions
429
Susana Aguilar
26. Migration Politics: The End of Spanish Exceptionalism?
445
Sergi Pardos-Prado
27. Social Movements
465
Eduardo Romanos
28. Spanish Nationalism Since 1975
479
Xosé M. Núñez Seixas
29. Regional and National Identities in Spain
494
María José Hierro
PA RT V I P U B IC P OL IC Y A N D P OL IC Y- M A K I N G 30. Public Policies: Transformations and Challenges
511
Joan Subirats and Ricard Gomà
31. Welfare State
526
Eloísa del Pino
32. Social Inequalities
542
Leire Salazar
33. Economic Policy-Making in Contemporary Spain José Fernández-Albertos
559
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viii contents
34. Employment Policy in Spain: Policy and Governance Perspectives
578
Mariely López-Santana
35. Education Policy
593
Héctor Cebolla-Boado
3 6. Gender Policy
614
Tània Verge
37. Corruption and Transparency
631
Manuel Villoria
PA RT V I I T H E I N T E R NAT IONA L A R E NA 38. Spanish Foreign Policy
651
Ramón Pacheco Pardo
39. Security and Defence Policy
668
Félix Arteaga
40. Spain in the EU: Preferences, Policy Process, and Influence in Brussels
683
Ignacio Molina
41. Spain and Latin America: From a Special Relation to Detachment?
699
Andrea C. Bianculli
Index
715
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List of Figures
5.1. Evolution of decentralized expenditure in Spain (1995–2016)
64
5.2. Consolidated government expenditure as percentage of total general government expenditure 2016
65
5.3. Consolidated government revenue as percentage of total general government revenue 2016
66
5.4. Index of static de/centralization in Western Europe 2015
69
5.5. Spaniards’ preferences among different alternatives of territorial organization
73
6.1. ETA killings per year, 1968–2011
87
7.1. Spanish population 1978–2018. Births and deaths (right axis) and natural increase (left axis)
102
7.2. Spain 1998–2018. Population born abroad
106
7.3. Sectoral and occupational distribution of Spanish labour force 1998–2018
109
7.4. 1978–2018 Spanish labour force, by sex, education, and immigrant status
111
9.1. Open infringement procedures (1995–2017)
143
9.2. Infringements declared by the CJEU (1995–2017)
143
9.3. Infringement procedures opened to Spain through policy arenas (1995–2017)
144
11.1. How satisfied are you with the Constitution?
185
11.2. Should the Constitution be reformed?
185
12.1. National core executive in Spain
194
12.2. Prime minister approval in Spain
199
12.3. Political experience of cabinet ministers
201
12.4. Technical background of cabinet ministers
203
12.5. Type of ministerial exits
203
12.6. Party background of cabinet ministers
205
13.1. Trust in Parliament, average, 1994–2016
216
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x list of figures 14.1. Attribution of responsibility for main regional policies
229
14.2. Attribution of responsibility by level of education
230
14.3. Attribution of responsibility for policy areas: 2012–2018
231
14.4. Percentage of correct attribution of responsibility for regional governments’ policies by type of region
233
14.5. Attribution of responsibility by evaluation of the regional government
236
14.6. Preferences for powers at different levels of government by party support
237
15.1. Typical organigram of a ministry
244
16.1. Trends in litigation in the Spanish Constitutional Court, 1980–2017 (appeals lodged by year)
264
17.1. Occupational prestige ranking
280
17.2. Technical assessment of the Spanish armed forces
286
17.3. What to do if Spain is attacked/invaded?
288
17.4. Impact of the AFs on international prestige
291
17.5. Importance of risks and threats for Spanish citizens
292
17.6. AFs management alternatives
294
18.1. Perceived and desired role for free and fair elections
307
18.2. Perceived and desired role for voting directly in referendums
308
18.3. Perceived and desired role for measures to reduce differences in income levels
309
19.1. Support for democracy in Spain
317
19.2. Satisfaction with democracy in Spain (1985–2018)
318
19.3. Political trust in Spain (1997–2016)
319
19.4. Economic performance in Spain (1997–2016)
319
19.5. Public evaluations in Spain (1997–2016)
320
19.6. Trust in parliament in European regions (2000–2018)
321
19.7. Trust in parties in European regions (2000–2018)
322
19.8. Trust in legal system in European regions (2000–2018)
322
19.9. Satisfaction with democracy in European regions (2000–2018)
323
20.1. Total, interbloc and intrabloc electoral volatility in general elections in Spain (1977–2016)
339
20.2. Electoral and parliamentary fragmentation. Effective number of electoral/parliamentary parties in Spain (1977–2016)
340
20.3. Concentration of votes and seats in the two main parties’ (1977–2016) economic performance in Spain (1997–2016)
341
20.4. Number of national and sub-national parties represented in the Congress of Deputies (1977–2016)
342
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list of figures xi 20.5. Ideological polarization of voters and parties in Spain (1977–2017)
343
21.1. Electoral results: votes in the Congress of Deputies, 1977–2016 (in percentages)
357
21.2. Religious denomination (Catholic, non-believer, and other religion) and weekly church attendance (frequent church-goer and almost never goes to church) in Spain, 1970–2017 (in percentages)
360
21.3. Evolution of party system nationalization (standardized) in Spain and other Western democracies, 1977–2016
362
21.4a. Ideological self-placement of Spaniards
365
21.4b. Perceptions of Spanish parties in ideological scales
366
22.1. Average marginal effects with 95% confidence intervals from multinomial logistic model for the 2000 elections
378
22.2. Average marginal effects with 95% confidence intervals from multinomial logistic model for the 2008 election
379
22.3. Average marginal effects with 95% confidence intervals from multinomial logistic model for the 2011 election
380
22.4. Average marginal effects with 95% confidence intervals from multinomial logistic model for the 2015 election
381
23.1. Proportionality profile, 1977–2016
395
23.2. Proportionality and the fragmentation of the party system, 1977–2016
399
24.1. Average turnout rates in national legislative elections in European Union countries, 1945–2018 (%)
412
24.2. Turnout rates in Spain by type of election, 1977–2016 (%)
413
24.3. Average turnout rates in Spanish general elections by district, 1977–2016 (%)
414
24.4. Determinants of turnout at the individual level, 1982–2016
420
24.5. Impact of turnout rates on left-wing vote shares at the district level, 1977–2016 (%)
423
25.1. Union coverage and union density in Spain (1980–2013)
436
25.2. Union coverage in collective bargaining and union density for different European countries in 2013. Combination of the two measures for different European countries (means for the 1980–2013 period)
436
26.1. Average level of anti-immigrant attitudes across countries
448
26.2. Evolution of anti-immigrant attitudes over time
449
26.3. Restrictiveness of access for labour migrants in Spain
453
26.4. Restrictiveness of security and rights for labour migrants in Spain
454
26.5. Correlation between migrant presence and dualism across occupations
456
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xii list of figures 26.6. Immigration positions of largest centre-right parties and Spanish electorates
460
32.1. Recent trends in inequality measures in Spain and the Euro area (19 countries)
544
32.2. Poverty by various characteristics in Spain, 2008 and 2017
547
32.3. Early school leaving rates in Spain and selected European countries
550
32.4. Relationship between the degree of selectivity in activity/ employment and the size of the gender wage gap, selected European countries and years
553
32.5. Social spending in old age vs family/children in 2008 and 2016, selected European countries
556
33.1. Total government revenues and expenditures in Spain and the Eurozone, 2000–2017
561
33.2. Synthetic Index of Monthly Economic Activity in Spain, 2002–2018
566
33.3. Government expenditures in Spain by level of government, as % of GDP, 2000–2017
570
33.4. Fiscal balance in Spain by level of government, as % of GDP, 2000–2017
570
33.5. Difference (in percentage points) between the national budget deficit (as % of GDP) and the overall budget deficit of the Euroarea as a whole, 2006–2017. Negative values represent deficits larger than in the Euroarea
572
33.6. Percentage of Spaniards in agreement with the statements ‘in general, taxes are not collected fairly, that is, those who have more do not pay the most’ and ‘taking into account the existing public services and social assistance programmes, would you say that society benefits a lot/fairly from what we pay to the public administration in the form of taxes and contributions?’
573
33.7. Support for tax cuts (even if it implies reduction of public services) vs more public services (even it implies tax increases) in a 0–10 scale, and percentage in agreement with the statement ‘Spaniards pay a lot in taxes’
574
33.8. Overall percentage in agreement with the statement ‘Spaniards pay a lot in taxes’, by year and cyclically adjusted primary balance as % of GDP
574
34.1. Spending on labour market policies as a percentage of GDP, Spain: 1985–2015
582
34.2. Share of temporary employment as a percentage of dependent employment, Spain vs. the OECD: 1987–2017
584
35.1. Probability of not achieving lower secondary education and graduating from university in Spain, France, and the United Kingdom by cohort of birth
594
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list of figures xiii 35.2. Numeracy (standardized test scores) in Spain, France, and the United Kingdom by level of education and age
595
35.3. Share of public and private schools by region (excludes tertiary education)599 35.4. Probability of achieving different levels of education by cohort of birth in Spain
602
35.5. Probability of achieving different levels of education by cohort of birth and sex in Spain
603
35.6. Probability of achieving different levels of education by cohort of birth and sex in Spain
604
35.7. Differences in PISA points over the PISA cycle between Spain and the OECD average
605
35.8. Distribution of performance (numeracy) of Spanish students and the OECD
606
35.9. Early leavers from education and training by sex
608
35.10. Probability of year repetition in Spain and the OECD by highest level of parental education
609
35.11. Average cognitive scores of students in Spanish regions by repeating status
609
35.12. Average evaluation of education in selected European countries (0 extremely bad, 10 extremely good)
610
36.1. Percentage of Women’s Representation in Spanish Politics
616
37.1. Quality of government in EU regions
633
37.2. Perception of corruption and economic crisis
641
37.3. The Great Recession in Spain
641
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List of Tables
7.1. Age structure of Spanish population (1978–2018)
104
7.2. Immigrants by continent of origin as a percentage of total immigrants. Selected European countries, 2015
107
8.1. The Boom Years (2000–2007)
118
8.2. Economic Performance 2008–2017
124
9.1. Preliminary rulings made by Spanish Judicial Actors (1986–2017)
141
9.2. Total and EU-Mean References for Preliminary Rulings (1986–2017)
142
11.1. Spanish Constitutions Approved by Free-Elected Assemblies
174
12.1. National Core Executive in Spain
191
14.1. Preferences for Multilevel Governance (0–10)
236
16.1. The Jurisdiction of the Spanish Constitutional Court
261
16.2. Yearly Average recursos de inconstitucionalidad, 1980–2017
267
16.3. List of Spanish Constitutional Judges, 1980–2018
269
16.4. Data on the Spanish Constitutional Court (recurso de inconstitucionalidad)271 17.1. Occupational Prestige Ranking, According to Future Civil and Military Elites
281
17.2. Top Ten Qualities Future Civil and Military Elites Want for Their Children and for the Military
283
17.3. What is the Public Image of the Armed Forces in Society (in percentages)?
290
17.4. The Future of the Military’s Role
293
19.1. Fixed Effects (FE) Models of Political Trust and Satisfaction with Democracy
326
20.1. Results of Spanish General Elections (1977–2016)
334
21.1. Electoral results: votes in the Congress of Deputies, 1977–2016 (in percentages)
352
23.1. Results of the 2016 elections
392
23.2. Evolution of the seat-vote differences and the advantage ratios for national parties, 1977–2016
394
23.3. Advantage ratio by district size
396
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xvi list of tables 23.4. Evolution of seat-vote differences and advantage ratios for regional parties
404
25.1. Evolution in the Number of Associations (1993–2015)
439
34.1. The Decentralization of ALMPs in Spain: 1997–2010 (Ruling Political Party at the National Level)
586
34.2. Social Expenditure and Replacement Rates, Selected Countries, 2007
588
36.1. Global Indices of Gender Equality and LGBTI Rights
615
36.2. Regulatory Framework of Gender Equality Policy
619
36.3. Regulatory Framework of LGBTI Policy
622
37.1. Hard Data on Corruption: 2015–2018
638
37.2. Spain in the Eurobarometers on corruption
639
37.3. Percentage of People Who Admit to Having Been Asked To Pay a Bribe in the Last 12 Months in Spain and Other Countries in the European Union and Relation to Corruption Perceptions
640
37.4. Experience of Bribery: 2011–2017
642
37.5. Anti-Corruption Legal Developments (National Level)
643
39.1. Evolution of Spain’s Military Expenditure (1990–2018)
674
40.1. Please Tell Me How Attached You Feel to Europe (%)
685
40.2. Would You Say that (Our Country) Has On Balance Benefited Or Not from Being a Member of the EU? (%)
685
40.3. Comparison of Systems for the Coordination of EU Policy in Some Selected EU Member States (Ambition and Centralization/ Decentralization)688 40.4. Assessing the Spanish Cortes Generales According to the Five Ideal-Types for Parliamentary Activities in EU Affairs
691
40.5. The Power of Spain in the Council: Normalized Banzhaf Index 1986–2019696
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About the Contributors
Susana Aguilar Full Professor of Political Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid. Javier Arregui Associate Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Felix Arteaga Senior Analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute for International and Strategic Studies. Andrea C. Bianculli Assistant Professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals. Agustí Bosch Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Héctor Cebolla-Boado Associate Professor at the Spanish National Distance-Learning University. Pablo Christmann Senior Researcher at GESIS. César Colino Associate Professor at the Spanish National Distance-Learning University. Josep M. Colomer Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University. Eloisa del Pino Senior Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council. Omar G. Encarnación Professor of Political Studies at Bard College. José Fernández-Albertos Permanent Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council. Bonnie N. Field Professor of Global Studies at Bentley University. Robert M. Fishman Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Carlos III University. Joan Font Senior Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Social Studies (Madrid). Marta Fraile Permanent Research Fellow at the Spanish National Research Council. Nuno Garoupa Professor of Law at George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School. Ricard Gomà Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Enrique Hernández Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. María José Hierro Lecturer in Political Science at Yale University.
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xviii about the contributors Ignacio Jurado Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York. Ignacio Lago Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Sandra León Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York. Mariely López-Santana Associate Professor of Political Science at George Mason University. Pedro C. Magalhães Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of University of Lisbon. Rafael Martínez Professor of Political Science at the Universitat de Barcelona. Mónica Méndez Lago Technical Advisor at the Sociological Research Center. Ignacio Molina Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. José Ramón Montero Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the Instituto Empresa. Diego Muro Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Xosé M. Núñez Seixas Full Professor of Modern History at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Ramón Pacheco Pardo Reader in International Relations at King’s College London and KF-VUB Korea Chair at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Sergi Pardos-Prado Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Glasgow. Salvador Parrado Associate Professor at the Spanish National Distance-Learning University. Miguel Requena Professor of Sociology at the Spanish National Distance-Learning University. Pedro Riera Assistant Professor at the Carlos III University Carlos III of Madrid University. Juan Rodríguez-Teruel Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Valencia. Eduardo Romanos Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid. Sebastián Royo Professor of Government at Suffolk University. Leire Salazar Associate Professor at the Spanish National Distance-Learning University. Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca Associate Professor of Political Science at the Carlos III University. Andrés Santana Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
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about the contributors xix Joan Subirats Professor of Political Science at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Mariano Torcal Full Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompey Fabra. Josep M. Vallès Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Tània Verge Associate Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Manuel Villoria Professor of Political Science at King Juan Carlos University.
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PA RT I
I N T RODUC T ION
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chapter 1
I n troduction Diego Muro And Ignacio Lago
1.1 Introduction Contemporary Spanish politics has attracted the attention of the international community for decades. Three historical events—the civil war (1936–39), the Francoist dictatorship (1939–75), and the transition to democracy (1975–78)—not to mention the profound economic, social, and institutional transformations since the 1970s, have put Spanish politics in the spotlight for historians and social scientists alike.1 First, the Spanish civil war began as a military coup against the elected government of the Second Republic (1931–36) and lasted almost three years (18 July 1936 – 1 April 1939). The armed conflict ended Spain’s first democratic experience at a time when key European countries were shifting back to authoritarian rule during a reverse wave of democratization. According to Paul Preston, 600,000 Spaniards perished during the civil war (either killed in the battlefields or as victims of famine and malnutrition), and more than 200,000 extra-judicial executions followed the conflict as part of a ‘cleansing’ campaign to eradicate all traces of left-wing influence (Preston 2013). The number of battle deaths in the civil war (i.e. the number of soldiers and civilians killed in combat) was the highest of any other European internal war, followed by the civil war in Greece from 1946 to 1949, with approxiamtely 154,000 battle fatalities (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005, and Pettersson and Eck 2018). In essence, the civil war was a conflict between liberal democracy and fascism, but also a proxy war between the Soviet Union and the
1 This handbook is the result of a group effort, and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such a talented and generous group of colleagues. Parts of the project, in the form of papers, were presented to different audiences in seminars and conferences worldwide; we profited from comments received there as well. For superb research assistance, we are indebted to Abelardo Gómez Díaz. Ignacio Lago would also like to acknowledge financial support from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant number CSO2017-85024-C2-1-P1 [AEI/FEDER, UE]), and the ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme.
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4 Diego Muro and Ignacio Lago European axis, which supplied men, weapons, and money to the Republican and Francoist sides respectively. In the end, fascism won. Second, Franco’s rule only came to an end with his own death in 1975; his dictatorship was the lengthiest of the second half of the twentieth century. Compared to other European autocrats, Franco ruled uninterruptedly for 36.6 years (1 April 1939 – 30 October 1975), closely followed by António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal with 36.2 years (1932–68), and Todor Hristov Zhivkov in Bulgaria with 35.7 years (1954–89; Slovik 2012). Interestingly, the end of World War II started a second wave of democratization that gave birth to 36 new democracies. However, Spain would not join in, as it had already succumbed to autocracy in 1939. Finally, the third historical event that attracted the interest of politicians and scholars was the Spanish model of transition, which was based on pacts and negotiations among political elites and consensus among the citizenry to avoid revenge and violent confrontations (Colomer 1991: 1283). The Spanish transition was a paradigmatic and inspiring case for transitioning countries that did not want to dwell on the past, particularly in Eastern Europe and South America, during the 1980s and 1990s. Fundamentally, the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democratic monarchy was part of the ‘Third Wave of Democratization,’ the outburst of democratic transitions that took place during the last quarter of the twentieth century (Gunitsky 2018). Contemporary Spanish politics are still influenced by the long shadow of these three historical events. By way of illustration, at the time of writing this introduction (early 2019), the Spanish government led by the socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez was trying to exhume the body of Franco from the Valley of the Fallen, the dictator’s monument to the civil war, and had to confront issues of memory relating to those executed or repressed during the dictatorship. Human rights activists interested in ‘recovering’ the political memory of those victimized by the civil war and the Franco regime argued that Spain was outside international norms of how nations dealt with a difficult and painful past (e.g. Germany, Argentina, South Africa etc.). In addition, left-wing political parties criticized the pragmatism of the transition and the ‘culture of forgetting’ that diminished the political crimes of Franco’s military uprising against the elected government of the Second Republic. At the same time, the Catalan pro-independence parties presented Spain with its most serious constitutional crisis since the 1970s. These three historical events have stimulated a long-lasting debate about ‘Spanish exceptionalism’ and the place of the country in comparative scholarship. According to Howard Wiarda (2000: 30), who popularized the view of Spanish exceptionalism in the 1970s, ‘for most of modern history, Spain has lagged behind the rest of Western Europe and has often been referred to as “different,” “unique,” and “distinctive”. Spain not only lagged economically and sociologically . . . it was believed to lag its neighbors politically, religiously, intellectually, psychologically, and even morally.’ By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Richard Gunther et al. (2004: 1) also argued that the idea of Spanish exceptionalism ‘succintly described the tendency of social scientists to regard Spain as an exceptional case.’ A comparative approach is sometimes neglected when the idea of
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Introduction 5 ‘Spanish exceptionalim’ is used. More recently, the term has been used when Spain is seen as deviating from Western countries on issues such as immigration (FernándezMacías et al. 2015), labour market dualism (Fernández Macias 2003), the decentralization process (Llera 2009), or antisemitism (Baer and López 2012). Lastly, a recent book by Josep Colomer (2019) further suggests that the debate on Spain’s exceptionalism shows no signs of exhaustion. This Oxford Handbook of Spanish Politics examines contemporary Spain from an analytical and empirical approach. Through the systematic comparison of Spain with other European countries, the handbook goes beyond black-box explanations that rely on the cultural singularities captured by the idea of ‘Spanish exceptionalism’. The handbook aims to explain both the causes and the effects of the social, economic, and political institutions, as well as the actions and interactions of relevant actors within the Spanish institutional setting. The handbook includes forty chapters written by a distinguished group of internationally renowned scholars who, we believe, will expertly inform the reader on issues relating to contemporary Spain. It is divided into six sections that cover: (1) the past and present of Spanish politics; (2) political institutions; (3) elections, public opinion, and political participation; (4) civil society; (5) public policy and policy-making; and (6) the international arena. The impact of the Great Recession of the late 2000s is carefully examined. External shocks such as political or economic crises shake the very foundations of democratic polities and often provide new political opportunity structures. Since 2008, the foundations of the Spanish political system have been shaken up by new actors who have discovered their appetite for agency, as the next sections on democracy, decentralization, political representation, and internationalization clearly suggest.
1.2 Democracy in Spain Spain’s longest-lasting democratic period begins with the transition to democracy and the approval of the Constitution in 1978.2 When one examines Spain’s modern history in the last two centuries, finding a democratic form of government is quite rare. According to the dataset on democracy created by Carles Boix et al. (2013), between 1800 and 1976 Spain was only coded as democratic during the 1931–6 period of the Second Republic. This lack of democratic credentials in Spain contrasts with the most established democracies (the US has been coded as a democracy since 1800, and Canada since 1867), 2 A country is defined as democratic if it meets the following conditions for both contestation and participation: In terms of contestation, (1) the executive is directly or indirectly elected in popular elections and is responsible either directly to voters or to a legislature; and (2) the legislature (or the executive if elected directly) is chosen in free and fair elections. In terms of participation, (3) a majority of adult men and women has the right to vote.
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6 Diego Muro and Ignacio Lago as well as with a good number of Western and Eastern European countries. According to Boix et al. (2013), before the Eastern democratic transitions of 1989, 1990, and 2000, Poland can be considered as a democracy from 1918 to 1929, the Czech Republic from 1918 to 1946, and Yugolavia from 1921 to 1928. Furthermore, by the time Spain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986, it was the member State that had experienced fewer years of democracy in its history, fifteen years, compared to the twenty-five years in Portugal, a country that deposed the Caetano regime and restored democracy in 1974. In the last few decades the Spanish democracy has been included in the crème de la crème of political regimes. According to the Polity democracy score (Marshall and Jaggers 2010), one of the most widely used measures to measure the state of world democracy, Spain had the maximum score of +10 between 1982 (i.e. after the February 1981 coup d’état) and 2013 (the last year covered by the Polity democracy score).3 However, since 2008 the quality of Spanish democracy has been eroded, something that suggests that there is a strong relationship between economic performance and satisfaction with democracy. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s measure of democracy,4 using a 0–10 scale, where 0 is the minimum and 10 the maximum quality, Spain’s score was 8.45 in 2008, 8.02 in 2012, 8.30 in 2016, and 8.08 in 2018 (The Economist Intelligence Unit 2018). While Spain was ranked fifteenth in a list of 167 countries in 2008, it dropped to nineteenth in 2018. Not suprisingly, the opinion of the Spanish people on bad governance was clearly in line with the aggregate indicator. According to a poll conducted by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) in November 2008 (study #2778), 60 per cent of respondents were ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the way democracy worked in Spain, versus 43 per cent according to another poll conducted by the CIS ten years later, in September 2018 (study #3223). One of the most serious political consequences of the Great Recession was that Spaniards became pessimistic about their own economic prospects and those of the country as a whole, and distrusted all major democratic institutions, including the government, the parliament, and the political parties.
3 The ‘Polity Score’ captures the regime’s authority spectrum on a 21-point scale, ranging from −10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy). The Polity scores can also be converted into regime categories in a suggested three-part categorization of fully institutionalized ‘autocracies’ (−10 to −6), mixed or incoherent regimes termed ‘anocracies’ (−5 to +5), and fully institutionalized ‘democracies’ (+6 to +10). 4 The Economist Intelligence Unit’s index is based on the view that measures of democracy that reflect the state of political freedoms and civil liberties are not inclusive enough. Some features that determine how substantive democracy is—or what its quality is—are either not encompassed sufficiently or not encompassed at all. Freedom is an essential component of democracy, but is not sufficient by itself. In existing measures, the elements of political participation and the functioning of government are considered only in a marginal way. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.
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Introduction 7
1.3 Decentralization of Economic and Political Power Despite being a multinational and multilingual society, Spain was a highly centralized country until recently. As is well known, autocracies are not prone to the decentralization of power (i.e. the devolution of autonomous political and fiscal power to subnational officials in the terms of O’Neill 2003: 1070); the Francoist dictatorship was not an exception. According to the Regional Authority Index (RAI)5 created by Hoogue et al. (2016) on an annual basis from 1950 to 2010 in 81 countries worldwide, from 1950 to 1977 (i.e. during the Franco dictatorship), decentralization in Spain was very weak, clearly below the average in the sample of countries. However, by the time the Magna Carta was approved in 1978, Spain’s RAI score increased substantially and, for the first time, remained above average. Since 1982, Spain has been in the top five of the most decentralized countries in the world, and from 1998 to the present it has systematically been the second most decentralized, after Germany. The devolution of economic and political power through the creation of a decentralized state (Estado de las Autonomías) was strongly supported by the Spanish citizenry. For instance, when asked by the CIS (study #2211) in 1996 about the creation of the Autonomous Communities, 76 per cent of the respondents found it positive for Spain, with only 15 per cent finding it negative. The results have been remarkably stable over time, and suggest that political and administrative division has successfully channelled the territorial cleavage for a majority of Spaniards. In 2005, in another poll conducted by the CIS with the same wording (study #2610), the positive and negative opinions were 74 and 16 per cent respectively. However, this scenario started to change with the Spanish financial crisis of 2008–14, also known as the Great Recession, which had devastating effects on the livelihood of Spanish citizens, including a rise in prices and very high unemployment. In a CIS poll (study #2956) in 2012, the gap between the positive and negative had virtually disappeared (45 versus 42%). The changing preferences of Spanish people about the territorial organization of the state show that the current Estado de las Autonomías is no longer a durable equilibrium, as indicated by the crisis in Catalonia. While in 2005, for instance, 56 per cent of respondents in a CIS poll (study #2610) were in favour of the status quo (i.e. a decentralized state), in 2018 the status quo was supported by only 42 per cent of the respondents in the corresponding CIS poll (study #3226). Furthermore, the apparent correlation between economic performance and perceived bad governance gave way to a crisis of representation, as the next section explains. 5 The Regional Authority Index is a measure of the authority of regional governments across ten dimensions: institutional depth, policy scope, fiscal autonomy, borrowing autonomy, representation, law-making, executive control, fiscal control, borrowing control, and constitutional reform. These ten dimensions constitute two domains of authority: self-rule, or the authority a regional government exerts within its territory; and shared rule, or the authority a regional government or its representatives exerts in the country as a whole. Country scores aggregate scores for each regional tier and individual regional governments in a country.
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8 Diego Muro and Ignacio Lago
1.4 Representation and Political Parties The creation and consolidation of the Spanish party system from the first democratic election in 1977 until the economic downturn of the Great Recession corresponded to the most frequent pattern in comparative perspective (Crisp et al., 2012). The fragmentation of the party system decreased immediately after the founding election and remained stable (i.e. the equilibrium was reached) in successive elections. Between 1982 and 2015, the party system was dominated by the social-democrat Socialist Party (PSOE) and the conservative Popular Party (PP). These two parties obtained the highest percentage of votes in all national elections, between 66 and 85 per cent of overall votes. Similarly to Austria, Germany, Greece, or the UK, the two big parties alternated in government. However, when comparing it to other European democracies, Spain is interesting because all elections, until 2019, produced a one-party government (gobierno monocolor). The high institutionalization of the party system was reflected, for instance, in the fact that the majority of the Spanish people—56 per cent according to a poll conducted by the CIS in 2007 (study #2736)—felt close to any given party. The global economic downturn of the Great Recession changed the Spanish party system dramatically, as citizens in economic difficulty found that politicians lacked the ability to address their problems adequately. According to another poll conducted by the CIS in 2012 (study #2930), only 36 per cent of individuals felt close to a given party. In the 2015 election two new national parties, the far-left Podemos (We can) and the centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) emerged strongly, suggesting that Spaniards had become more sympathetic than ever before to the new range of political options opening up before them. Furthermore, following the 2015 election, government composition became a crucial issue in contemporary Spanish politics, as it had previously been in other European countries, such as Belgium or the Netherlands. Spanish politics entered a phase of electoral volatility and divided government and, for the first time after the twelve national elections held since the restoration of democracy, the Parliament elected in 2015 failed to reach an agreement on who should be prime minister. Just as in other European member states hit by the recession, so in Spain the political incumbents took an electoral beating, as voters shifted their allegiance from established to new political parties.
1.5 The Internationalization of Spain The Francoist regime faced diplomatic and economic isolation during the 1940s and 1950s. Its fate would only change as the Cold War heated up and Spain became a strategic ally of the United States against the Soviet Union. Spain was the only major Western European country to be excluded from the Marshall Plan and implemented an autocratic
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Introduction 9 economy, while trying to recover from the civil war. The economic isolation was reflected in the varying importance of trade for the Spanish economy over time. According to the World Bank (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ne.trd.gnfs.zs), the sum of exports and imports of goods and services in Spain was 15.3 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1960, 31.59 per cent in 1980, and 65.52 per cent in 2017. In the same years, the averages for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries were 23.62 per cent, 37.27 per cent, and 55.23 (2016); for European Union member states were 38.89 per cent, 51.11 per cent, and 85.96 per cent respectively. Furthermore, in 1995 Spain’s trade in GDP terms was greater than France’s for the first time in history, whereas thirty-five years earlier, in 1960, France’s was 76.62 per cent greater than Spain’s. Although Spain joined the United Nations in 1955, the country was politically isolated from the political and economic initiatives of other Western European democracies until the restoration of democracy in the 1970s. Needless to say, Spain did not participate in the European Union—whose creation began in 1951 with the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)—until the 1980s. The period of isolation came to an end with the democratization of the 1970s and, more importantly, in 1986, when Spain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Spaniards have traditionally held very positive views about the European integration process since joining the EEC. In 1987, according to a poll conducted by the CIS (study #1655), for 60 per cent of respondents being a member of the EEC was seen as a good thing, as opposed to 15 per cent for whom membership was seen as a bad thing. In 2004 (study #2566), 71 per cent of respondents found that belonging to the EU had benefited Spain, while only 14 per cent believed that it had harmed Spain. However, Spaniards changed their opinions about Europe’s political and economic union in the aftermath of the Great Recession, when the government aimed to reduce budget deficit through spending cuts and tax increases. According to a CIS poll conducted in 2014 (study #3022), 48 per cent of respondents believed that belonging to the EU had benefited Spain, whereas 34 per cent believed that it had harmed Spain. Never before had Spaniards been so critical of the European project. Despite the harsh impact of the Great Recession and the austerity measures associated with it, the breadth and depth of the country’s socio-economic transformation since the 1970s had been staggering. More importantly, governments had come and gone, but democracy had stayed.
1.6 Structure of the Handbook The handbook is divided into six sections centred around a specific aspect of Spanish politics. The first section gives a general overview of Spain’s recent political developments. It provides the reader with the necessary background on the political, social, and economic changes undergone by Spain in the last decades, and discusses how the main conflicts have played out over time. The second section examines political institutions in
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10 Diego Muro and Ignacio Lago Spain in a comparative perspective and assesses the key challenges they face. The third section is focused on elections, public opinion, political participation and representation at the national, regional, and local levels. The fourth section explores the contribution of civil society organizations to political and social change in Spain, and examines key conflicts in Spanish society. The fifth section provides readers with an understanding of how and why Spanish public policy-making functions as it does. An overview of the existing programmes, institutions, and political dynamics for a variety of public policy areas is provided. Finally, the Spanish foreign policy and defence policy since the late 1970s is the focus of the sixth section. Special attention is given to the role of Spain within the European Union (EU) and in relation to traditional areas of interest such as Latin America. By organizing the handbook into six sections, the reader will find a comprehensive discussion of various aspects of Spanish politics, with chapters that speak to and complement each other. We also believe that the sections capture all the core features of Spanish politics. The handbook will not, and cannot, provide comprehensive answers to all questions about Spanish politics. However, it can serve as a gateway into the politics and government of Spain, both for scholars interested in single case studies, as well as for those engaged in comparative analysis. With regard to contributors, the handbook reflects the scope and richness of Spanish social sciences. The majority of authors are Spanish, but there is also a substantial number of non-Spanish scholars. In addition to providing a snapshot of Spanish politics as a discipline, there is also an attempt to provide a gender-balanced volume, at the same time trying to represent the various research centres, universities, and think-tanks with an interest in the politics and government of Spain. When commissioning the chapters, we avoided being prescriptive in terms of how contributors should tackle their chapters. Rather than imposing a uniform structure and approach, the volume allowed authors to press at the limits of existing knowledge in their area of expertise, and to be both intellectually fruitful and provocative. We are delighted that the contributors have far exceeded our expectations. Not only have they delivered a diverse set of chapters with different theories and methodological approaches, but they have also produced stimulating and rigorous essays, which will shape research agendas for years to come. The result of their determination is this collective work, which takes stock of what we know about Spanish politics and opens the door to exciting comparative research. Finally, the Oxford Handbook of Spanish Politics has been designed with a wide audience in mind. Political studies are often written by professional social scientists who produce technically excellent research, but are intellectually narrow-minded. Increasing professionalism and methodological expertise in the discipline has come hand in hand with increasing isolation and, on average, scholarly papers are read by a handful of people, and many are not read at all. But it is no longer possible to live in an ‘ivory tower’, as funding bodies have bolstered a shift and now demand that—publicly funded—social scientists engage in public commentary and impact. With this handbook, we are trying to facilitate public dissemination and engagement with politics as a subject. Authors
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Introduction 11 have been asked to avoid jargon, and to ‘translate’ their work into more accessible texts, which, we hope, will be used by policy-makers. In addition to individual practitioners, we also aim to communicate existing research on Spain to stakeholders and users such as activists, politicians, and bureaucrats, in order to facilitate understanding and fulfil our civic duty as social scientists. To paraphrase Max Weber, we simply aim to facilitate knowledge-transfer, which can help the type of people who are called to the profession of politics.
1.7 Bibliography Baer, Alejandro and Paula López. 2012. ‘The blind spots of secularization: A qualitative approach to the study of antisemitism in Europe’. European Societies 14: 203–21. Boix, Carles, Michael K. Miller, and Sebastian Rosato. 2013. ‘A complete data set of political regimes, 1800–2007’. Comparative Political Studies 46(12): 1523–54. Colomer, Josep Maria. 1991. ‘Transition by agreement: Modeling the Spanish way’. American Political Science Review 85(4): 1283–302. Colomer, Josep Maria. 2019. The Spanish Frustration: How a Ruinous Empire Thwarted the Nation-State. London: Anthem Press. Crisp, Brian F., Santiago Olivella, and Josuha D. Potter. 2012. ‘Electoral contexts that impede voter coordination’. Electoral Studies 31: 143–58. Fernandez-Macías, Enrique. 2003. ‘Job instability and political attitudes toward work: Lessons from the Spanish case’. European Journal of Industrial Relations 9: 205–22. Fernandez-Macías, Enrique, Rafael Grande, Alberto del Rey Poveda, and José-Ignacio Antón. 2015. ‘Employment and occupational mobility among recently arrived immigrants: The Spanish case 1997–2007’. Population Research and Policy Review 34: 243–77. Gunitsky, Seva. 2018. ‘Democratic waves in historical perspective’. Perspectives on Politics 16: 634–51. Gunther, Richard, José Ramón Montero, and Joan Botella. 2004. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hooghe, Liesbet, Gary Marks, Arjan H. Schakel, Sandi Chapman Osterkatz, Sara Niedzwiecki, and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield. 2016. Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lacina, Bethany and Nils Petter Gleditsch. 2005. ‘Monitoring trends in global combat: A new dataset of battle deaths’. European Journal of Population 21: 145–65. Llera, Francisco José. 2009. ‘Spain: Identity boundaries and political reconstruction’. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 15: 305–35. Marshall, Monty G., and Keith Jaggers. 2010. Polity IV Project: Political RegimeCharacteristics and Transitions, 1800–2009. Fairfax: George Mason University and Center for Systemic Peace. O’Neill, Kathleen. 2003. ‘Decentralization as an electoral strategy’. Comparative Political Studies 26: 1068–91. Pettersson, Therése and Kristine Eck. 2018. ‘Organized violence, 1989–2017’. Journal of Peace Research 55: 535–47. Polavieja, Javier G. 2003. ‘Temporary contracts and labour market segmentation in Spain: An employment-rent approach’. European Sociological Review 19: 501–17. Preston, Paul. 2013. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in TwentiethCentury Spain. New York: Norton.
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12 Diego Muro and Ignacio Lago Slovik, Milan. 2012. The Politics of Authoritian Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Economist Intelligence Unit. 2018. Democracy Index 2018: Me Too? Political Participation, Protest and Democracy. A Report by the Economist Intelligence Unit. London, New York, Hong Kong: The Economics. Wiarda, Howard J. 2000. ‘Spain 2000: A normal country?’ Mediterranean Quarterly 11(3): 30–61.
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pa rt I I
PA ST A N D PR E SE N T OF SPA N ISH P OL I T IC S
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chapter 2
Spa i n i n Com pa r ati v e Perspecti v e contributions of the spanish case to comparative political analysis Robert M. Fishman
2.1 Introduction The proposition that the Spanish case holds major comparative significance for political analysis, greater in magnitude than suggested by the country’s size and economic weight, is difficult to deny. Spanish developments have attracted major worldwide attention from both political actors and students of politics at various points over the last hundred years—and before. On numerous occasions, this country case has motivated scholarly work that redefined comparative political analysis in important ways, transforming conceptual and theoretical tools for cross-national research. Nonetheless, the overall lessons to be drawn from, and about, the Spanish case, and the way that comparativists ought to think about the case and classify it, seem to defy easy synthesis and consensus. Some country cases tend to generate a good deal of scholarly agreement regarding their overarching significance for comparative analysis. Sweden is widely seen as an emblematic example of a historically successful social democratic welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990); France has been classically understood as an exemplar of a strongly centralized state and of a political culture rooted in a secular or ‘laicist’ sense of Republicanism and of national identity (Brubaker 1992). The United Kingdom is typically viewed as a system resting on a largely unwritten constitution and a robust sense of parliamentary government. In contrast, it is far more difficult to place a simple overarching conceptual label on the case of Spain or to characterize its comparative significance through one central claim or prism. Adding up and tying together the various contributions of Spanish politics to comparative political science constitute a rather daunting challenge. After all, this country
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16 Robert M. Fishman case has caught the attention of comparativists and reoriented the thinking of scholars on a diverse range of themes. This chapter takes up this challenge, specifying several instances of major significance of Spanish politics—and of the academic work devoted to analysing its puzzles—and attempts to identify a unifying logic present in most if not all of these examples of Spanish political relevance. The discussion developed here is intended to be of use for both comparativists and country specialists. A concluding objective of the chapter is to delineate a recurring puzzle about Spanish politics that underpins many of its instances of relevance. This puzzle offers grounds for future research aimed at further elucidating the comparative significance and primary characteristics of Spanish politics. Several basic questions underpin this analysis: How should we place the Spanish case on major dimensions of variation in political phenomena? How can we conceptualize Spain’s political performance and challenges? What are the main research puzzles that scholars should address in studies of this case? And finally, what theoretical lessons can be gleaned from the study of Spanish politics? Despite the relatively straightforward nature of these queries, the answers to them have not generated scholarly consensus. The study of Spanish politics motivates considerable academic debate and, fortunately for the larger field of comparative politics, that debate has often proved extraordinarily fruitful for the advance of the larger discipline and its commitment to making sense out of cross-case variation in political phenomena. Moreover, in practical terms, the longrun significance of Spain in world history and the country’s relevance for the evolution of contemporary European institutions are both at least somewhat greater than its current economic or demographic significance. In this chapter, I first take note of basic contours of the case and discuss the selection of a frame of comparative reference for its study. I then address methodological differences between macro and micro-level research on the case and delineate a number of thematic areas in which scholarly work on Spain has significantly contributed to moving the larger field forward. I ask whether there is a common thread—a shared explanation—for the large number of points on which the Spanish experience has provided an empirical foundation for theoretically innovative work. In concluding the chapter, I offer a tentative answer to that question and use it to identify important questions for future work on this case.
2.2 The Contours of this Case and the Selection of a Comparative Frame of Reference On a wide range of political outcomes, Spain stands out as an intermediate case that is neither one of the greatest success stories of the last hundred years nor a particularly unsuccessful one. The record of the country’s political life is a rather mixed one in numerous respects, yielding episodes and arenas both of success and of failure.
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 17 This raises the question of whether there is an overarching pattern to be discerned as a way of illuminating central features of the country’s political life and of their relevance for comparative political scientists. On some matters, the successes and failures were actually simultaneous with one another: the country’s late-nineteenth-century Restored Monarchy was at the same time a relative pioneer in the consolidation of universal suffrage for males and an example of largely non-competitive elections that were to a significant degree controlled by governments in power. Political contradictions such as this one are certainly not limited to the Spanish case, but they are a recurring feature of this country’s political history. In the 1930s, Spain’s Second Republic was an example both of how onetime political outsiders could initiate a major episode of human progress and of the dangers of political polarization. During the Civil War of 1936–39, the country was an example of massive popular resistance to a violent assault on democracy and of cruel excesses by many combatants on both sides of the conflict. After the end of the War, the country’s experience provided evidence of both the massive repression of right-wing authoritarian rule and the internal complexities of such regimes. With the return to democratic rule following the death of long-time dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, the capacity of political actors to conduct themselves with ingenuity, and frequently with self-imposed restraint, made possible a successful transition to democracy when many observers had questioned whether that outcome would be possible. This triumph attracted great cross-national attention from political actors and observers throughout the world, but the new democracy that was constructed has motivated a good deal of critical analysis, perhaps for reasons related to the transition itself. At the time that this volume goes to press, nearly two full decades after the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Spanish case offers a number of examples of disappointing outcomes. Some of those negative developments may be attributable to dynamics put in place by the large cross-national economic crisis that began in 2008, but others were clearly discernible well before the economic crisis began. If we focus on socio-economic matters, research has shown that governmental management of the economic crisis led to a significantly greater expansion of inequality in Spain than in other South European cases (Perez and Matsaganis 2018). In neighbouring Portugal, also subject to strong external pressures to adopt austerity policies during the Great Recession, the crisis period actually witnessed a decline in inequality, even though political parties of roughly the same ideological stripes governed both Iberian Peninsula countries during almost the entire period of economic crisis (Fishman 2019, ch. 5). Moreover, as is well known, Spain has suffered from chronically high unemployment for most of the postFranco period—well before the onset of the Great Recession in 2008 (Fishman 2012). Disagreements over the political status of the country’s plurinational periphery (especially in Catalonia and the Basque Country) have led to greater conflict than in many other plurinational democracies. Indicators of citizen political satisfaction and of institutional strength also provide disappointing evidence as discussed in section 2.4. Evaluating such matters necessarily involves adopting a comparative frame of reference, the challenge that we now examine.
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18 Robert M. Fishman The comparative frame of reference in studies of Spain, and in broader designs that include this country, has varied considerably. Whereas much work has sought to locate points of similarity and contrast with several other south European countries (Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle 1995; Diamandouros and Gunther 2001; Gunther, Diamandouros, and Sotiropoulos 2006), some work has focused instead on the smaller paired comparison (Tarrow 2010) with Portugal. Some work on this two-way pairing has taken the contrast between the Iberian Peninsula neighbours as an opportunity to examine the lasting impact of pathways from dictatorship to democracy (Fishman 2011, 2017, 2019; Fernandes 2015). The two Iberian Peninsula countries had developed in remarkably similar fashion for centuries but diverged in the mid-1970s in transitions to democracy that took the form of a democratizing social revolution in Portugal and a regime-led process of institutional reform (under pressure from the opposition) in Spain (Sánchez-Cuenca 2014a). The analytical treatment of the 1970s regime transitions as a ‘critical juncture’ (Collier and Collier 1991; Collier and Munck 2017) makes it possible to draw theoretical conclusions as to whether modes of democratic transition generate distinctive consequences. Other studies have sought to rigorously compare Spain—and Portugal—to their former colonies in the Americas, generally yielding findings that place Spain in a favourable light (Huber and Stephens 2012). However, increasingly researchers have preferred to place the Spanish case in a larger universe including other relatively prosperous countries in Europe and other world regions. This broader frame of reference reflects in part the existence of large cross-national data sets that facilitate such comparisons, but the broader frame is also congruent with several elements of political reality: the importance of the European Union for political developments within member states including (since 1986) Spain (Royo and Manuel 2003), and the fact that in worldwide comparisons Spain stands out as a relatively prosperous country with a complex and advanced society. All four comparative frames have their logic and usefulness, although the comparisons that focus on Latin America generally seem more fruitful for Latin Americanists than for analysts primarily concerned with Spain, Europe, or economically advanced countries. In the frame of reference that examines the universe of Spanish-speaking countries— Spain and Spanish America—and that can be expanded to include Portugal and its mammoth former colony Brazil, Spain clearly looks quite favourable. Support for democracy, per capita income, social guarantees and the reduction of inequality are all objectives that Spain has obtained to a greater extent than its former colonies in the Americas. However, the broader assessment of the political record clearly cannot be constructed exclusively through this comparative frame. The favourable contrast can hardly generate enthusiasm for the accomplishments of this country case if it stacks up poorly when compared to its European peers. The comparisons with other European cases cannot be avoided. On a wide range of outcome variables, the Spanish political system appears at least somewhat disappointing when compared to its European peers. Some negative developments can be linked to the large impact of the global Great Recession. The economic crisis produced a rapid rise in unemployment, inequality, and political disaffection in
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 19 Spain (Torcal 2014; Sánchez-Cuenca 2014b; Muro and Vidal 2017; Fishman 2019, ch. 5). Nonetheless, some crucial indicators had generated quite negative readings well before the crisis began. During the years from 1999 through 2002, just as Spain was beginning a period of unsustainable economic outperformance linked to a large property and construction bubble, the country stood out as a European laggard in data on citizens’ sense of political efficacy (Bonet, Martín, and Montero 2006, 121). Indeed, in the group of countries examined by Bonet, Martín, and Montero, only Russia scored lower than Spain in the degree to which citizens felt that they could successfully bring their views to the attention of power holders. However, much did change with the crisis. The abrupt turn toward harsh austerity measures by the Socialist government in May 2010 and the steady increase of inequality under governments of both right and left during the crisis brought about a variety of severe political consequences along with the material difficulties experienced by ordinary citizens (Fishman 2019, ch. 5). Comparative data analysed by Ganuza and Font (2018, 15) show that during the economic crisis Spain suffered an especially severe decline in public trust in the political system’s central institution, the parliament. The country’s party system also entered into crisis during the period of economic difficulty and austerity (Orriols and Cordero 2016)—as happened, to a greater or lesser extent in two of the other south European countries—Italy and Greece. Indeed, in southern Europe only Portugal escaped this broadly shared challenge to the existing party system (Fishman 2019, ch. 5). Underlying the emergent signs of political crisis was a growth of material difficulties for large sectors of the population and an increase in inequality. The crucial comparative point is that inequality increased more in Spain than in the rest of southern Europe (Perez and Matsaganis 2018). Before the crisis, the Spanish case was already distinctive in its extremely low level of subjective political efficacy among citizens. During the crisis, it once again proved distinctive in the magnitude of deterioration in distributional outcomes. Thus, despite this country case’s favourable standing when compared to its former colonies, it takes on a decidedly unfavourable hue when compared to its European peers. As developed below, this outcome holds some elements in common with other theoretically significant macro-level dynamics that characterized the Spanish case earlier. That mixed record of the Spanish case is not a new phenomenon, and it offers a valuable avenue to making theoretical sense out of the comparative significance of the case. The country’s colonial empire in the early modern era was among the greatest in the world—changing Spain, Europe, and world history—but the empire largely collapsed before those of several of Spain’s imperial peers, and for all practical purposes ended with the country’s one-sided defeat in a war with the United States in 1898 (McCoy, Fradera, and Jacobson 2012). The country’s economic development has placed it well within the range of normal for Europe, but at a level that has consistently remained substantially below the average for the continent’s most successful economies. During the post-Franco democratic period, the country’s relative status in the ranking of European economies has remained relatively stable over the medium term, with some significant short-term fluctuations (Fishman 2012). In the important field of regime
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20 Robert M. Fishman type, the country experienced long periods of both dictatorship and democracy during the twentieth century. Moreover, in the conflict over the form of government for the country, Spaniards have engaged in conduct that scholars have seen as ranging from exemplary, wise, and courageous to regrettable, unwise, and shortsighted. In its intermediate status between success and failure, the Spanish case has provided those studying it with numerous puzzles and challenges, including ones that were clearly not scientifically anticipated within the academic literatures that predominated when those puzzles came to the attention of researchers. It is in confronting this challenge—the puzzle provided by a series of disjunctures between the case’s experience and the expectations of specialized literatures—that scholars of Spanish politics have formulated new concepts and theories that proved to be widely useful. Crucially, in the Spanish case, both democracies and dictatorships have often worked in practice in ways that have diverged sharply from some scholarly expectations for those forms of government. This does not mean that in any generalized way Spain is ‘different’, except to the extent that all cases are distinctive and different from others—as the great social scientist Max Weber argued in his central methodological statement (Fishman 2007). However, the way in which the Spanish case has brought to the attention of scholars a series of divergences between empirical reality and predominant theories about it has proved to be of wide comparative significance. We now turn our attention to the thematic terrains on which the Spanish case has made its major contributions to comparative political analysis.
2.3 Macro- and Micro-Level Contributions on the Spanish Case: Methodological Challenges Many of the questions on which the study of Spain has yielded especially important scholarly contributions—helping to define new ways of understanding political and causal dynamics of global expanse—involve systemic phenomena of a macro-political nature rather than more micro-level phenomena such as individual-level attitudes and behaviours. Indeed, Spain serves as an emblematic case in the literatures on both democratic breakdown and democratic revival, which is to say redemocratization. Themes such as the effort to account for the breakdown of democratic regimes (Linz 1978), the conceptualization and analysis of repressive anti-democratic regimes (Linz 1975), the understanding of successful instances of regime transformation from dictatorship to democracy (Linz and Stepan 1996; Gunther, Montero, and Botella 2004), the study of conflict over national identity and of its impact on the viability of democracy (Stepan, Linz, and Yadav 2011), the import of party ideology on policy outcomes under democracy (Boix 1998), and the degree of inclusion and political equality to be found in democratic
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 21 regimes (Fishman 2019), are but some of the large systemic questions on which work dealing with the Spanish experience has offered conceptual and theoretical claims of relevance for cross-national comparisons and explanations. Much of the work involved in such contributions has been the direct result of the path-opening scholarly efforts of the late political scientist Juan Linz, but the impact of Spain on macro-level theorizing is not limited to his neo-Weberian work. However, with the country’s post-Franco political democratization and the return of opportunities for the free expression of political sentiments though elections or in other ways, individuallevel political dispositions and actions have also assumed great significance for students of this national case—as in the study of other democracies. A great deal of relatively new high-quality work has adopted this approach, focusing on explaining variation observed at the individual level. This chapter takes up both macro-level and more micro-level dynamics, assessing the comparative significance of the Spanish case from both vantage points. The methodological and conceptual challenge of placing work on this case in comparative perspective seems, at least on the surface, to take on somewhat different forms in macro-level and micro-level scholarship. Macro-level work inevitably leads researchers to examine the complex constellations of historical, institutional, and cultural factors that vary between countries. The challenge might appear less daunting in the case of micro-level analysis: the placement of any country case in comparative perspective from the standpoint of dispositions and behaviours expressed at the individual level appears to offer scholars a ‘fast-track’ of comparison based on rigorous data. Survey research findings, and for our purposes here, aggregate level average outcomes for Spain—or any other country case—provide a crucially important basis for making cross-national comparisons. The rigorous assessment of cross-national differences between country cases in the prevalence of trust, political confidence, interest in democracy—or any other important political phenomenon that is subject to study through large N-national-level survey research—constitutes one of the most fundamental pillars of contemporary political analysis. But does that mean that a quick reading of the relative placement of Spain—and other cases—on dimensions of variation in political preferences, dispositions, and behaviours, stands as a sufficient basis for assessing the comparative placement of Spain within the universe of more or less comparable country cases? I suggest here that unfortunately this fast track to cross-national comparisons, if taken on its own without complementary forms of analysis, offers a somewhat inadequate basis for assessing the full significance of this, or any, country case in comparative terms. I offer both specific empirical and broadly methodological rationales for this judgement. One finds substantial evidence of the need to look well beyond ‘fast-track’ aggregate indicators in the best scholarship on individual-level differences. One of the most important and original contributions to the study of post-Franco politics—the incisive analysis of class voting by Chhibber and Torcal (1997)—reaches the conclusion that simple individual-level studies of class voting at the country-wide level generate a highly misleading impression of the true magnitude of class phenomena in voting choices in Spain. Whereas many analysts of individual-level voter choices had found
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22 Robert M. Fishman that class was relatively unimportant in structuring the vote of citizens, Chhibber and Torcal find a powerful class effect. Their fundamental innovation is to bound their analysis by Autonomous Community—where many crucial governmental decisions are made in this country case. They then differentiate between Autonomous Communities where the Socialists have governed from others where they have not done so. By contextualizing voter choice in a framework that incorporates institutional realities specific to the case and partisan strategies—linked to policy outputs—these authors were able to locate a powerful class effect in the structuration of the vote, one that had been essentially missed by more conventional analysts. One could hardly ask for a better example of how deep knowledge of a country case permits carefully contextualized analysis to uncover causal dynamics that would escape researchers limited to a simple ‘fast-track’ approach that restricts itself to observing country-level aggregate values of key political variables. The lesson provided by the classic analysis of Chhibber and Torcal is in general terms congruent with the approach to comparison elaborated by the distinguished methodologist, Charles Ragin. Ragin argues (1987, 2008) that genuine comparison involves doing much more than simply searching for an average effect of variables across multiple cases. He labels that approach as ‘variable oriented’ work, contrasting it with the comparative method which he views as a more effective avenue to elucidating causality. Causation, Ragin suggests, can be masked by the search for average effects understood to operate similarly across cases. Instead, he argues that causation is fundamentally configurative, involving complex interactions among variables and processes that take varying forms that are inevitably conditioned by context. Whereas some social s cientists assume that fundamental causal processes involve dynamics that operate in a uni versal context-free manner, Ragin argues exactly the reverse. In his perspective, causal dynamics are embedded in constellations of interaction that can vary by context. This approach in effect offers a methodological rationale for eschewing what I have labelled the ‘fast-track’ route to comparison. For social scientists influenced by Charles Ragin’s methodological claims, the placement of Spain or indeed any country case in comparative perspective inevitably leads us to take up contextual matters and dynamics that involve national history, cultural phenomena, and institutional as well as policy-related phenomena located at the macro-level. The consideration of Spain’s comparative significance offers methodological implications that extend beyond this case. Without analysis that focuses on contextually embedded institutional, historical, and cultural matters we would be left without any way of assessing and conceptualizing macro-level variation between countries. Scholarly work on the Spanish case has served not only to provide research findings of significance for comparative political science but also to contribute conceptual and theoretical approaches of wide disciplinary impact. In what follows I examine a series of specific thematic terrains on which the study of Spanish politics has yielded major conceptual and theoretical insights that travel well beyond the limits of Spain itself. In doing so I take up several contributions to the study of Spain that have attained wide recognition in comparative literatures, and I ask not only what the major lessons of each such contribution is, but also whether there are any
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 23 common threads of analysis that can be identified. I then turn toward a final effort to draw together lessons generated by these broadly relevant conceptual and theoretical advances. On the basis of that effort, I offer suggestions regarding areas of research needed to more fully realize this country case’s potential to help resolve large scientific doubts within the field of comparative political analysis.
2.4 Spain and the Comparative Study of Regimes: Conceptual Contributions On repeated occasions during the twentieth century, Spain’s episodes of regime change attracted the attention of global actors, observers, and analysts. Spain has been an outsized player in the politics of regime change and in the conceptualization of what political regimes are. The hopes and travails of the Second Republic in the 1930s, the prolonged armed confrontation in the Civil War between defenders of the Republic and proponents of right-wing anti-democratic rule, the long years of Franco’s right-wing authoritarian rule, and the unusual dynamics of a return to democracy orchestrated and led in part by veterans of the Franco dictatorship, all have attracted great attention internationally from political actors and scholars. The Civil War was seen by many as a proving ground for alliances and military strategies later deployed more widely in World War II. International volunteers played a vital role in the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the Republic to defend itself from a coalition led by right-wing elements of the country’s military under the command of Francisco Franco. The status and efforts of Spain attracted not only the interest, but also the ultimate sacrifice, of many within the interwar generation that witnessed the rise to power of fascist regimes in Italy and Germany. At the end of the Franco regime, after the long-time dictator had died while still in power in November 1975, the largely orchestrated transition to democracy drew enormous attention from observers in other countries that continued to suffer from dictatorship. As the distinguished student of democratic diffusion, Kurt Weyland, has documented, many crucially placed actors in political systems that were searching for a viable path from dictatorship to democracy looked to the Spanish case for strategies and arrangements that could be ‘emulated’ at least in part (Weyland 2014). Thus, much of the outsized significance of this country case in the terrain of regime change is rooted squarely in the practical world of politics. Observers and actors from other countries have repeatedly found significance in this country’s experience in shaping or remaking regimes. However, much of the impact of the Spanish case on comparative political analysis is largely reflective of the extraordinary contributions—and above all the conceptual innovations—of the great Spanish political scientist and sociologist, Juan Linz (1926–2013). Linz’s work on regimes and regime change built on his in-depth case-sensitive knowledge of a number of cases, including most prominently that of Spain. Much of his
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24 Robert M. Fishman crucial work was carried out in collaboration with his frequent co-author, Alfred Stepan, but the conceptual core of Linz’s central contributions was, for the most part, developed in single-authored work. This work includes his one volume theoretical introduction (1978) to a longer work on the breakdown of democracies co-edited with Stepan (Linz and Stepan 1978). Linz’s comparative model on the process and dynamics that lead to democratic breakdowns quickly became a landmark in the comparative analysis of regime transitions, influencing not only studies of democratic collapse but also of transitions to democracy. Important recent work by Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt on How Democracies Die (2018) draws heavily on arguments of Linz—along with related work by Linz’s Yale University colleague Robert Dahl (1971). This recent study by Levitsky and Ziblatt was motivated in large measure by the casespecific turn of American politics in 2016 with the unexpected election of Donald Trump as president that year, but the conceptual approach of their work builds in important ways on the contributions of Linz. In his original argument on the dynamics that led to democratic breakdown in a number of cases—including, prominently, Spain—during Europe’s twentieth-century interwar years, Linz placed a good deal of emphasis on ways in which supposed friends of democracy undertook courses of action that tended to undermine the prospects for democratic survival. Linz’s analysis highlighted the role of political decisions, including those by democracy’s advocates and would-be defenders. He also developed the concept of semi-loyalty, referring to those who wished to link themselves to democracy, but who formed alliances with anti-democratic forces for one reason or another, hoping to advance their social project by drawing support from sectors that lacked genuine democratic credentials. Linz developed this theory in his empirical and historic treatment of the Spanish case, in which he examined how the expansive hopes that the declaration of the Republic brought ‘onstage’ in April 1931 gave way to destructive polarization, a deepening cycle of political violence, and the upsurge of both semi-loyalty and outright disloyal opposition by crucially placed political actors. Linz’s analysis highlights how dynamics of political action can lead to outcomes diametrically opposed to the hopes of the actors involved—a key assumption of Weberians from Max Weber onward. In a sense, Linz’s theory of democratic breakdown is largely about two large ‘disjunctures’: one that juxtaposes the aspirations of democracy’s advocates with the effects of their actions, and the other that examines the internal contradictions of ‘semi-loyal’ actors who are ambivalent on major systemic questions. In both instances, Linz’s conclusion is that actors who profess a commitment to democratic principles cannot be counted on to act consistently and effectively in ways that solidify democratic rule. Linz’s argument claims that political action by ambivalent or semi loyal actors helped to undermine Spain’s Second Republic and other democracies as well. In that sense, Linz’s reading of the Spanish case, and his elaboration of theoretical lessons based on that analysis, offer strong amendments or qualifications to class-based theories (Moore 1966) that had been dominant when Linz developed this line of analysis. Linz’s analysis of regimes builds in systematic fashion off his case-sensitive claim that the substance of anti-democratic rule in the Spanish case followed a logic strikingly
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 25 different from the expectations of the then dominant theory on anti-democratic regimes—the theory of totalitarianism. Linz conceptualized the Franco regime as an ‘authoritarian regime’ (1964, 1975), arguing that such political systems were characterized by limited internal pluralism and by the effort to demobilize and depoliticize the citizenry instead of by the totalitarian ambition to activate the population in pursuit of some large overarching goal. Linz’s theory of authoritarianism has at times been misinterpreted as an argument that authoritarian regimes are less repressive than totalitarian systems and therefore closer in nature to democracy. Such claims are unrelated to the thrust of Linz’s argument. He asserts that authoritarian regimes can be every bit as repressive as totalitarian ones, and indeed that some authoritarian regimes are more repressive than the least repressive totalitarian ones. In Linz’s analysis, the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism in the terrain of regime repression involves the targets of repression, not the ferocity of it. Linz claims that totalitarian regimes tend to be especially harsh with political actors who once formed part of the regime’s core and who at some point developed political differences with the regime’s leadership. In contrast, authoritarian regimes tend to be especially lenient with those who once formed part of the system’s founding nucleus. Linzian authoritarianism is fundamentally different from totalitarianism, not only in the identity of the primary targets of repression but also in the treatment of internal differences within the circles of power and among regime supporters. Authoritarian regimes, as Linz formulated the concept, accept and indeed thrive on such internal divisions, whereas totalitarian regimes feel threatened by internal disagreements. Linz’s early characterization of the Franco regime as an authoritarian regime that followed certain highly predictable forms of conduct that were anti-democratic, yet different in crucial respects from the conduct theorized for totalitarianism, proved highly helpful to both scholars and political activists seeking to make analytical sense out of the actions of that regime. Changes in regime policy such as the end of autarchy, the embrace of a certain type of collective bargaining (without legalizing strikes or the labour movement opposition) and others fit the Linzian conceptualization, but did not in any sense signify a shift in the fundamentally repressive and anti-democratic nature of the system. Linz later amplified his typology (1975), using his pioneering work on authoritarianism in Spain as the basis for a broad-scale typology of anti-democratic regimes. The disjunctures that Linz identified between the theory of totalitarianism and the realities of Francoism served to reorient a great deal of scholarship on anti-democratic regimes elsewhere. In this instance, as in others, the crucial disjunctures that Linz identified involved unwritten rules that diverged both from the formal guidelines of the regime and the then predominant theory of anti-democratic rule—the theory of totalitarianism. In the case of Francoism, these unwritten rules included harsh repression for the long-time opposition to the regime, toleration or semi-toleration for sectors that had identified with the regime in its founding moments but that later strayed from that position, toleration for many apolitical forms of civil society organization, and a comprehensively conservative socio-cultural view of the country that effectively excluded large sectors of the population from full recognition. The regime was predictably repressive,
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26 Robert M. Fishman carrying out executions until the end, but it was also internally diverse and capable of certain types of flexibility that allowed it to endure and—in certain respects—evolve. Here, as in the case of democratic breakdown, disjunctures that Linz identified between Spanish realities and then predominant theories in comparative politics served to forge conceptual tools that would help numerous scholars working on other countries to identify and explain the realities of those other cases. Spain’s democratic transition, analysed in depth in this volume by Ignacio SánchezCuenca, provided another occasion for political and social scientists to formulate new concepts to characterize and explain Spanish political developments that diverged from many existing expectations of actor behaviour. A number of developments during the transition helped provide the foundation for a large conceptually oriented literature on the Spanish transition that has contributed in major ways to broader comparative theorizations on democratization (Linz and Stepan 1996). These developments included the willingness of regime politicians to vote within existing institutions for the crucial reform package that would undermine their power and provide for a return to democracy (Sánchez-Cuenca 2014a), the decision of many actors within the opposition to reduce their aspirations for a clear break with the past and to place other self-imposed limits on their demands, and the capacity of long-time political adversaries to agree on crucial guidelines for the emergent democratic regime. Another theme that the new Spanish democracy inevitably had to confront, and that held large implications for other cases, was the effort to build an institutional basis for the country’s divergent views on national identity. Whereas a majority of Spaniards held only one national identity, in the country’s periphery many Basques, Catalans, and Galicians held either an alternative national identity—for example only as Basques—or dual identities—for example as both Basques and Spaniards (Montero 2019). Spain is one of a number of democracies in which many citizens do not think of the existing state structure as a nation-state but instead as a plurinational state (Stepan, Linz, and Yadav 2011). As noted, this view is especially prevalent in much of the country’s periphery, where history, language, and socio-cultural realities have been supportive to alternative national identities and movements. The Franco regime had been committed to reasserting a unitary conception of the Spanish state after the Second Republic’s acceptance of devolution to newly created ‘Autonomous Communities’ in the country’s plurinational periphery. Harsh linguistic repression against the languages of the periphery formed part of that broader effort by the Franco regime (Fishman 2019, ch. 6). The post-Franco democracy quickly forged a Constitutional framework that permitted a kind of ‘asymmetric federalism’, allowing the regions constitutionally defined as ‘historic nationalities’ to pursue autonomy statutes through a special expedited procedure (Linz and Stepan 1996). However, in practice Spain quickly turned to an approach to devolution that has been widely called ‘coffee for everyone’. All of the country’s regions sought and received the right to construct Autonomous Communities that enjoyed certain administrative and political responsibilities devolved from the central Spanish state (Gunther, Montero, and Botella 2004). A Constitutional design that had offered the periphery the hope of a type of asymmetric federalism—recognizing and accepting the
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 27 national distinctiveness of the periphery—gave way in practice to a generalized but limited devolution of powers for all regions. In the country’s political culture, re- centralizers emerged, demanding a reduction of autonomy and the end of distinctive Basque and Catalan political prerogatives that had survived the turn toward ‘coffee for everyone’. The new democracy’s institutional structure was pervasively shaped by the universality of devolution to Autonomous Communities, but the cultural significance attached to autonomy—and as a result the salience of regionally specific party systems— varied a good deal by region within Spain (Lago 2004). In practice, the Spanish system failed to develop a robust form of asymmetric federalism, and tensions over national identity and the magnitude of self-rule for the periphery have continued to consume the political energies of the country. On this issue as on others, a divergence between initial design and actual practice has strongly marked contemporary political reality. At least two other fundamental issues that have emerged in scholarship on the postFranco democracy are relevant for assessing the country’s comparative placement on political matters. The magnitude and causes of political disaffection and the alleged tendencies of the system’s ‘democratic practice’ to fall far short of democracy’s inclusionary ideal of political equality for all citizens (Fishman 2017, 2019) both pose issues of major comparative relevance. Analyses of political disaffection in the Spanish case have noted the unusually low level of subjective political efficacy of Spanish citizens (Bonet, Martín, and Montero 2006 121), the anomalous failure of participatory institutions to build enthusiasm for participation among those who experience the new opportunities that they provide (Font and Navarro 2013), and the decline in political confidence in a variety of centrally important political institutions (Muro and Vidal 2017; Sánchez-Cuenca 2014b; Torcal 2014). Some of the maladies to be detected in citizen attitudes toward the political system are broadly shared by many other European democracies—especially in southern Europe, where the politics of austerity took a severe toll on economic conditions. Numerous studies have documented a considerable decline in citizen satisfaction in the context of economic crisis (Ganuza and Font 2018; Muro and Vidal 2017; Torcal 2014; Sánchez-Cuenca 2014b). Nonetheless, on some crucial indicators, the data on Spain also showed elements of unusual weakness—greater in magnitude than in otherwise comparable south European cases— even before the onset of economic crisis (Fishman and Villaverde Cabral 2016). It is in this light that studies that seek to identify features of Spanish democracy that limit the responsiveness of office holders to popular concerns assume added significance. The argument that Spain’s culturally rooted form of ‘democratic practice’ tends to isolate office holders from the voices of dissatisfied citizens to a greater extent than in otherwise similar polities, such as Portugal (Fishman 2017, 2019), may be able to shed light on this anomaly. A systematic comparison of understandings of democracy and prevalent forms of political conduct in Spain and Portugal suggests that those neighbouring countries’ polar opposite pathways to democracy in the 1970s left as enduring legacies culturally embedded approaches to democratic life that differ substantially by country (Fishman 2019). Whereas Spanish political actors came to believe in the importance of erecting sharp boundaries between the political action that takes place within
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28 Robert M. Fishman representative institutions and expressions of popular preferences elsewhere—for example in the streets in demonstrations or other forms of protest—Portuguese actors developed a very different conception of democracy rooted in that country’s revolutionary route to political freedom. In Portugal, political actors have tended to see the parliament and the streets as complementary arenas—both of them essential to the vitality of democratic life (Fishman and Everson 2016). This contrast aligns closely with the parting of the ways of the two cases in distributional terms during the crisis. In Portugal, where even a right-wing government reversed course on a crucial element of its austerity policies in September 2012 in the wake of social movement pressures in the streets, inequality actually declined during the crisis. In Spain, where governments often sought to isolate themselves from the voices of dissatisfied citizens, inequality increased during the crisis (Fishman 2019, ch. 5). Spain, in this analysis, stands out as a country case in which unwritten understandings and implicit rules of conduct have limited the responsiveness of office holders and their attentiveness to the concerns of low-income sectors. On this point as on many others, analyses of the Spanish case offer possible contributions to the conceptualization and study of dynamics that hold causal relevance in many other country cases as well.
2.5 A Common Thread in the Thematic Terrains Discussed Here Several of the points taken up in this discussion involve disjunctures between actual political conduct in Spain and the expectations set by dominant theories rooted in the analysis of other cases. Spanish political realities have often provided researchers with ample evidence of such disjunctures. Other country cases also provide examples of such disjunctures, but the conceptual and theoretical insights derived from empirical casesensitive work on Spain have often proved capable of helping to explain empirical realities, not only in this country case, but also in others where institutional rules and dominant theories serve as an insufficient guide to political realities. Spain’s disjunctures from theoretically expected outcomes have proved to travel well as the numerous major contributions of Juan Linz, and other work as well, have shown. This observation, in turn raises the question of how culturally embedded understandings that differ from formal institutional rules come into existence and reproduce themselves or evolve. This large theoretical question—about the relationship between formal and informal dynamics, about the contrasts and tensions between institutions and the taken-for-granted culture of politics, provides rich ground for future work on Spain. Spain’s mixed record as a country characterized by failures along with its successes has provided comparative researchers with a long list of conceptual tools of explanation and serves to provide scholars concerned with Spain with a long list of important questions for new research capable of driving broader trends in comparative analysis.
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 29 The discussion in this chapter seeks to show that the comparative significance of the Spanish case lies precisely in the surprises that it has offered and the related conceptual innovations formulated to explain such phenomena. Expectations based exclusively on formal institutional rules and general theories of politics have frequently proved inadequate to the task of making sense out of politics in Spain, especially on large matters of deep systemic significance. Political practice during the Second Republic of the 1930s, the repressive Franco regime, the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, and the post-Franco democracy have proved different enough from the expectations of large streams of scholarship to call out for theoretical innovation. Spain’s mixed record of successes and failures in politics stands close enough to predominant theoretical expectations—for example in early theorizations of anti-democratic regimes or democratization scenarios—to invite scholars to attempt applying those expectations to the case, yet at the same time far enough removed from such expectations to encourage conceptual innovation and renewal. Many instances of such conceptual innovation involve new theories that identify patterns of regularity that rest on ‘mentalities’ (Linz 1964, 1975), ambivalence (Linz 1978), or cultural foundations of political conduct (Fishman 2019). The Spanish case provides recurrent evidence of why it is crucial to complement formal institutional analysis with theoretical frameworks that delineate types of conduct not anticipated by that approach. Scholarship on this case has offered conceptual tools linked to such disjunctures and applicable to numerous other cases. Whether one wishes to explain the evolution of distributional outcomes, the erosion of support for existing parties, transformations in regimes or other large-scale outcomes, analyses of the uneven record of the Spanish case offer scholars lessons and analytical instruments of wide comparative relevance.
2.6 Bibliography Boix, C. 1998. Political Parties, Growth and Equality: Conservative and Social Democratic Strategies in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bonet, E., I. Martín, and J. R. Montero. 2006. Las actitudes políticas de los españoles. In: Ciudadanos, asociaciones y participación en España. Madrid: CIS, pp. 105–32. Brubaker, R. 1992. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chhibber, P. and M. Torcal. 1997. ‘Elite strategy, social cleavages, and party systems in a new democracy’. Comparative Political Studies 30(1): 27–54. Collier, D. and G. Munck. 2017. Building blocks and methodological challenges: A framework for studying critical junctures’. Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 15(1): 2–9. Collier, R. and D. Collier. 1991. Shaping the Political Arena. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dahl, R. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Diamandouros, N. and R. Gunther. 2001. Parties, Politics and Democracy in the New Southern Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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30 Robert M. Fishman Fernandes, T. 2015. ‘Rethinking pathways to democracy: Civil society in Portugal and Spain, 1960–2000s’. Democratization 22(6): 1074–104. Fishman, R. M. 2007. On being a Weberian (after Spain’s 11–14 March): Notes on the continuing relevance of the methodological perspective proposed by Weber. In: Max Weber’s ‘Objectivity’ Reconsidered. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 261–89. Fishman, R. M. 2011. ‘Democratic practice after the Revolution: The case of Portugal and beyond’. Politics and Society 39(2): 233–67. Fishman, R. M. 2012. ‘Anomalies of Spain’s economy and economic policy-making’. Contributions to Political Economy 31(1): 67–76. Fishman, R. M. 2017. ‘How civil society matters in democratization: Setting the boundaries of post-transition inclusion’. Comparative Politics 49(3): 391–409. Fishman, R. M. 2019. Democratic Practice: Origins of the Iberian Divide in Political Inclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fishman, R. M. and D. Everson. 2016. ‘Mechanisms of social movement success: “Conversation”, displacement and disruption’. Revista Internacional de Sociología 74(4): 1–10. Fishman, R. M. and Cabral, M. Villaverde. 2016. ‘Socio-historical foundations of citizenship practice: After social revolution in Portugal’. Theory & Society 45: 531–53. Font, J. and C. Navarro. 2013. ‘Personal experience and the evaluation of participatory instruments in Spanish cities’. Public Administration 91(3): 616–31. Ganuza, E. and J. Font. 2018. ¿Por qué la gente odia la política? Madrid: Catarta. Gunther, R., N. Diamandouros, and H. Puhle. 1995. The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gunther, R., N. Diamandouros, and D. Sotiropoulos. 2006. Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gunther, R., J. R. Montero, and J. Botella. 2004. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Huber, E. and J. Stephens. 2012. Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lago, I. 2004. ‘Cleavages and thresholds: The political consequences of electoral laws in the Spanish Autonomous Communities, 1980–2000’. Electoral Studies 23(1): 23–43. Levitsky, S. and D. Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown. Linz, J. 1964. An authoritarian regime: The case of Spain. In: Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems. Helsinki: Transactions of the Westermark Society, pp. 291–342. Linz, J. 1975. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. In: Handbook of Political Science. Reading: Addison Wesley, pp. 175–411. Linz, J. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown & Reequilibration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Linz, J. and A. Stepan, eds. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Linz, J. and A. Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. McCoy, A., J. Fradera, and S. Jacobson. 2012. Endless Empire: Spain’s Retreat, Europe’s Eclipse, America’s Decline. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Montero, J. R. Forthcoming. Juan J. Linz: Identidades primordiales y territoriales en el nacionalismo. In: Cuarenta años del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas y doce Premios Nacionales de Sociología. Madrid: CIS.
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Spain in Comparative Perspective 31 Moore, B. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Muro, D. and G. Vidal. 2017. ‘Political mustrust in southern Europe since the Great Recession’. Mediterranean Politics 22(2): 197–217. Orriols, L. and G. Cordero. 2016. ‘The breakdown of the Spanish two-party system: The upsurge of Podemos and Ciudadanos in the 2015 general election’. South European Society and Politics 21(4): 469–92. Perez, S. and M. Matsaganis. 2018. ‘The political economy of austerity in Southern Europe’. New Political Economy 23(2): 192–207. Ragin, C. 1987. The Comparative Methos: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ragin, C. 2008. Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Royo, S. and P. Manuel. 2003. Spain and Portugal in the European Union: The First Fifteen Years. London: Routledge. Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 2014a. Atado y Mal Atado: El Suicidio Institucional del Franquismo y el Surgimiento de la Democracia. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 2014b. La Impotencia Democrática. Madrid: Catarata. Stepan, A., J. Linz, and Y. Yadav. 2011. Crafting State-Nations: India and other Multinational Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Tarrow, S., 2010. ‘The strategy of paired comparison: Toward a theory of practice’. Comparative Political Studies 43(2): 230–59. Torcal, M. 2014. ‘The decline of political trust in Spain and Portugal: Economic performance or political responsiveness?’ American Behavioural Scientist 58(12): 1542–67. Weyland, K. 2014. Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America since the Revolutions of 1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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chapter 3
Spa n ish Democr atiz ation transition, consolidation, and its meaning in contemporary spain Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca
3.1 Introduction The Spanish transition to democracy has gained emblematic status, not only in the literature on democratization, but also among many pro-democratic decision-makers who have taken it as a model worthy of emulation. Spain moved from authoritarianism to democracy in the early phase of the ‘Third Wave’, soon after Portugal and Greece (both in 1974). The Southern European experiences were then followed by several instances of democratization in Latin America in the 1980s and later on by the Eastern European countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union; in many of these cases, Spain was an important and inspiring example. Why is the Spanish transition considered to be such a successful and important case? For many, Spain was a most unlikely candidate for democracy given the country’s historical precedents. Spanish history has been marked by political instability, polarization and conflict. The Second Republic (1931–36) lasted only six years and was followed by a bloody civil war (1936–39) and then by one of the longest and most repressive authoritarian regimes of twentieth-century Europe (1939–77). And, yet, Spain was able to break with its tradition of political exclusion and conflict, and become another liberal democracy in Western Europe. The Spanish transition figures prominently in studies on democratization (among many others, O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Przeworski 1991; Linz and Stepan 1996; Collier 1999) and has been the object of many valuable monographs by political scientists and historians (Carr and Fusi 1981; Colomer 1995; Fishman 1990; Gallego 2008;
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Spanish Democratization 33 Huneeus 1985; Maravall 1982; Molinero and Ysàs 2018; Powell 1989; Preston 1986; Sánchez-Cuenca 2014; Share 1986; Weingast 2004). In its most stylized version, the canonical description of the transition establishes that Spanish democracy was born through encompassing and consensual agreements between the regime and the opposition, without violence, and by means of institutional reforms that transformed the authoritarian regime into a democratic one without breaking the legal system of the dictatorship (a synthetic formulation can be found in Gunther and Montero 2009, 36–41). This presentation of the transition has cast a long shadow on Spanish politics. Democratization has become the founding moment of the full political normalization of Spain in Europe. As surveys show, the Spanish public feels proud about the way in which the democratization process unfolded: 78.9 per cent of respondents said so in 1995, and 72.4 per cent in 2012, in the middle of the economic crisis.1 The crisis, nonetheless, led to what might be described as a political earthquake: Podemos, the party created in 2014, brought the transition back onto the agenda, with a highly critical perspective according to which the left made too many concessions on issues such as the monarchy, transitional justice, and economic matters. In a sense, the critical vision of the transition is the mirror image of the canonical description I referred to above. Both share a certain (positive or negative) idealization. I will present here a more nuanced analysis, avoiding either an apologetic or a demystifying approach. Based on the most recent wave of research on the transition, I propose three significant corrections to the canonical description. First, Spain was not such an unlikely candidate for democratization from a comparative perspective. The probability of Spain being a democracy in 1977 given its level of economic development (measured by GDP per capita) was certainly high, .85 (Przeworski et al. 2000, 95–6). Actually, Spain had already reached the .5 threshold in 1964. In this sense, the country was mature for democracy: the probability of democracy surviving in Spain in the 1970s was close to 1. From this point of view, the continuity of democracy in Portugal was a much more uncertain event (the probability of Portugal being a democracy in 1974 was only .54). Therefore, democratization was more likely in Spain than in Portugal or Greece given their levels of development. Secondly, even if ‘consensual politics’ was certainly a defining element of the transition, its occurrence was circumscribed to a relatively short historical period, which was somewhat late in the transition process. Thus, consensus really only occurred following the first democratic elections of 15 June 1977, and finished after the second elections of 1 March 1979. In the first crucial part of the transition, before the elections, negotiation was pretty much absent. In this initial phase, the initiative for political reform was monopolized by the Francoist elites, who acted under strong pressures from civil society, but maintained control of the process from above. 1 Survey 2201 (December 1995) and survey 2996 (November 2012) of the Centro de Estudios Sociológicos (CIS).
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34 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca Thirdly, the transition was more conflictual than is usually admitted. The whole rocess was punctuated by strikes, demonstrations, and political violence. The level of p popular mobilization was indeed impressive, one of the highest in Europe in the 1970s (together with Greece and Portugal). And the levels of political violence (mostly in the form of terrorism) and of state repression of protest were unparalleled in other European transitions to democracy (with the single exception of Romania in 1989). The transition, therefore, was in fact a conflictual and divisive process that took place in the context of considerable violence caused by forces that marginalized themselves from democratization (including radical nationalists, radical leftists, radical rightists, hardliners of the regime and significant sectors of the army). The process was not derailed precisely because the level of economic development of the country made Spain a mature candidate for democracy. The most important characteristic of the transition was not ‘consensual politics’, but rather control of the institutional reforms by the Francoist elites up to the holding of the first democratic elections.
3.2 The Background Conditions of Democratization The dictatorship of General Francisco Franco survived for almost four decades. During this long period, it evolved from a highly repressive regime to a more liberal one, as well as from an autarkic and stagnated system to an open economy with one of the fastest growth rates in the West. The technocrats who were included in the Government in the late fifties elaborated the important Stabilization Plan of 1959 to end the autarky and introduce pro-market reforms. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the main legitimation of the regime came from economic growth. The 1960s were years of rapid economic and social change, including the exodus from the countryside to the cities, accelerated industrialization, and expansion of the middle class. The regime used the buoyant economic conditions to pass reforms aimed at the full institutionalization of the system. To address the succession problem that is endemic in authoritarian regimes, Franco defined Spain as a kingdom in 1947 and, in 1969, he appointed Juan Carlos de Borbón as the king who would succeed him, restoring the monarchy. Economic growth not only brought better living conditions for broad segments of the population; it also generated a more diversified and pluralist society. Such a complex social order could not be fully controlled by repression. Consequently, some small spaces of opposition were created within the regime thanks to the self-organization of civil society. The most important of these was the Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Committees), which appeared around 1963 and infiltrated the official unions of the regime. In general, the working class became more restive and openly challenged the status quo with a campaign of strikes that intensified in the early seventies, when economic growth started to decline because of the oil crisis of 1973 (Molinero and Ysàs 1998). Another source of civil
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Spanish Democratization 35 opposition came from the University, where most students rejected the traditional hierarchies, and some embraced radical left ideas. Asociaciones de vecinos (neighbourhood associations—referred to by many as ‘schools of democracy’) also became a powerful grass-roots movement, protesting against the lack of infrastructures in the new working-class suburbs of the big cities. At the end of Francoism, foci of opposition could also be found within professional associations and even within the Church. The experiences of participating in associations and acts of protest established the path for pluralistic politics (see Radcliff 2011 for an overview). Although parties were banned, the Spanish Communist Party (acting underground) was the leading political force that sought to organize and unify the various threads of opposition to the regime. Many regime insiders were aware of the erosion of legitimacy of Francoism and devoted serious efforts to figuring out how to save the regime after the unavoidable death of the dictator. The formula that summarized the general idea was ‘after Franco, the institutions.’ In the early 1970s, different proposals circulated about how to liberalize and even democratize the regime without dismantling the institutions or breaking the legal system. In this regard, the Portuguese transition of 1974, based on a revolutionary breakdown, with land and factory occupations, reinforced the concern of the elites about the necessity of controlling a process of political change that was regarded as inevitable. Given all these antecedents, it might be concluded that the conditions for democracy were mature when Franco died in November 1975. A relatively high level of economic development, the oil crisis, a strong middle class, the accumulation of acts of protest that delegitimized political authority, plus the isolation of Spain in Western Europe after the Portuguese and Greek transitions, made the democratic evolution of Spain unstoppable. The structural conditions were ripe for democracy. However, the way in which democracy arrived was largely contingent. Democracy was bound to come in the medium term, but the way in which the transition would evolve was not written anywhere. There is no contradiction, therefore, between long-term necessity and short-term chance. Many possibilities were open after Franco’s death. The regime might have collapsed, giving way to a constituent assembly. Or the regime could have stabilized for some period of time with a limited democracy. The fact that the transition took place in the way it did depended on various political actors’ strategies and power bases.
3.3 Preliminary Remarks on the Transition Properly speaking, the Spanish transition took from Franco’s death (20 November 1975) to the holding of the first democratic elections on 15 June 1977. Many authors, however, analyse the process in broader terms, extending the transition to the approval of the Constitution in December 1978, or even to later events, such as the failed coup attempt
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36 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca of February 1981 or the first alternation in government after the elections of October 1982, when the Socialist Party obtained a resounding victory. These longer perspectives tend to conflate the transition and the consolidation of democracy.2 I will spend much of the following space on analysing the former rather than the latter. The dominant analysis of the transition is a horizontal one, focusing on the negotiations and compromises made between the regime’s soft-liners and the opposition’s moderates. Their capacity to reach agreements, sidelining hardliners and radicals respectively, would be the defining characteristic of the Spanish case (the general logic is outlined in O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) and Przeworski (1991)). In this regard, Share (1986) classifies Spanish democratization as ‘transition by transaction’ (as opposed to ‘incremental democratization,’ ‘rupture’ and ‘protracted revolutionary struggle’); Karl and Schmitter (1991) consider Spain to be a pure case of transition by ‘pact’, based on a compromise between the elites (as opposed to ‘imposition’, ‘reform’, and ‘revolution’); and Weingast (2004) analyses the transition as a series of pacts within the regime first and then between the regime and the opposition. By contrast, Huntington (1991) takes the Spanish case as a typical example of ‘transformation’ (as opposed to ‘replacement’ and ‘transplacement’): in transitions by ‘transformation’ the elite in power takes the lead in bringing about democracy. Huntington, thus, agrees with the elite-driven nature of the Spanish transition, but he downplays the importance of pacts between the regime and the opposition. This abundance of typologies is not only confusing, but also misleading: it overlooks basic aspects of the transition. In what follows, I argue that there are at least two markedly different political processes that cannot be reduced to a single category in the existing typologies. We should refrain from overambitious generalizations, separating clearly what happened before and after the first democratic elections. Thus, if we focus on the first period (November 1975 – June 1977), there was hardly any negotiation between the regime and the opposition. Spain, in this regard, did not have a transition through pact or transaction. Huntington was right when he emphasized the leading role of the regime elite in the Spanish process. But this is only half of the story, since the regime elites only launched democratic reform because they were heavily pressured by civil society. The process was far from being restricted to the elites, as most exercises in classification have assumed. Instead of the standard horizontal approach based on negotiations between the elites, the political dynamics of the first eighteen months was a vertical one: pressure from below was followed by reform from above (Maravall 1982; see Collier 1999 for a comparative analysis of these dynamics). Later on, in the following eighteen months, from June 1977 to December 1978, the country entered into a different pace in which political parties from the left and the right agreed on some basic compromises (on political amnesty, a socio-economic pact and the Constitution) that contributed crucially to the consolidation of the democratic system.
2 As Linz and Stepan (1996) famously said, a democracy is consolidated when it becomes ‘the only game in town.’
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Spanish Democratization 37 An extended problem of many studies on the Spanish transition is that they p roject retrospectively what happened in the second period (after the elections) to the first (before the elections). The negotiations and the consensual politics of June 1977 – December 1978 are used to interpret what happened before, assuming that democracy was the result of a ‘pact’ between regime and opposition forces. As I try to show next, a separate analysis of the two periods leads to a more nuanced and complex description of the peculiarities of the Spanish transition.
3.4 From the Dictatorship to the First Elections: Mobilization and Reform The death of Franco was followed by a spectacular wave of working-class protest that lasted until early March 1976. In a very short time, the strike volume (number of days lost per 1,000 workers) went from almost 0 to 250, the highest of the transitional period (Sánchez-Cuenca 2014, 46). Many of the strikes were in principle related to labour issues, with no political or revolutionary intent, but the repression of the strikers, as well as the concatenation of so many protests, made them, eventually, political events. In Madrid, the strikes of January 1976 almost paralysed the city: army personnel had to run the metro service and some public services (the postal system, the train network) were fully militarized. The intensity and radical nature of the protest was very high in some cities and regions (in Madrid, in Sabadell, in the Baix Llobregat in Catalonia, in Vitoria and the Basque Country more generally), but it did not amount to a general strike that would lead to the collapse of the regime. Demonstrations demanding political freedoms and an amnesty for political prisoners were also abundant in these first months of the transition.3 Politically, the whole opposition movement was formed by two broad umbrella organizations, one led by the Communist Party (the PCE) and Comisiones Obreras, the Junta Democrática, and the other by the Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (the PSOE), the Plataforma Democrática. Both backed ruptura rather than reforma, expecting that mobilizations would give way to a constituent period with a cross-partisan provisional government. However, the regime was able to resist the pressure. Unlike the Portuguese state, the Spanish one retained control of public order in the street and in the factory. Manuel Fraga, then Minister of Interior and Vice Premier, wrote that after the opposition’s failed attempts to organize huge mobilizations during Labour Day (1 May 1976), he was convinced that the risk of rupture was definitely overcome (Fraga 1987, 46). Actually, by April 1976 both demonstrations and strikes were in a phase of decline. The opposition, aware of its incapacity to win over the regime through mobilization, decided to unite under a single entity, Coordinación Democrática, and shifted from 3 For an analysis of mobilizations during the transition, see Sánchez-Cuenca and Aguilar (2009).
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38 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca ruptura towards ruptura pactada (negotiated breakdown), a sort of oxymoronic expression that concealed the relative weakness of the opposition. The regime elites were not willing to accept a ‘rupture’ with Francoism; their guiding principle was ‘de la ley a la ley’ (from the law to the law). Any reform should be a legal transformation of the constitutional structure of Francoism. This was, moreover, the best way to secure the survival of the monarchy, since the king had been crowned according to the Francoist legal and political system. ‘De la ley a la ley’ was a feasible strategy because the regime’s elites retained full control of the political situation: the reforms ultimately depended on their approval. The regime’s reformists ‘paid attention’ to the street and to the statements made by the opposition, but they did not feel it was necessary to sit at a table to negotiate with the opposition, which remained underground until a few months before the holding of the democratic elections. Or to put it in the more general terms I outlined previously, pressures from below were transformed into reforms from above, but with no real negotiations between the regime and the opposition. Actually, it is not far-fetched to assume that without the pressure from below, the Francoist Government would not have gone so far in terms of reform. The incentives to liberalize first and to democratize later stemmed from the pressure exerted by the opposition and more generally by civil society. According to a survey held in December 1975, only one month after Franco’s death, 59 per cent of public opinion was in favour of democracy in one way or another (some wanted democracy as soon as possible, others were willing to wait), 18 per cent defended the status quo, and 23 per cent did not answer.4 The new king, Juan Carlos I, did not replace the prime minister who had been appointed by Franco, Carlos Arias Navarro. Arias was considered a hardliner who was openly opposed to democracy. The king, however, forced him to include a number of reformists in the cabinet. Arias tried to liberalize the regime, but he did not go very far. His Vice Premier, Manuel Fraga, thought that the best way of proceeding was through piecemeal reforms. Thus, there were various legislative projects to soften the restrictions on basic political rights, the most important one being the law on ‘political associations’ (the euphemism used for parties). The regime was willing to accept the formation of parties if, and only if, the PCE was excluded. All these reforms required approval by the Cortes, the legislative chamber of Francoism. The Government also contemplated a constitutional reform whereby a two-chamber system would be created: while the lower chamber would be elected through universal suffrage and with no restriction other than the exclusion of the Communists, the upper chamber would be formed according to a mixed system of popular election and quotas for Francoist interests that would guarantee a Francoist majority; the upper chamber, moreover, would have veto power over the laws passed by the lower chamber. Finally, the government would not be elected by the people or the legislature, but appointed by the king. As these changes had constitutional relevance, a qualified majority of two-thirds in the Cortes plus a referendum were necessary. 4 Survey 1089, CIS.
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Spanish Democratization 39 Although these were very timid reforms (they did not go beyond liberalizing the regime), they faced growing opposition within the Cortes (Huneeus 1985; Molinero and Ysàs 2010; Sánchez-Cuenca 2014). Actually, the government was fearful of its legislative initiatives being defeated, to the point that the vote on the removal from the Penal Code of the ‘crime’ of being a party member was cancelled. Likewise, the project of constitutional reform was not submitted to the Cortes because of internal quarrelling among the hardliners. On the other hand, the Government was running out of steam due to its repressive record. The mobilizations organized by the opposition forced the regime to show its most repressive side. The transition, in general, was quite violent because of the almost constant presence of terrorism (of all kinds, nationalist, radical right, and radical left), but also because of state repression (Baby 2018). Just in the period that goes from Franco’s death to the elections of June 1977, fifteen people participating in demonstrations were killed by the police (Sánchez-Cuenca 2014, 88); the most traumatic event was the killing of five workers in Vitoria on 3 March 1976. Given the political exhaustion of Arias and his cabinet, with no realistic prospect of even a liberalization of the regime, the king made a bold move by removing Arias and replacing him with one of the youngest ministers, Adolfo Suárez. Súarez was clearly a second-rank politician with a mixed reputation: for some, he was a hardliner who opposed the more far-reaching liberalization measures of Arias’s cabinet (he was the General Secretary of the Movement, the single party of Francoism); for others, he was a careerist with high ambition, with no solid ideological convictions. But the point is that Suárez, unlike Arias, had the full support of the king. The new prime minister understood that a new approach to political reform was necessary. Rather than the piecemeal strategy of Arias and Fraga, Suárez opted for a single legal instrument that would move the system from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. That instrument was a new Fundamental Law of the system, the eighth (the constitution of Francoism was composed of seven Fundamental Laws, whose amendment required a two-third majority in the legislature plus a referendum). It received the title of Ley para la reforma política (Law for political reform) (LRP): it was very brief, establishing the creation of a bi-cameral legislature elected by universal suffrage (the lower chamber with a proportional electoral system). The Law conferred constituent powers on the new Cortes. In stark contrast with the legislative initiatives of Arias, the LRP passed with a resounding majority in the Cortes on 18 November 1976: in a chamber with 531 MPs, 497 of them were present on the voting day: there were 425 yeas, 59 nays, and 13 abstentions (the two-third threshold was 330 yeas).5 This overwhelming majority is all the more surprising given that the LRP clearly implied the end of the dictatorship. How is it possible that Arias’ liberalization plan obtained less legislative support than Suárez’s democratization? 5 The referendum was held on 15 December 1976. The opposition parties opted for abstention. Participation was 77.8 per cent. Support for the LRP was 94.2 per cent.
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40 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca Colomer (1995) has argued that the change in the behaviour of Francoist legislators was due to the threat made by Suárez to the hardliners that he would side with the opposition if they did not vote for the LRP, moving into ruptura. However, this seems a weak explanation for two reasons, one empirical, another theoretical. From a historical point of view, there is no support for the thesis that Suárez ever threatened the hardliners with allying with the opposition in favour of ruptura. Had the threat existed, hardliners, who knew Suárez well, would not have regarded it as a credible one. Colomer’s explanation fits the view that the transition was made through pacts. But it is worth noting that the opposition rejected the LRP, among other reasons because the government had not negotiated the contents of the Law with them. As I have argued elsewhere (Sánchez-Cuenca 2014), the legislative success of the LRP was the result of a large phenomenon of coordination of expectations. In times of high political uncertainty, the most prudent course of action is to side with the winning majority. Betting on the wrong horse may have catastrophic consequences for the political career of each legislator. These processes of coordination have been analysed by Ermakoff (2008), who talks about the ‘institutional suicide’ of democratic legislatures that pass laws transforming the regime into an authoritarian one. Suárez was very skilful, as he generated the expectation that the LRP would be approved. Among other things, he gained the support of the army in a meeting with top generals on 8 September 1976. Once many hardliners became convinced that the reform would pass, they ended up voting for it in order to avoid being in the losing minority. There was a snowball effect that gave rise to almost unanimity on the most crucial piece for the institutional dismantlement of the regime. Once the LRP was passed, Suárez focused on the organization of the elections. The most crucial element was the legalization of the PCE, a sort of red line for the army and for many Francoist politicians. Suárez eventually thought that the elections would be seen domestically and internationally as fully legitimate only if the PCE was allowed to run. The price to be paid was the erosion of trust in him in the most reactionary sectors of the army, which would start to conspire against democracy from that moment until the mid-eighties (see section 3.6 on consolidation).
3.5 Consensus and Constitution-Making The first democratic elections were held on 15 June 1977. Suárez organized a party of notables suitable for his needs, Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD, Democratic Centre Union) that attracted the various families that fell under the ‘reformist’ label. To his right, Manuel Fraga created Alianza Popular (AP, Popular Alliance), formed by the hardliners who sought to restrict the most progressive elements of the new democracy. On the opposition side, the main party was not the PCE, despite of, or precisely because of, its involvement in the anti-Francoist struggle, but the more moderate (and modern-looking) PSOE. The electoral system was crafted by the incumbent, in negotiations with AP, and
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Spanish Democratization 41 very little participation of the opposition. As the LRP established, the system was a proportional one, but with a heavy majoritarian bias that favoured the rural, conservative districts (Lago and Montero 2005). This system, with small changes, has survived until today. Suarez thought than the incumbent effect plus a favourable electoral system would grant him a majority in the lower chamber. To his surprise, the UCD won the elections, but only with 34.4 per cent of the vote. The PSOE was second, with 29.3 per cent. The more radical parties did not get much support: 9.3 per cent for the PCE and only 8.2 for AP. Various Basque and Catalan nationalist parties jointly achieved 6 per cent of the vote. Two lessons could be drawn from the elections. On the one hand, moderate parties clearly outflanked radical ones; on the other, there was almost a perfect tie between the left and the right. Adding all parties in each ideological bloc (and excluding nationalist parties from the counting), each bloc obtained 43 per cent of the vote; however, the right gained 52 per cent of the seats (leftist MPs were 41 per cent) thanks to the bias of the electoral system. After the elections, the king kept Suárez as prime minister (the government was not yet accountable to parliament). Suárez faced a dilemma: either to rule with the support of right-wing MPs (an alliance that added a majority of seats) or to acknowledge the tie between the two ideological blocs, and try to reach encompassing agreements with the left-wing parties. Given that democracy was in its first stages and a constitution had to be written, the consensual option eventually prevailed. The traumatic memory of the Civil War helped in this choice (Aguilar 1996). The politics of consensus, seen by many as the most distinct trait of the Spanish transition, was based on cross-party agreements on key issues for the construction and consolidation of democracy. Consensus crystallized in three areas: amnesty, a socio-economic pact (Pactos de la Moncloa), and the Constitution itself. The law on political amnesty was the first law approved by the new parliament in October 1977. It was passed by the main political groups, except Alianza Popular, which abstained. Its importance was more symbolic than real, for there were very few political prisoners in jail (most of them had been released in the partial amnesty decided earlier, in July 1976, by Suárez’s government). The amnesty law embodied the spirit of national reconciliation: it not only liberated the last political prisoners, it also extended judicial immunity to the officials of Francoism. Its main function was to establish the beginning of a new political period. The whole transition period unfolded in the context of poor economic conditions, with rising unemployment, the destruction of firms, a banking crisis, and untamed inflation. The Government negotiated a stabilization package with the unions and the parties that included wage restraint, wide-scale tax reform, currency devaluation, and a restrictive monetary policy (Cabrera 2011). The broad consensus reached among all the involved parties was crucial to keeping the economic situation under control and to establishing the basis of an embryonic neo-corporatist arrangement. Finally, the most important development was the drafting of the Constitution. The initial inclination of the government was to write the initial draft without the participation of Parliament. Once this option proved unfeasible, the Government opted to create a committee of experts, but the opposition also rejected this possibility. So the task was
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42 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca devolved to Parliament. A committee of seven politicians was formed (three from UCD, one from PSOE, one from PCE, one from AP, and one from Catalan nationalism, who also represented Basque nationalists). During the first months, there was little consensus: most proposals were passed with the vote of UCD and AP, excluding the left and the nationalists. It was only after the socialists abandoned the committee in March 1978 that consensus between the UCD, the PSOE, and other opposition groups emerged. From that point, the text evolved more smoothly, as a truly consociational agreement. The constitutional committee, in any case, did not question the basic architecture envisaged in the Francoist LRP: a parliamentary monarchy with a bicameral system and proportional representation. The most contentious issue was decentralization and the recognition of the peculiar characteristics of the Basque Country and Catalonia. According to Linz and Stepan (1996), one of the factors that accounts for the success of the Spanish transition is that the territorial issue was addressed after the first democratic elections. When territorial claims are discussed during the demise of the dictatorship, the potential for destabilization and conflict is much higher. Nevertheless, the constitutional debate did not lead to a full, definitive agreement. The eighth chapter of the Constitution, on the territorial structure of Spain, was pretty much left open. A compromise on the use of the term ‘nationality’ for regions with their own language (understood as something more than a region but less than a nation) settled the issue for some time, though AP opposed it vigorously, arguing that it brought into question the unity of the country. In the final vote on the floor, half of AP’s MPs voted in favour, five voted against, and three abstained. UCD, PSOE, and PCE and other minor groups voted in favour. The constitution was ratified in a popular referendum on 6 December 1978. Participation was low (67 per cent); the yeas were 92 per cent. In the Basque Country, where the Basque Nationalist Party recommended abstention, participation was only 45 per cent (the party had abstained in the Spanish parliament). After the constitution was passed, the consensus finished. Suárez called for early elections on 1 March 1979. The period of encompassing agreements and cross-party cooperation was therefore brief, less than two years.
3.6 Consolidation If the criterion to operationalize democratic consolidation is the presence of an armed challenge to the system, Spanish democracy only consolidated in October 2011, when the terrorist group ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) announced the end of violence. ETA’s peak of activity was precisely in the years 1978-80, in the early period of democracy. The GRAPO, a small Maoist underground group that was also very present during the late seventies, killed for the last time in 2006. Apart from Northern Ireland, Spain had the highest levels of domestic terrorist violence in Europe in the last quarter of the 20th century (see Muro’s Chapter in this volume).
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Spanish Democratization 43 Terrorist violence fuelled the anti-democratic impulses of certain sectors of the army. The first symptoms of a dangerous distance between the military and democratic forces were already visible when Suárez made the PCE legal (see section 3.4). Since then, nostalgia for Franco and a growing impatience with terrorism and decentralisation led some in the armed forces to make various plans for launching a coup. In November 1978, one of these plans was dismantled and its leading authors arrested (Operación Galaxia). The most serious and ambitious attempt took place on 23 February 1981, when members of the Civil Guard violently entered the lower chamber while the investiture vote of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo was taking place to replace Suárez, who had resigned one month before. The bold action of taking over the parliament was supposed to trigger a process of adhesion from the generals in charge of the various military regions of Spain. Many of them, however, remained undecided, waiting for some signal from the king. Once Juan Carlos appeared on television condemning the coup, the whole operation was derailed. The opposition of sectors of the army to democracy only waned in the mid-eighties, thanks to the reform of the army undertaken by the Socialist government. However, in 1985, the secret services foiled a coup attempt to kill most of the government with a bomb, creating a power vacuum that would be filled by the military. Apart from violence, the only other major challenge that Spanish democracy has experienced is that of questioning the territorial integrity of the country. As mentioned above, the territorial structure of Spain has never been in equilibrium since Franco’s death. The constitution did not find an adequate solution to the decentralisation process. Thus, the upper chamber was never reformed to become a truly territorial body, as the constitution establishes. Moreover, the list of competences of the regions has not been fixed, causing constant litigation between the central and the regional governments in the Constitutional Court. Lastly, the model is unbalanced, since decentralisation of expenditures has not been accompanied by equivalent fiscal decentralisation. But beyond all these problems, which are mainly a matter of institutional design, a serious conflict over the demos remains, particularly in the Basque Country and Catalonia, two regions that demand full national recognition. In the Basque Country the so-called ‘Ibarretxe plan’ to establish a confederal relationship with Spain led to widespread political acrimony in 2004-05. Even more concerning, the recent Catalan crisis of 2017 shows that the territorial and national conflict is the main obstacle to full consolidation of Spanish democracy. The lack of federal loyalty shown by the Catalan authorities and the repressive response of the central state reveals that the foundations of Spanish democracy are shakier than usually admitted (see Fishman 2019).
3.7 The Meaning of the Transition to Democracy in Contemporary Spain Starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the generation formed by the grandchildren of those who fought the Civil War (mainly those baby boomers born in the 1960s) opened
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44 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca a debate on historical memory that remains very alive today. Unlike their parents, who considered that the past had to be silenced for the transition process to succeed, the baby-boomer generation developed a different perspective: having spent most of their lives in democracy, and free of fears about a coup or a new civil confrontation, they thought that the so-called ‘pact of silence’ had to be broken. The pact of silence refers to the tacit agreement that the divisive issues of the past should be removed from the public sphere (a sort of gag rule) (Aguilar and Payne 2018). At the time of writing, many regard this pact of silence as unfair for those who were repressed during the Civil War and, particularly, during the first ten years of Franco’s regime, and never got recognition or reparation. In this context, the most contentious point is the amnesty law of 1977. Those who criticize it for the immunity granted to Francoist politicians and officials perceive it through the lens of the endpoint laws (leyes de punto final) approved in Southern American countries after harshly repressive military dictatorships. Although as a historical analysis this would be a flagrant anachronism, as a political analysis the issue is far more complicated. From a historical perspective, it is obvious that the legislators’ original intent was not that of an endpoint law; actually, the very possibility of judging Francoist officials in court was unthinkable in the Spain of 1976–77. However, the fact is that the immunity granted by the law may be evaluated in a different light by current or future generations, who may conclude that the grievances caused by the law should be addressed even if a long time has passed since then. On the other hand, the long and profound economic crisis of 2008–14, combined with the discovery of many corruption scandals, generated deep anguish concerning the political and economic deficits of Spanish democracy. In the search for culprits, some turned their eyes to the transition period. Thus, the transition might be seen as responsible not only for the pact of silence, but also for creating a two-party system that reproduced the old habits of turnismo and clientelism of the period of the Restauración (1874–1931). From this perspective, the ‘regeneration’ of Spain requires leaving behind the old political habits that were created during the transition years. While the transition is still cherished by mainstream parties as the foundational moment of a modern, liberal, European Spain, it has become the principal target for Podemos and the radical left (for a forceful critique of the transition written before the crisis, see Navarro 2002). From an academic point of view, the debate is about the legacy of the Spanish way of democratizing. This requires a comparative approach rather than an in-depth analysis of the case of Spain. Have the main traits of the transition (legal continuity, reforms from above, pact of silence) left an imprint in Spanish democracy? Is Spain a less inclusive or less participatory democracy than others because of its transition? Is the transition responsible for the weaknesses of Spanish civil society? Can the transition be blamed for the institutional problems of Spanish democracy? These are questions that, with very few exceptions (see Fishman 2019), have not yet been investigated in a rigorous way.
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Spanish Democratization 45
3.8 Bibliography Aguilar, P. 1996. Memoria y olvido de la guerra civil española. Madrid: Taurus. Aguilar, P. and L. A. Payne. 2018. El resurgir del pasado en España. Madrid: Taurus. Baby, S. 2018. El mito de la transición pacífica: Violencia y política en España (1975–1982). Madrid: Akal. Cabrera, M. 2011. ‘Los pactos de la Moncloa: acuerdos políticos frente a la crisis’. Historia y Política 26: 81–110. Carr, R. and J. Fusi. 1981. Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy. s.l.: George Allen & Unwin. Collier, R. 1999. Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colomer, J. 1995. Game Theory and the Transition to Democracy. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Ermakoff, I. 2008. Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications. Durham: Duke University Press. Fishman, R. 1990. Working-Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Fishman, R. 2019. Democratic Practice: Origins of the Iberian Divide in Political Inclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraga, M. 1987. En busca del tiempo perdido. Barcelona: Planeta. Gallego, F. 2008. El mito de la transición: La crisis del franquismo y los orígenes de la democracia (1973–1977). Barcelona: Crítica. Gunther, R. and J. Montero. 2009. The Politics of Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huneeus, C. 1985. La Unión de Centro Democrático y la Transición a la Democraica en España. Madrid: CIS. Huntington, S. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. Karl, T. and P. Schmitter. 1991. ‘Modes of transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe’. International Social Science Journal 128(2): 267–82. Lago, I. and J. Montero. 2005. ‘Todavía no sé quiénes, pero ganaremos’: manipulación política del sistema político español’. Zona Abierta 110/111: 279–348. Linz, J. and A. Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, Latin America and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Maravall, J. 1982. The Transition to Democracy in Spain. London: Croom Helm. Molinero, C. and P. Ysás. 1998. Productores disciplinados y minorías subversivas: clase obrera y conflictividad en la España franquista. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Molinero, C. and P. Ysás. 2010. Anatomía del franquismo: de la supervivencia a la agonía. Barcelona: Crítica. Molinero, C. & Ysàs, P. 2018. La transición: historia y relatos. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Navarro, V., 2002. Bienestar insuficiente, democracia incomplete. Barcelona: Anagrama. O’Donnell, G. and P. Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Powell, C. 1989. Reform Versus ‘Ruptura’ in Spain’s Transition to Democracy (PhD Thesis). Oxford: Oxford University.
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46 Ignacio SÁnchez-Cuenca Preston, P. 1986. The Triumph of Democracy in Spain. London: Methuen. Przeworski, A. 1991. Democracy and the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, A., M. Àlvarez, J. Cheibub, and F. Limonhi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radcliff, P. 2011. Making Democratic Citizens in Spain: Civil Society and the Popular Origins of the Transition, 1960–1978. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 2014. Atado y mal atado: El suicidio institucional del franquismo y el surgimiento de la democracia. Madrid: Alianza. Sánchez-Cuenca, I. and P. Aguilar. 2009. ‘Terrorist violence and popular mobilization: The case of the Spanish transition to democracy’. Politics & Society 37(3): 428–53. Share, D. 1986. The Making of Spanish Democracy. New York: Praeger. Weingast, B. 2004. Constructing self-enforcing democracy in Spain. In: Politics from Anarchy to Democracy: Rational Choice in Political Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 161–95.
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chapter 4
M EMORY A N D POLITICS I N DEMOCR ATIC SPA I N Omar G. Encarnación
4.1 Introduction A peculiar phenomenon in contemporary Spanish politics is the persistence of the politics of ‘forgetting’. Nothing suggests this better than the aptly named ‘Pact of Forgetting’, the agreement forged by Spanish politicians from the right and the left following the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in 1975. Franco had ruled Spain with an iron fist since the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, a conflict triggered by his assault on the popularly elected Second Republic, in 1936. Inaugurated with a broad amnesty law enacted in 1977, the pact to forget introduced a culture of political amnesia about the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship that for the most part persists to this day. As a consequence of this agreement, no political prosecution of former Franco officials took place during or after the democratic transition, and no truth commission has ever been organized in Spain to assign responsibility for the Civil War or to account for the human rights abuses of the Franco regime. Reparations to the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship were only authorized by the state in 2007, some thirty years after Franco’s death (see Aguilar 1996, 2002, 2008; Blakeley 2006; Golob 2008; Encarnación 2008, 2012, 2014). Further evidence of the persistence of forgetting in Spanish politics is the saga of the old dictator’s remains (Encarnación 2018). In keeping with the spirit of ‘letting bygones be bygones’ born with the democratic transition, Franco’s remains rested undisturbed at El Valle de los Caídos (or the Valley of the Fallen), a memorial to Franco’s victory in the Civil War, until October 2019, giving the impression, at least to foreigners, that Spaniards are oblivious to the crimes of their former oppressor. It was only in 2017, in response to demands from human rights activists, that the government
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48 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN took steps to exhume Franco’s remains and relocate them to a less prominent and controversial site (The Guardian 2017). In 2019, after the Franco family exhausted all legal options, the remains were exhumed and reburied in a private vault outside Madrid. At least two reasons make the persistence of the politics of forgetting in Spain puzzling and noteworthy. On the one hand, political scientists have traditionally viewed Spain as a country where agreement on virtually any political issue has been in very short supply (Wiarda 1973; Gunther, Montero, and Botella 2011; Berman 2019). Accordingly, for Spanish politicians to have voluntarily agreed to collectively will themselves into political amnesia is quite remarkable. Indeed, Spain’s reputation for political contentiousness explains why scholarly assessments of the country’s capacity to succeed at transitioning to democracy following Franco’s death were almost uniformly bleak. Writing in the twilight of the Franco era, Richard Herr (1971, 5) warned that because ‘Spaniards have appeared by nature to be rebellious and politically mercurial,’ ‘both friends and enemies of Franco anticipate that Spaniards will return to their former habits.’ José Amodia’s prediction was equally ominous: ‘In the political future of Spain I see a great deal of darkness and hardly any light: my forecast must be pessimistic’ (1976, 233). On the other hand, Spain’s politics of forgetting stand in defiance of ‘transitional justice’, the international human rights movement that promotes the view that holding authoritarian regimes accountable for their political misdeeds is an indispensable component of any successful process of democratization (see Benomar 2003; Teitel 2000; Boraine 2006). Born with the Nuremberg Tribunal, a body that imposed the death penalty on the architects of Germany’s Nazi regime after the end of World War II (Sands 2003), transitional justice has in recent decades become a rite of passage for newly democratic societies. Notable examples of transitional justice in the post-Nuremberg era include the ‘lustration’ policy to which the Antonio Salazar regime was subjected in Portugal, which purged ‘authoritarian collaborators’ from the new democratic regime, including academics, clergy, and members of the business community (Costa Pinto 2008; Encarnación 2012); the prosecution of Argentina’s military junta on charges of ‘crimes against humanity’ for the political excesses of the Dirty War (Brito et al. 2001; and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, convened to examine the legacy of racial discrimination of apartheid (Nagy 2002). So, what explains the persistence of Spain’s politics of forgetting? And why does Spain continue to challenge (if not flaunt) prevailing norms of transitional justice? In this chapter, I review some of the most compelling theories and arguments that address these questions—from the unwillingness of the Spanish political class to open old wounds for fear that doing so would put Spain back on the path to civil war; through the negotiated nature of the Spanish democratic transition and the limits it placed on bringing justice and accountability to the outgoing authoritarian regime; to the forward-looking political mentality that prevailed among the Spanish public during the democratic transition and its aftermath, especially the desire to become ‘European’. This mentality stressed erasing from the public memory those episodes in Spanish history, like the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, which set Spain apart from the rest of Europe.
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 49 Ultimately, however, I settle on the ‘political uses of forgetting’ as the most persuasive explanation. As shown in this analysis, the case of Spain is a powerful and compelling reminder that while much of the debate about what nations should do about a difficult and painful past stresses the need for ethical solutions to this vexing dilemma (Kritz 1995; Crocker 1999; Benomar 1993; Teitel 2000; Boraine 2006), in reality political actors in a new democracy are more concerned with what is possible, and, more importantly, perhaps, with what is politically advantageous. For much of the post-Franco era, not engaging with the past, in fact, ignoring it altogether, has been hugely beneficial to the political class—from enabling politicians from the right and the left to conceal embarrassing and inconvenient political histories; to facilitating the reinvention of the leading political parties; to anchoring many of the compromises of the democratic transition upon which the current political regime stands. But political calculations about the past are not set in stone: they are vulnerable to being upset or modified by generational change, shifts in public opinion, and politicians’ evolving priorities. This has certainly been the case of Spain’s pact to forget. In recent years, a significant change in the political calculation about this pact has taken place. Subjects once thought to be taboo or a third rail in Spanish politics, especially the Civil War, no longer are; at least not for left-wing politicians. Many factors have contributed to this radical change in perspective. The most apparent is the emergence of a new generation of left-wing politicians without any personal connection to the political compromises of the democratic transition. For this generation of politicians upending the politics of forgetting is the moral thing to do. Increasingly, it is also what is most politically advantageous.
4.2 The Architecture of Forgetting Introduced as part of the flurry of negotiations that allowed for the return to democracy in Spain between the years of 1975 and 1978, the pact to forget was not an official act of state censorship. Since Franco’s passing, Spaniards and foreigners alike have been free to investigate any aspect of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship without any interference from the state, a point attested by the vast size of the bibliography of the Civil War. According to one account (Boyd 2008, 135), by 1986, roughly a decade after Franco’s death, some 15,000 books had been published in Spain on the Civil War alone. Nor was the pact to forget foisted upon an unsuspecting public by a scheming political class. Following Franco’s death, 61 per cent of the population approved of a blanket amnesty (Wert Ortega 1985, 75). This made it possible for the political elite to move firmly in the direction of amnesty, forgetting, and impunity without fear of a backlash from the public. Instead, the pact to forget was engineered by the political class as a voluntary, sanctionfree, and informal agreement to prevent history from spoiling the return to democracy. It entailed, among other things, avoiding public policies or political situations that
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50 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN would rekindle in any meaningful way the memory of the Civil War and its aftermath, unless the point was to stress the need to forget and move on. The ensuing silencing of the past meant that for decades following the democratic transition there was no national conversation in Spain about who bore ultimate responsibility for the Civil War, the seminal event in country’s history in the twentieth century. As The Economist (2006, 73) noted: ‘The pact of forgetting has meant that mere mention of the Civil War has been kept out of everything, from politics to dinner-party conversations.’ According to historian Paul Preston (2012), among the casualties of the Civil War were some 200,000 people who died in the battlefield, and an additional 200,000 executed during the war. The majority of these executions were carried out by Franco’s nationalist army and the rest by the so-called ‘Red Terror’, or reprisal killings by the Republican side estimated at 38,000 (Beevor 2006, 87)). An unknown number of people were killed by Franco’s bombing of Spanish cities and villages. After the end of hostil ities, some 20,000 Republicans were executed as part of a ‘cleansing’ campaign that Preston (2012) has referred to as ‘the Spanish Holocaust’, to rid Spain of ‘red influence’ (communists, socialists, and anarchists, especially), and some 400,000 people were sent to prison because of their political beliefs, sentenced under the 1933 Law of Political Responsibility. That law gave the Franco regime licence to imprison anyone for almost any reason. Another class of victims of the Franco regime was the ‘Republican exile’, the approximately 500,000 people forced to leave Spain for countries such as France, Argentina, and Mexico (Alted 2005, 52). It was not until 2007 that Spain formally began to confront the dark history of the Civil War and its aftermath with the Law of Historical Memory, a piece of legislation enacted by the socialist administration of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (see Blakeley 2006; Aguilar 2008; Boyd 2008; Golob 2008; Encarnación 2014). The law condemned the institutions of the Franco regime as ‘illegitimate’, provided financial reparation to those victimized by the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, restored Spanish citizenship to the Republican exile and its descendants, and created a research centre for the study of the Civil War in the city of Salamanca. Also in the law is a policy of ‘moral rehabilitation’ for those prosecuted by the Franco regime for their political beliefs and their sexual orientation and identity, and a call for the removal from public view of memorials and monuments honouring Franco. It is questionable, however, that the epoch-making Law of Historical Memory overturned the pact to forget. Indeed, to some extent, the law reaffirmed the status quo. For one thing, the law did not revoke the comprehensive amnesty enacted in 1977, which sheltered Francoist officials from prosecution. Upholding this amnesty effectively foreclosed the possibility that any former Franco official will ever see a court of justice; at this juncture most of them are already dead or of very advanced age. Also missing from the law were the creation of a truth commission to chronicle the human rights atrocities of the Civil War and to assign responsibility for their occurrence, and financial support for the location and re-burial of the remains of those killed by Franco’s Nationalist army. Those remains are found in common graves located all over Spain (Franco re-buried those who perished on the Nationalist side).
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 51 Also telling is that the Law of Historical Memory did not apply to monuments to the Franco regime with ‘historical significance’, an exception that left untouched Franco’s burial site at the Valley of the Fallen and the monument itself. Inaugurated in 1959 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Franco’s victory in the Civil War, this onesided memorial to the Civil War dead was built with the forced labour of some 20,000 Republican prisoners (Mendiola Gonzalo 2011). Not surprisingly, human rights activists abroad and at home have denounced the Law of Historical Memory as incomplete and insufficient, and international organizations, such as the United Nations, have called on Spain to do more to bring about justice and accountability to the Franco regime (Encarnación 2014).
4.3 A Wealth of Explanations Foremost among the many explanations for Spain’s politics of forgetting is the theory of memoria traumática, or traumatic memory. It suggests that the painful legacy of the breakdown of the Second Republic, Spain’s first genuine attempt at living under democracy, and the ensuing political violence of the Civil War and the wanton human rights abuses of the Franco dictatorship, all but rendered the Spaniards incapable of revisiting these historical events during the years of democratic transition and consolidation. This theory implies, in essence, that Spanish society as a whole entered democracy afflicted with a severe case of ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, or PTSD, ‘a condition whose symptoms include re-experiencing the original traumas through flashbacks or nightmares, and avoiding situations or potential situations associated with the traumatic past events for fear that they may reoccur’ (Encarnación 2014, 19). Reams of studies in the Spanish psychological literature confirm a diagnosis of PTSD. A comprehensive review of this literature (Ruíz Vargas 2006, 1) concluded that ‘the brutal repression imposed upon the losers of the Civil War not only impeded the possibility of overcoming the traumas of the war, it also added an abusive burden of suffering. The politics of terror and silence imposed by the dictatorship created an environment that engendered a veritable epidemic of post-traumatic stress.’ This conclusion is echoed by the public opinion data of the transition. In March 1975, almost 60 per cent of the public expressed ‘worry’ about the capacity of the country to organize a peaceful transition to democracy (Wert Ortega 1985, 74). Such concerns were intensified by the political violence that preceded and followed Franco’s death, including the assassination of Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco (which Franco had tasked with the responsibility of maintaining ‘Francoism without Franco’), in 1973 by the Basque terrorist group ETA. That event was eerily reminiscent of the wave of political executions and assassinations that precipitated the Civil War. A great deal of the scholarly work on the Spanish democratic transition also lends credence to the theory of traumatic memory. Paloma Aguilar (2002) has extensively traced the manner in which the deliberations of democratic transition that followed
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52 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN Franco’s death were greatly influenced by ‘the ghosts’ of the Civil War. In particular, her work stresses how patterns of political socialization about the Civil War under the Franco regime made delving into the events of the Civil War during the transition an especially taxing endeavour; indeed, an endeavour that should be avoided at all costs. She writes (2002, 25) that: ‘Francoism instilled a ferocious, obsessive, and omnipresent fear of any repetition of the Civil War, from which arose a national consensus on nunca más (never again), a phrase meant to convey that Spain would go to any length not to become embroiled in a similar conflict.’ Another compelling school of thought about political forgetting in post-Franco Spain focuses on the limits on justice, accountability, and even remembrance imposed by the very nature of the Spanish democratic transition. In contrast to Portugal and Greece, where the democratic transition included the collapse of the authoritarian regime, the consequence of mass opposition to the authoritarian regime’s involvement in foreign wars, in Spain the authoritarian regime was the engine of the democratic transition (Encarnación 2008). After Franco’s death, the authoritarian state was reformed from the inside out through complex negotiations between the reformist elements of the Franco regime and its democratic opposition; this accounts for conceptions of the Spanish democratic transition as a model of ‘transition through transaction’ (Share 1987); a ‘pacted transition’ (Linz and Stepan 1996); and an ‘elite settlement’ (Gunther 1992). These negotiations, which dictated an orderly transition to democracy, reflected two realities of the Spanish politics at the time: the strength of the authoritarian regime to orchestrate its own political transformation and the weakness of the democratic oppos ition led by the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) to uproot the Franco regime. The legal linchpin behind the Franco regime’s process of self-transformation was the 1976 Law of Political Reform, which allowed for the liquidation of the authoritarian institutions of the regime, alongside the legalization of political parties (save for the Spanish Communist Party, which was granted legality just prior to the 1977 general elections) and civil society associations, such as the trade union movement. A comprehensive amnesty law, approved by the Congress of Deputies, on 14 October 1977, accompanied the Law of Political Reform. It granted immunity from prosecution against all crimes ‘that may have endangered or harmed the life and integrity of any persons’ as well as against ‘all acts of political intentionality regardless of whatever outcomes that they may have generated’ (Encarnación 2014, 75). But the amnesty law was also intended to put a lid on Spain’s dark and painful history, since the law was framed ‘to make it possible for the new generations to forget Franco and to erase any traces of the dictatorship’ (Encarnación 2014, 75). The political class and actors from civil society celebrated the conflation of amnesty and amnesia embodied in the amnesty law. An editorial from El País, a new liberal newspaper that quickly emerged as the new democracy’s paper of record, stressed the importance of amnesty for reconciliation while encouraging Spanish parliamentarians to enact as broad an amnesty law as possible (Encarnación 2014, 72):
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 53 Amnesty is an exceptional act, justified by the reasoning of the State and the necessity to erase the memory of acts as bloody and painful as a civil war—a war between brothers—and a long dictatorship. Democratic Spain should, from this point forward, forget the responsibilities and the events of the Civil War and make an abstraction of the forty years of dictatorship. Looking backwards should only have the purpose of reflecting about the causes of the catastrophe and ways to prevent its repetition. A people cannot and should not lack historical memory; but this should only serve to promote projects of peace and cohabitation toward the future and not to feed old hatreds.
Yet another explanation for the persistence of forgetting is the political culture of the post-Franco era, which stressed consensus, collaboration, and compromise as the driving principles of governance and inter-party relations (see, especially, Gunther 1992; Encarnación 2008; and McDonough, Barnes, and López Pina 1998). Ever since the democratic transition, the handling of the most critical issues in Spanish politics—from the economy to terrorism to separatism—has for the most part enjoyed bipartisan support from the right and the left. Less apparent, however, is the sentiment among the politicians to move on and look to the future. In particular, the political class entered the post-Franco era with a deep desire to leave behind Spain’s image as a poor and backward nation, and to embrace the view of the country as a modern, democratic, and, above all, perhaps, European nation. The ‘forward-looking culture’ of the post-Franco era embraced what Nietzsche (1983, 62) described as ‘active forgetting’, which he defined, not as a simple failure of memory, ‘but rather as a concerted effort to repress the memory of selective events from the past in order to envision possible futures’. Leading members of the political class and civil society vigorously worked to promote forgetting as a means to move on. Key among them was Santos Juliá (2003), a leading intellectual widely known for his defence of the thesis that Spain’s success at consolidating democracy and building a democratic future hinged on the country’s capacity to echar el pasado al olvido (cast the past aside). He argued that this action did not represent a wanton or careless disregard for history, but rather a necessary step in the successful founding of the new democracy. The national media, led by El País, which played the role of cheerleader in promoting a nationwide spirit of forgetting and moving on, broadly echoed Juliá’s sentiments. On the first anniversary of Franco’s death, in 1976, El País declared Franco ‘the most forgotten man of the post-Francoist era’ (Encarnación 2014, 122). By 2000, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the dictator’s death, the paper led the coverage with a distinctly celebratory, forward-looking angle, described by the Spanish social critic Fernando León Solís as ‘the myth of re-foundation of the Spanish state’, designed to sever ‘the spatial and temporal links of modern Spanish society with its Francoist and “transitional” past’ (Encarnación 2014, 130). In a special issue to commemorate the anniversary, a host of writers gathered by the paper wrote about Spain’s ‘profound transformation’, ‘nothing of substance remaining of Franco’s repressive regime’, and about Franco being ‘a ghost and a distant, ugly, stranger to the lives of young Spaniards’ (Encarnación 2014, 130).
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54 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN Ordinary Spaniards also showed an eagerness to set the past aside and embrace the future. The cultural and literary critic Jo Labanyi (1995, 396) has noted that ‘[i]t is hard to avoid the impression that post- Franco Spain is marked by a sense of catching up with the future’, when observing the apparent disinterest on the part of the general public to delve into the past during and after the transition. These contentions are echoed by the leading cultural movements of the post-dictatorship, especially La Movida (literally ‘the movement’; conceptually the vibe or the stirring), a group of Madrid-based artistic innovators who reinterpreted rock-punk culture led, among others, by filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar (Hopewell 1996). Typical of the cultural output of the movement was to all but ignore the trauma of the dictatorship as a way to emphasize a unique version of Spanish modernity in which icons of Spanish culture such as nuns, flamenco dancers, and bullfighters tried to negotiate the travails of the post-Franco environment.
4.4 The Political Uses of Forgetting However appealing and compelling, none of the explanations noted so far to account for the persistence of the politics of forgetting in Spain are unimpeachable. Indeed, some of them fare very poorly when placed in a broad comparative perspective. It is hard to argue, for instance, that, decades after Franco’s death, Spanish society remains so traumatized by the past that it cannot handle a truth commission about the human rights abuses committed during the Civil War and the Franco regime. This argument lacks credibility since it is only a minority of Spaniards that can justly claim that their lives were directly impacted by the events of the Civil War and the advent of the Franco dictatorship. It is also the case that transitional justice mechanisms have been possible in other countries that, like Spain, underwent transitions to democracy that imposed severe limitations on justice and accountability. Brazil, which for years stood out among South American democracies for not having formed a truth commission, authorized such a commission in 2011, with the report submitted to the nation in 2014, to chronicle the human rights abuses of the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1964 and 1985. In 2011, the Uruguayan congress nullified the 1986 ‘Expiry Law’, opening the way for the prosecution on human rights charges of the military regime in place between 1973 and 1985. In Chile, whose transition to democracy closely mirrors Spain’s own transition, many judges began circumventing the country’s amnesty laws (put in place just before the transition to democracy in 1990), after the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London, in 1998, on orders from Spain, which had indicted Pinochet on ‘crimes against humanity’. Ultimately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand the persistence of Spain’s politics of forgetting without taking into account the actual political benefit that the pact to forget afforded to the political class and the nation as a whole. Of the many political uses of forgetting that can be considered, none is more apparent than having allowed
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 55 Spanish politicians from across the ideological spectrum to reinvent themselves as democratic actors by eclipsing their decidedly non-democratic professional pasts. Certainly, no other political group benefited more from this than right-wing politicians directly or indirectly implicated with the Franco regime. This was most certainly the case of the founding fathers of the Union of Democratic Centre, or UCD, the centreright party that won Spain’s first democratic elections in nearly four decades, in 1977, and that ushered in the new democratic era. The most prominent of UCD actors is Adolfo Suárez, the charismatic first prime minister of the post-transition era. Despite a long association with the Franco regime that included serving as director of the national television service and as head of the Movimiento Nacional, the closest thing to a political party allowed under Franco, Suárez was never tainted with the moniker of an ‘authoritarian collaborator’. Quite the contrary: he is remembered as ‘the founder of Spanish democracy’ (El País 2007). Suárez’s political trajectory is reflected in his entire cabinet, which was drawn from across the Francoist technocratic apparatus. This permitted for significant continuity in regime personnel throughout the democratic transition and its aftermath. According to one extensive study of ministers and regimes in twentieth-century Spain, ‘the overwhelming majority of the fifty-one UCD ministers had previously occupied secondor-third level executive positions during the last year of Franco’s regime and the democratic transition, and almost one-third of them had been ministers of the corporatist Cortes, the Francoist parliament’ (Linz, Jerez, and Corzo 2001, 29). The pact to forget also aided in the political viability of those on the fringes of the Spanish right. One of the longest political careers in Spain is that of Manuel Fraga, a prominent member of the Franco regime. Between 1962 and 1969, Fraga led the Ministry of Information and Tourism, a job that required defending the policies of the authoritarian regime, and served as Spain’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1973 and 1975 and as Deputy Prime Minister between 1975 and 1976. After the democratic transition, Fraga became one the founders of the neo-Francoist Popular Alliance, the precursor of the Popular Party, universally known as the PP, Spain’s leading conservative party in the post-Franco era. From 1990 to 2005, Fraga presided over the regional government of Galicia. At no point in his long post-transition career, was Fraga compelled to answer for his intimate association with the Franco regime. Less apparent and discussed is the concealing of the crimes of the left afforded by the pact to forget. This is a key factor in understanding why the left-wing parties, which bore the brunt of Franco’s repression, were complicit in the repression of the memory of the past. It took until 2004 for the PSOE to approve a resolution endorsing recovering the historical memory and addressing the injustices of the past committed against ‘fellow Socialists.’ More telling still, the high point of ‘disremembering’ history coincided with the ‘golden era’ of Spanish Socialism, between 1982 and 1996. During these years, the PSOE enjoyed impressive parliamentary majorities; yet little was done to upset the terms of the pact to forget. A telling example of disremembering is the lack of formal commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Civil War, which fell in 1986. On the war’s anniversary, Prime Minister Felipe González released a statement
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56 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN noting that the war’s fratricidal character made it ‘unworthy of commemoration’; he further declared that the war ‘was finally history’ and that ‘it is no longer part of the reality of the country’ (Encarnación 2018). At least two factors can be cited for the PSOE’s support for the politics of forgetting. In 1982, the party entered office armed with an ambitious project of modernization, which included Spanish membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union. Confronting the past would have certainly complicated these policy objectives. A less apparent factor was the political re-invention of the party after the transition to democracy. The last thing the party needed as it sought to reinvent itself from a Marxist institution that drew support from the working class to a ‘catch-all’ political organization was a discussion of the party’s role during the days of the Republic and the Civil War. Any revisiting of this history would have certainly reminded the public of the aforementioned ‘Red Terror’, the campaign of political killings committed by the left and its allies during the Civil War. Among the events of the Red Terror, few have the notoriety of the 1936 massacre of Paracuellos del Jarama, a killing rampage in a small town in the province of Madrid, in which an estimated 3,000–5,000 Nationalist prisoners (mainly Francoist military officials who participated in the 1936 uprising against the Second Republic), were executed by left-wing militias while being transferred among several of Madrid’s prisons. Historians have pointed to Santiago Carrillo, Secretary General of the PCE from 1960 to 1982, as the person responsible for ordering the killings (El País 2005). The Red Terror was also responsible for an anti-clerical killing campaign that resulted in a death toll of 6, 832 clerics, including monks, nuns, and 13 bishops (de la Cueva 1998, 355). Referred to by the Vatican and Spanish Catholic officials as ‘Civil War Martyrs’, these victims of the Civil War have received considerable attention in recent years. As of 2017, the Vatican has beatified some 2,000 Civil War Martyrs, roughly half of them since 2007, the same year that the Law of Historical Memory was enacted. The beatification process recognized the victims’ brutal death and their sacrifices made in the name of their faith. Unburdened by the task to revisit the past, Spanish politicians from the right and the left managed to erect a democratic regime that, for all its flaws, such as the lack of a clear bureaucratic rupture with the Franco regime, is widely praised for its stability and respect for political freedoms and human rights. All of the major democratic rating surveys, such as Freedom House’s ‘Freedom in the World’, concur in qualifying Spain as one of the world’s most developed democracies (Freedom House 2018). The c ountry received the highest score possible in the ratings for respect for both political and civil rights. That this happened as Spanish democracy endured its most severe test yet—the challenge by Catalan separatists—is suggestive of the maturity of the country’s democracy. It would be hard to envision a successful democratic transition in Spain with the nation embroiled in a bitter revisiting of its past. The re-construction of democracy in Spain was not a matter of simply enacting a new democratic constitution, as in Brazil, or
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 57 restoring an old one, as in Argentina and Chile. In Spain, the transition triggered a crisis of ‘stateness’ driven by demands for home rule by culturally distinct communities (Linz and Stepan 1996, 106). By 1981, the crisis had unleashed a full-blown process of decentralization that resulted in the creation of a system of seventeen Autonomous Communities; each with its own set of administrative competencies negotiated with the central state in Madrid. The high stakes of this process cannot be overstated. On at least two previous occasions in Spanish history, under the First Republic (1873–1874) and under the Second Republic (1931–1939), the attempt to decentralize the nation wrecked the transition to democracy. And, as fate would have it, after Franco, decentralization unfolded in the midst of an explosion of ethno-violence in the Basque Country.
4.5 Shifting Political Calculations The stability that the politics of forgetting afforded to the new democratic regime has made it possible for Spain to undertake the process of recovering the historical memory that was so conveniently set aside during the transition and its aftermath. This process began in the early 2000s, with the formation of a ‘memory’ movement, led by the Association for the Recovery of the Historical Memory. Its emergence signalled an important departure in how Spanish society had related to the past since the transition to democracy—away from amnesia and toward remembrance. This movement is credited with propelling the 2007 Law of Historical Memory. Just as important, if not more, is the role of the movement to recover the historical memory in sensitizing the Spanish public about the crimes of the old regime: not only what the public was already aware of, such as the ‘cleansing’ campaign of the early Franco period, but a host of political crimes and human rights transgressions that has come into full view only in recent years. Recent scholarship has fully exposed the issue of ‘Franco’s slaves’, or those individuals forced to work for the state and/or private businesses, like construction companies and factories, to expiate their political sins (see, especially, Mendiola Gonzalo 2011). This was a key source of free labour for the state in the construction of public works, such as prisons, dams, and roads, as well as monuments to the Franco regime, such as the Valley of the Fallen. The public is also aware of the repression of homosexuals at the hands of the Franco state: an estimated 5,000 homosexuals were forcibly sent to state hospitals and institutions to undergo ‘aversion therapy’ to cure them of their same-sex attraction (El País, 20 December 2004). Last but not least is the public’s awareness of the massive trafficking of infants (as many as 300,000), overseen by a sinister network of nuns, doctors, and public officials from Franco’s social agency Auxilio Social between the years of 1939 and 1980. The infants were stolen from their left-wing and ‘morally deficient’ parents and sold to ‘approved’ families (see, especially, Vinyes, Armengou and Belis 2002, and Cenarro 2008). Taking its cues from shifting public attitudes toward the past, the political class is now more receptive toward public policies that acknowledge the realities of the past. This is
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58 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN especially the case of a new generation of left-wing politicians that was neither socialized into Francoism nor beholden to the political compromises of the democratic transition. Zapatero’s ascent to power signalled the rise in political influence of this new generation of Spanish politicians. Still a teenager when Franco died in 1975, Zapatero was the first president of the government in the new democracy without any ties to the democratic transition. Upon gaining control of the PSOE in 2000, with the mission of boosting the political fortunes of Spanish socialism after the scandals that pushed the party from power in 1996, Zapatero began to criticize the democratic transition for being too heavy on compromise and too short on accountability. This criticism was unprecedented at the time. As part of his electoral platform for the 2004 general elections, Zapatero endorsed the demands of the movement to recover the historical memory to address the unexamined history of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship (Gálvez Biesca 2006). As prime minister (2004–2011), Zapatero appointed a commission chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega to examine what could be done for the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship. It culminated in the 2007 Law of Historical Memory. The law was supported by the PSOE and the regionalist-nationalist parties from Catalonia and the Basque Country, but broadly opposed by the PP and the Catholic Church. In 2011, as follow-up to the Law of Historical Memory, the Zapatero administration convened a commission that recommended exhuming Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen and the conversion of the monument from a shrine to Francoism to a memorial to Franco’s victims. Yet it is Pedro Sánchez, who assumed power in 2018 via a non-confidence vote against conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Popular Party, whose policies most clearly suggest the new willingness of left-wing leaders to upend the politics of forgetting. The Sánchez administration entered office pledging to exhume Franco’s remains and to convert the Valley of the Fallen into a national memorial to the victims of the Civil War and the Francoist repression (Encarnación 2018). There were obvious political calculations behind Sánchez’s actions. He clearly intended to put the PP in the awkward position of having to defend the Franco regime. In the past, PP leaders have opposed most efforts to revisit the events leading to the Civil War, including voting against the Law of Historical Memory. PP leaders have also opposed the reformation of the Valley of the Fallen, arguing that the nation should not obsess about the past but rather look to the future. ‘I would not spend one Euro on exhuming Franco,’ remarked PP head Pablo Casado during the April 2019 electoral campaign (Encarnación 2018). Sánchez also aimed to boost his re-election prospects in 2019 by rallying the PSOE’s left-wing base, especially at a time when little else could be accomplished given the PSOE’s parliamentary weakness (Encarnación 2019). He indirectly referenced the left’s repression under Franco to justify the removal of Franco’s remains from the Valle of the Fallen and the transformation of the monument into a memorial for Franco’s victims. ‘Something that is unimaginable in Germany and Italy, countries that also suffered fascist dictatorships, should also be unimaginable in our country,’ Sánchez said during his first interview since being sworn-in, on 2 June 2018 (Encarnación 2018).
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 59 Finally, Sánchez’ commitment to shattering the status quo at the Valley of the Fallen was clearly focused on the electorate in Catalonia, where Franco is especially despised (Encarnación 2019). A related objective was to co-op the theme of national unity from the upstart Cuidadanos, or ‘Citizens,’ the Catalan party that gained national prominence in the wake of the 2017 Catalan separatist crisis. A core message of Cuidadanos is the indivisible nature of the Spanish nation, a point stressed in the Spanish Constitution enacted in 1978. After Catalan separatists illegally declared the Republic of Catalonia, the prospect that the region might break away from Spain made national unity the main political concern for Spanish voters, far exceeding other issues, including the economy (Encarnación 2017). As suggested by Sánchez’s strong victory in the April 2019 general elections, confronting the past has become politically advantageous for the left. But the ethical dimension of the left’s shift in calculation about the past should not be overlooked. In justifying the pledge to exhume Franco’s remains and remove them from the Valley of the Fallen, the Sánchez administration stressed the moral imperative behind this action. According to a government spokesperson cited by The Guardian (2018), ‘The Valley needs to be transformed so it ceases to be a place of Francoist and National Catholic memory and is remade as a space for the culture of reconciliation and collective democratic memory, where the victims of the Civil War and the dictatorship are recognized and treated with dignity.’ Fortunately for the left, when it comes to handling the issue of the past, it has the public on its side. Despite criticism from the right and the left, the public has embraced the Law of Historical Memory (Encarnación 2014); and polls suggest that a majority of Spaniards backed Franco’s exhumation (Encarnación 2018). All of this reveals that the societal complicity that for decades underwrote the politics of forgetting has for the most part dissipated. This augurs well for a more honest treatment of the past in the coming years; it also reveals the growing maturity of Spain’s still young democracy.
4.6 Bibliography Aguilar, P. 1996. Memoria y olvido de la guerra civil española. Madrid: Taurus. Aguilar, P. 2002. Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy in Spain. New York: Berghahn. Aguilar, P. 2008. Políticas de la memoria y memoria de la política. Madrid: Alianza. Alted, A. 2005. La voz de los vencidos: el exilio Republicano de 1939. Madrid: Aguilar. Amodia, J. 1976. Franco’s Political Legacy: From Fascism to Façade Democracy. London Penguin. Beevor, A. 2006. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Benomar, J., 1993. ‘Justice after transitions’. Journal of Democracy 4 (1): 3–14. Berman, S. 2019. Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancient Regime to the Present Day. New York: Oxford University Press. Blakeley, G. 2006. ‘Digging up Spain’s past: Consequences of truth and reconciliation’. Democratization 12(1): 44–59. Boraine, A. 2006. ‘Transitional justice: A holistic interpretation’. Journal of International Affairs 60(1): 17–27.
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60 Omar G. ENCARNACIÓN Boyd, C. 2008. ‘The politics of history and memory in democratic Spain’. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617: 133–48. Breazeale, D. 2003. Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brito, A., C. González Enriquez, and P. Aguilar. 2001. The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cenarro, A. 2008. ‘Memories of repression and resistance: Narratives of children institutionalized by Auxilio Social in postwar Spain’. History & Memory 20(2): 39–59. Costa Pinto, A. 2008. ‘Political purges and state crisis in Portugal’s transition to democracy’. Journal of Contemporary History 43: 305–32. Crocker, D. 1999. ‘Reckoning with past wrongs: A normative framework’. Ethics & International Affairs 13: 43–64. de la Cueva, J. 1998. ‘Religious persecution, anticlerical tradition and revolution: On atrocities against the clergy during the Spanish Civil War’. Journal of Contemporary History 33(3): 355–69. El País, 2004. ‘La persecución de los gays durante el franquismo’. El País, 20 December. El País, 2005. ‘Paracuellos fue terrible, pero lo entiendo’. El País, 22 September. El País, 2007. ‘Adolfo Suárez: El hacedor de la democracia’. El País, 25 September. Encarnación, O. 2008. Spanish Politics: Democracy after Dictatorship. Cambridge: Polity Press. Encarnación, O. 2012. ‘Justice in times of transition: The paradoxical legacies of the Iberian experience’. International Studies Quarterly 56(1): 179–92. Encarnación, O. 2014. Democracy without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Encarnacion, O. 2017. ‘The Catalan martyr vs. the Spanish strongman’. The New York Times, 28 October. Encarnación, O. 2018. ‘Spain exhumes its painful past’. The New York Review of Books, 24 August. Encarnación, O. 2019. ‘Will the center prevail in the Spanish elections?’. Foreign Affairs, 26 April. Freedom House. 2018. Freedom in the World Survey, s.l: Freedom House. Gálvez, B. 2006. ‘El proceso de la recuperación de la memoria histórica en España: Una aproximación a los movimientos sociales por la memoria’. International Journal of Iberian Studies 19(1): 121–41. Golob, S. 2008. ‘Volver: The return of/to transitional justice in Spain’. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9 (2): 127–141. Gunther, R. 1992. Spain: The very model of an elite settlement. In: Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin American and Southern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press: 38–80. Gunther, R. J. R. Montero, and J. Botella. 2011. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Herr, R. 1971. An Historical Essay on Modern Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hopewell, J. 1996. Out of the Past: Spanish Cinema after Franco. London: British Film Institute. Jackson, G. 1965. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Juliá, S., 2003. ‘Echar al olvido, memoria y amnistía en la transición’. Claves de Razón Práctica 29: 14–25. Labanyi, J. 1995. Post-modernism and the problem of cultural identity. In: Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
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MEMORY AND POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 61 Linz, J., M. Jerez, and S. Corzo. 2001. Ministers and Regimes in Spain: From First to Second Restoration, 1874–2001. Cambridge: Centre for European Studies Working Paper No. 101. Linz, J. and A. Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, Latin America and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. McDonough, P., S. Barnes, and A. López Pina. 1998. The Cultural Dynamics of Democratization in Spain. New York: Cornell University Press. Mendiola, G. 2011. Forced Labour in Franco’s Spain: Workforce Supply, Profits and Productivity (Working Papers in Economic History). s.l.: European Historical Economics Society. Nagy, R. 2002. ‘Reconciliation in post-commission South Africa: Thick and thin accounts of solidarity’. Canadian Journal of Political Science 35(2): 323–46. Nietzsche, F. 1983. Untimely Meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Preston, P. 2012. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruíz Vargas, J. 2006. ‘Trauma y memoria de la guerra civil y la dictadura franquista’. Hispania Nova: Revista de Historia Contemporánea 6: 1–38. Sands, P. 2003. From Nuremberg to The Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Share, D. 1987. ‘Transitions to democracy and transition through transaction’. Comparative Political Studies 19(4): 525–48. Teitel, R. 2000. Transitional Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Economist. 2006. ‘Spain’s civil war: Painful memories’. The Economist, 23 December. The Guardian. 2017. ‘Spanish MPs Vote to Exhume Dictator’. The Guardian, 11 May. Vinyes, R., M. Armengou, and R. Belis. 2002. Los niños perdidos del franquismo. Madrid: Plaza y Janés. Wiarda, H. 1973. ‘Toward a framework of political change in the Iberic-Latin tradition’. World Politics 25(2): 206–35. Wert Ortega, J. 1985. The transition from below: Public opinion among the Spanish population from 1977 to 1979. In: Spain at the Polls. Durham: Duke University Press.
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chapter 5
Decen tr a liz ation i n Spa i n federal evolution and performance of the estado autonómico César Colino
5.1 Introduction The Spanish territorial model (Estado autonómico) is one of the basic constituting elements of the Spanish democracy and political system. Alongside increasing Europeanization since 1986, it has resulted in a transformation of power relationships between different tiers of government and a rescaling of the traditional Spanish state model. Its workings, effectiveness, and legitimacy are among the main issues in political, media, and academic debate, especially in the wake of political and economic crisis such as the 2008 Great Recession and the secessionist crisis in Catalonia since 2012. Thus, to understand the territorial system, its likely evolution, and its achievements and problems becomes critical for the correct understanding, not just of the Spanish state and politics, but also of its current predicaments and the soundness of the public reform discussion and proposals. Paradoxically, despite the recent surge in research there is still a dearth of sophisticated accounts of the evolution and performance of the Spanish territorial model. Maybe due to its hybrid nature and its mixed results there is not an idiosyncratic theory or approach clearly accounting for its workings, as is usually the case with other federal systems. Increasingly, however, the Spanish system is receiving attention from political, administrative, and economics scientists. These have provided new empirical studies and frameworks of analysis with detailed descriptions and different explanatory hypotheses of this model of decentralization. We still need, however, more historical and comparatively informed interpretations of the evolution and performance of this model of
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Decentralization in Spain 63 decentralization, a variety of the federal model, helping to understand its current problems and suggesting ways to deal with them. Drawing on some recent political science studies in comparative federalism, and historic institutionalism, this chapter proposes an approach which is historic, comparative, and multi-causal to understand the Spanish decentralization model. It seeks to avoid traditional approaches based on its supposed exceptionalism and usually overly pessimistic in their assessments. At the same time, it seeks to critically review the broad literature, legal, political, or economic, that has dealt with the issues of the history, institutional design, political operation, and consequences of the federal system in Spain.
5.2 Institutional Design and Evolution How has the constitutional pact and the institutional evolution of the system shaped the main institutional rules and practices of the Spanish territorial model? As is well known, the territorial distribution of power was not completely spelled out in the Constitution, which contained only general principles, such as the principle of autonomy and that of unity, and a general distribution of powers among levels. Several constitutional safeguards protect the powers of the Autonomous Communities (ACs) through review by the Constitutional Court and a constitutional guarantee of autonomy provided by rigidity in the amendment of the regional statutes of autonomy (the equivalent of regional constitutions in other federations, see Castellà 2018).
5.2.1 Origins and Evolution of Institutions in Comparative Perspective During the transition to democracy, between 1976 and 1979, political action and constitutional deliberations showed a clear will to accommodate the regions with nationalist movements and important historical claims for self-government. This was reflected in the creation of provisional regimes of autonomy (the so-called regimenes preautonómicos) in thirteen regions before the Constitution was enacted. At the same time, there were increasing movements on the part of some central and regional elites to respond to the societal pressures felt by most of the population across all the Spanish regions and put an end to economic and political centralism, which was identified with dictatorship at the time. The necessity of more general devolution was also associated throughout the country with the consolidation of democracy, better governance, and economic development (Colino and Hombrado 2017). The regional autonomy thus created was to be further protected by a constitutional reform procedure characterized by its rigidity, including the quasi-constitutional nature
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64 CÉSAR COLINO of the regional statutes of autonomy and the impossibility of their unilateral amendment by the Spanish parliament. The existence of a Constitutional Court, responsible for adjudicating intergovernmental conflicts and providing constitutional review, also helped to safeguard autonomy. The system has thus developed into a highly decentralized system as reflected in the regional autonomy in terms of public spending and policy, as seen in Figure 5.1, in which one can see the increasing importance of regional expenditure from the mid-nineties to the present. The distribution of powers in the Spanish territorial system has been shaped by the 1978 Constitution, the regional statutes of autonomy, and the constitutional interpretation, configuring a system where shared and concurrent competencies predominate, with few areas of exclusive competence, and with the implementation of central law in the hands of the regional units in most areas. This resembles the German integrated or collaborative model, but without provision for the participation at the centre as in the German case, since the Senate has not functioned as a real territorial chamber or as a common or meeting body for the ACs (Colino and Hombrado 2017). However, ACs have enjoyed more autonomy and one can witness more political and administrative diversity than the Länder in Germany, or constituent units in Austria or Australia. At the same time, the central level has maintained, apart from their own implementing networks for some policy sectors such as social security and security, many instruments to avoid excessive decentralization and opportunist behaviour from the regions. For example, the central government may use its spending power and some coercive measures on the regions (Máiz et al. 2010). 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 % Local Level
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67.3 65.5 64.5 63.4 61.4 59.5 58.5 54.9 58.1 58.5 51.6 51 50.2 50.2 50.6 51.7 58.7 59.3 57.6 57 56.2 56.6
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Figure 5.1 Evolution of decentralized expenditure in Spain (1995–2016). Source: OECD Fiscal Decentralization Database
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Decentralization in Spain 65 At the same time, some power asymmetries affecting several dimensions of regional powers were entrenched in the constitution: the recognition of co-official languages, with implications for education, cultural policies, and citizen rights derived from traditional civil law systems in six ACs: Catalonia, Galicia, Navarra, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Aragon and the Basque Country; the constitutional recognition and protection of the special economic–fiscal arrangements—larger tax autonomy, tax collection systems—of the Basque Country and Navarra; and a special economic-fiscal regime for the Canary Islands with special provisions on VAT. Other asymmetries were also implemented in several policy areas or in the exercise of powers in practice. Asymmetry of powers in some areas has led to the need for both bilateral and multilateral forms of negotiation and coordination (Agranoff 1999). Regarding territorial finance, a solidaristic fiscal federalism system with some peculiarities and asymmetries has developed which has permitted high regional spending and borrowing autonomy, but low to medium revenue autonomy for the ACs, with the exception of the ACs of the Basque Country and Navarra, which enjoy so-called charter regimes with higher fiscal autonomy, both in terms of expenditure and revenue. As can be observed in Figure 5.2 the expenditure of Spanish ACs can be placed in a middle position among classical federal countries, with a share of almost a third of public expenditure exercised by the regions. After many years of continuous expenditure decentralization, the fiscal crisis, the European requirements of fiscal consolidation policies, and other regulatory reforms to provide budget stability (especially impacting on regional governments) seem to have had a brief centralizing effect on the system, increasing the dependence of ACs on the central government (Colino and Del Pino 2017). 68 57
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66 CÉSAR COLINO The Spanish financial constitution has been evolving from a system based on centralized tax collection and a prevailing reliance on conditional transfers to a one more similar to other cooperative federal systems, where the territorial funding system is based primarily on the sharing of revenues from the main national taxes, some regional own-source taxes and mostly unconditional equalizing grants or other transfers from the central government. Regional governments have consistently preferred to increase their share in central government revenues rather than using their discretion to increase revenue by taxing their own citizens. The spending power of the central government has been exercised in many areas of regional jurisdiction through the use of conditional grants or joint programmes (Lago-Peñas et al. 2017). Reforms and adaptations of fiscal federalism have been frequent, responding to the changing needs of regional governments and often heavily influenced by some regions such as Catalonia (Bandrés and Cuenca 2016). The fiscal equalization scheme has produced relatively high solidarity and redistribution, but has lacked objective and clear distributive criteria and produced some arbitrary results leading to horizontal competition for central resources and a vertical tension for more decentralization of powers and resources. As most systems in which the spending autonomy and the capacity to borrow is larger than the revenues capacity, some disincentives for responsibility and incentives for blame-shifting have been generated. Coordination bodies in fiscal and debt issues have been too hierarchical and fiscal rules have not been used or have proven ineffective. In Figure 5.3 one can observe the middle position of Spain in terms of revenue autonomy among European and other federations. 90
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Decentralization in Spain 67 Regarding the participation of the regional level in central decisions and the relationship between governments, they are less formalized than in the German cooperative model and less effective and decisive than in the Canadian model, and are characterized by a medium level of articulation and institutionalization. Multilateral relations among the ACs and the central government still cohabitate with bilateral relations at the level of executives and have been increasingly formalized in statutes of autonomy and national administrative regulations. As in the case of Canada, Australia, Austria, or other federations, in the Spanish federal model there is also a lack of mechanisms for cooperation or intrastate participation through the second chamber, which does not possess real participation or veto rights for regional representatives in central institutions. With the recent round of reforms of the regional statutes of autonomy, however, an increase in participation rights of the ACs in central government bodies and the ability to participate in the appointment of members of certain constitutional bodies (advisory councils, public companies, the appointment of some judges of the Constitutional Court by the Senate, etc.) has been recognized, albeit with scant effectiveness so far. On the other hand, the Congress of Deputies, especially for those regions with regional parties, has served in practice as a substitute for a representation of regional interests in the Senate (Grau 2010). In the case of other ACs, their interests have also been defended in the internal party circuit within the main national parties, with a predominant role for the regional presidents, as regional leaders and as party leaders, which has produced a certain competition among ACs which approaches the Spanish case more to the model of Canada. Although many intergovernmental cooperation or coordination bodies have been regulated and, despite the existence of intergovernmental bodies such as the Conference revailed in the system of Presidents, a rather hierarchical approach to cooperation has p with no compulsory joint decision-making as in Germany, most bodies merely being consultative. Some ministerial conferences (around twenty have been effective) and other second-level intergovernmental commissions or working groups of high-ranking officials (around 1,000) have evolved as the machinery of intergovernmental decisionmaking (see Aja and Colino 2014). Similarly to Canada, Australia or the US, but unlike in Germany and Switzerland, there has been little use of horizontal collaboration between the component units in the Spanish system. The Constitutional Court has played a very relevant role due to the original ambiguity of the distribution of powers in the Constitution. The Spanish system has featured a comparatively high degree of jurisdictional conflict before the Courts. Recent studies show that this high degree of conflict has been determined in part by the very Court behaviour and by party colour at the central government and ACs, especially Catalonia (Sala 2010; Rodríguez et al. 2019). The main criticism of the Court is that it has allowed excessive central cross-cutting competences to revert to the central state, powers that were designed as regional in the Constitution. Many also recognize that the Constitutional Court has issued important judgments protective of or sensitive to the decentralized reality of the Spanish model, such as landmark rulings on land development legislation, or the ruling on the external action of the ACs.
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68 CÉSAR COLINO Regarding the regional level, all seventeen ACs in Spain have established unicameral parliamentary systems with proportional representation, in which governments are politically responsible to regional parliaments/assemblies, elected for fixed four-year terms. Most regional governments have developed in practice as presidentialist systems with a heightened relevance for regional prime ministers. They have acted usually as ‘regional barons’ of the main state-wide parties, being the main representatives of their territories’ interests in Madrid, especially when their party is not in office at the central government, having increased their influence within their national parties’ organization.
5.2.2 The Degree of Decentralization in Comparative Perspective Following Dardanelli (2019), we can think of decentralization or autonomy of subcentral governments as having three main components: an institutional set-up conducive to the formulation of its own policy preferences (institutional autonomy), the legal competence to enact binding policy decisions on those preferences (policy autonomy), and a degree of fiscal autonomy to finance such policy decisions (fiscal autonomy). These components can be measured through numerical indicators that allow us to compare Spain with other federal countries (see Figure 5.4). Similar to the usual expenditure and revenue indicators, Spain occupies a middle position among European federations in Dardanelli’s decentralization index composed by the three dimensions of decentralization (charter regions show more fiscal autonomy).
5.2.3 Change and Reforms of the System: Drivers, Scope, and Frequency Regarding change of the system, and its capacity to deliberately adjust to the environment changes, the 1978 Constitution has been accused of rigidity with regard to its procedures for amendment of the decentralization system. This is one of the reasons why until now the evolution and institutional change of the territorial model has taken place without constitutional amendment and through reform of the regional autonomy statutes or other laws agreed upon at the national level. Most reform attempts were initiated in a top-down fashion by the two main state-wide parties in the first years or, as was recently the case with regional statute reforms, by the regional branches of state-wide parties (Colino and Olmeda 2012). At other periods, reforms were demanded or initiated by regional nationalist parties and state-wide parties’ branches in other regions. The last round of regional statute amendments in the mid-2000s, mainly driven by Catalonia’s
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Decentralization in Spain 69
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demands, but followed by Andalusia and others, was used as an alternative option to constitutional reform, intended as a bottom-up reinterpretation of the Constitution for achieving more accommodation and resources. This reinterpretation, agreed by the national and Catalan parties in the national parliament was rejected by the Constitutional Court. Regarding the reform of the funding system, clear coalitions of regional governments with similar problems and financial interests seem to stay in the way for more than a gradual or incremental change deviating from the status quo since it would produce clear losers. Central political forces have been able to control the sequence and content of most of the reform processes so far. Generally, ACs may participate and motivate the reform debate in the central parliament, the Senate, or in the electoral campaigns, depending on the strength of the regional parties in the Congress of Deputies. Currently, as a result of various factors such as the fiscal and institutional crisis and the secessionist bid by the Catalan government, the traditional parameters of territorial constitutional negotiations in the Spanish model seem to have altered, complicating the usual accommodating strategies of intergovernmental actors and their mutual trust, and modifying the traditional panoply of available responses to attain accommodation—authority or policy concessions, fiscal appeasement, or further devolution—that seem to be no longer effective (for the obstacles for reform of the Senate, see Harguindéguy et al. 2017).
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70 CÉSAR COLINO
5.3 Existing Explanations of the Territorial Model: From History and Structure to Actors and Dynamics If we turn to explanations of the institutional development of the Spanish model of decentralization, some studies have resorted to its social basis, putting the emphasis on the territorial heterogeneity and the existence of regional nationalist parties or movements. The problem with these accounts is that they cannot explain the timing or scope of the changes, so more sophisticated institutionalist accounts have been proposed based on the effect of historical legacies, such as the Spanish Second Republic, and the historical path dependency and causal relevance of several critical junctures in the Spanish mode of federalization (Novo et al. 2018). These junctures or events, such as the approval of pre-autonomy regimes, the willingness of Andalusian elites and voters to pursue the fast-track of decentralization alongside the nationalities, the occasional landmark rulings of the Constitutional Court, or the economic crisis have determined the evolution and the current shape of the system. Several authors (see Baldi 1999) have suggested the importance of the origins and emergence of the system, by disaggregation or devolution, as the main determinant of the institutional arrangements. According to them, devolutionary federal systems, holding-together federalism, lead to institutional mechanisms too weak for the constituent units to control the power of the centre, given that the centre controls the decentralization process, its sequence, and its contents, and can relinquish its own power determining its pace and scope. This has led to the dominance of self-rule arrangements over shared rule elements of the system (Blanco 2014). This form of federalization, it is argued, usually gives rise to second chambers with rather weak territorial representation, with a predominance of the first chamber that represents all citizens over the second that represents the territories. In addition, it usually produces a distribution of functional or administrative competencies, where the central level predominantly reserves the legislation and the constituent units are in charge of executing it. At the same time, the initial asymmetric or unequal configuration of the Spanish territorial model in terms of power distribution, may also account for the excessive importance of national framework legislation and the lack of coordination mechanisms between the ACs, which, having different powers and interests, had little to coordinate. It would also account for the underdevelopment of horizontal relations among the Spanish constituent governments, and the lack of multilateral forums led actors to develop bilateral negotiation strategies (Beramendi y Máiz 2003). At the same time, the ambiguity, asymmetry, and instability of the financial arrangements would have intensified conflict among regional nationalist parties and Spanish-wide parties (Gray 2014).
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Decentralization in Spain 71 Other explanations in the historical institutionalist perspective have emphasized the mobilization of territorial elites as the main factor accounting for the decentralization and resymmetrization of the system, since the interest of these elites was linked to the deepening of the decentralization process, which required the assumption of more competencies from the centre, which in turn required the institutionalization of regional administrations to guarantee its effectiveness (Blanco 2014). The initial distinctions of ACs and separate elections favoured the continuous rule of nationalist parties in some ACs, which produced decentralizing and differentiating tendencies. The initial asymmetry in the system eventually led to catching-up or blocking tendencies in the other regional governments, but also to emulation, producing unexpected decentralization all round (Moreno 2000; Hombrado 2011). According to some studies, regional elites and parties have used strategies to promote their institutional power, for example through mobilization strategies in regional electoral competition, due to party positioning (Fernández-Albertos and Lago 2015), to the use of the territorial issues as mobilizing devices (Martínez-Tapia 2016), and/or to the action of nation-building policies in regional education and media, which have increased exclusive identities at some periods. At the same time, outbidding electoral competition in Basque Country and Catalonia between moderate and more radical nationalists or sovereigntists has produced at some points a radicalization of demands towards secession of the former to the point of generating a constitutional crisis (Colomer 2017; Barrio and Rodríguez-Teruel 2017). As Alonso (2011) pointed out, in the last two decades, dominant minority nationalist parties in those regions realized that they were losing the monopoly of the nationalist and autonomist discourse and radicalized their demands to differentiate themselves from national parties’ branches in their regions or from other regional parties. For those that had defended autonomy so far, this implied the imperative to advocate some version of sovereignty or outright secession. Only the integrative effect of state-wide party organizations and the interests of some regional politicians seeking a national career or needing the support of national parties in their region could counteract these disintegrative tendencies. Other recent explanations of the evolution of the Spanish system have resorted to the concept of varieties of federalism and emphasized the interaction of historical legacies, societal developments, and economic environment, institutional logics, and actors’ strategies, by governments or parties, to explain institutional structures and political dynamics (e. g. electoral competition or behaviour of elites and voters). They have tried to show how these structure and dynamics have affected the results of the system and its stability, performance, and legitimacy, as well as its typical problems or pathologies (Colino 2013). They hypothesize that different varieties of federalism are more or less prone to the risks of overcentralization or fragmentation and the associated federal tensions, and display different mechanisms to deal with them. We can thus understand or predict the typical evolution or institutional policies and trajectories of a territorial model like the Spanish one by looking at its variety and its logics. Moreover, each of the varieties of federation responds to different societal pressures and different structures of opportunities for formal reform. Consequently, they each
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72 CÉSAR COLINO tend to utilize different mechanisms of implicit or explicit constitutional change, such as formal constitutional policy-making, intergovernmental competition, and/or ‘paradigmatic’ shifts in constitutional ideas and values, and/or ‘implicit’ change of intergovernmental rules or change in the legal interpretation by the courts (Benz and Colino 2011). Besides that, as Toubeau (2018) has pointed out, devolutionary federal systems with several national identities such as the Spanish one have evolved in a typical trajectory mediated both by the power and ideas of mainstream state-wide parties representing the national majority that accept the need to somewhat accommodate regional nationalist demands, and by the power of subnational parties to put constitutional issues or territorial reform on the agenda. Finally, the concept of varieties of federalism allows us to understand and predict both the behaviour of the system in terms of its institutional evolution or degree of stability (centralizing or decentralizing tendencies, intergovernmental tension, institutional ideas and culture), and in terms of its governance and efficiency problems or pathologies (more or less decision-making capacity, duplication, coordination, gridlock, redistribution, adaptability), and therefore its accommodation capacity (integrative capacity, management of diversity, degree of confrontation) (Colino, 2013). In the next section we turn to territorial politics and refer in more detail to some of these dynamics identified in the literature producing centrifugal and centripetal tendencies in the Spanish system.
5.4 Territorial Dynamics and Politics: Centrifugal and Centripetal Tendencies Spain is a multilingual country with a clearly dominant language and a dominant national identity present throughout its territory, but with several historically mobilized minority national groups and regional identities (Moreno and Colino 2010). Given its territorial institutions and socially and culturally diverse composition reflected in its state-wide and regional party systems, Spain shows both centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. The pre-existing social basis, the politicization of Spanish social and cultural pluralism in the past forty years, and the incentives produced by the institutions themselves have combined to produce a peculiar decentralizing dynamic. How do political processes or dynamics interact with, or how are they determined by, the described institutions and their social basis? How do they affect the stability and legitimacy of the system? We can assume that territorial dynamics are influenced by the institutions but also by economic or social tensions and changing identities usually embodied in new or old political parties and changing party systems. Although the Spanish devolution model has been regarded by most of the population as beneficial and has counted on high levels of legitimacy for the most part of its history (see Figure 5.5), territorial preferences may change, sometimes evolving with changes in
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Decentralization in Spain 73 70,00 60,00 50,00 40,00 30,00 20,00 10,00 0,00
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1994 1995 1996 1998 2002 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2010 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 a model in which the autonomous communities would have less autonomy within the Spanish state a model in its current form a model in which the autonomous communities would have more autonomy within the Spanish state a centralized state with no autonomous communities a model in which the autonomous communities could have the possibility of becoming independent state N.S. N.C.
Figure 5.5 Spaniards’ preferences among different alternatives of territorial organization. Source: Own elaboration with data from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas
national or regional identities and producing new parties and changing electoral competition. The distribution of public opinion and dual identities is still strong in most ACs (Martínez-Herrera and Miley 2010) and has been maintained or is slowly recovering after the crisis. In the Spanish case, the institutionalization of the ACs reinforced the status of existing regional parties and favoured the emergence of new ones. Also, the success of subnational nationalist parties at both their parliaments and the national parliament induced the emergence of other regionalist parties. Many of the seventeen ACs have seen the creation of regionalist and nationalist parties that defend their local identities and interests. At the same time, decentralization has promoted the federalization of national parties and strengthened their regional apparatuses, which have led them to claim more decentralization within the context of regional electoral competition with regional nationalist parties. Regional ‘barons’ of state-wide parties have acquired great influence when they are in power and their national party leader is in opposition. For Blanco (2014), the relevance of these regional nationalist parties, along with the effects of the electoral system and the openness of power distribution combined to prevent the emergence and success of state-wide third parties as coalition partners playing any pivoting role in cases of minority governments. This gave this role to regional nationalist parties, mainly Catalan and Basque nationalists, which acquired the capacity of exchanging policies or governability at the central parliament for more power and resources, both with governments from the right and the left, thus somewhat distorting representation in national parliament. The three nationalist parties (CiU, PNV, and Canary Coalition) that have dominated for a very long time the regional governments of their respective regions, have thus been able to disproportionately condition, despite their scarce presence in the central parliament, the functioning of the parliamentary system in Spain and everyday politics.
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74 CÉSAR COLINO From a pessimistic view of the Spanish model, this constellation produces a number of centrifugal tendencies that are usually attributed to defects in the institutional design or to the lack of a true federal culture among leaders and citizens (Caamaño 2014; Vallès 2016) that causes self-generated instability, bringing about opportunistic behaviour from governments at both levels (that leads to encroaching by the central government and shirking by the regional ones). This would have impeded adaptive and rationalizing reforms of the system. At the same time, this brings about a growing tension between the democratic dynamics, characterized by adversarial politics and polarization at the parliamentary arena, and the need for cooperation in the intergovernmental arena, preventing the necessary cooperation and blocking highly needed reforms (Vallès 2016). On the other hand, we could also identify, with more optimistic implications, some tendencies in Spanish territorial dynamics that promote institutional adjustment, cooperation, stability, and prevent conflict. These are, for example, the practice of multilevel or informal coalitions of national parties and regional or non-state-wide parties both at national and regional legislatures. These agreements have contributed to the governability and the integration of the system, with the nationalists’ or regionalist parties’ support to the central government preventing eventual centralization tendencies. As Field (2015) has argued, the existence of these different parties and multidimensional competition with different goals and logics, and the compatibility between the party goals of national and regional parties have promoted governing capacity and cooperation. This author shows that party behaviour and relations among the governing party at the central parliament and the regional nationalist parties during periods of minority governments in national parliament is quite cooperative. At the same time, decentralizing stances or declarations in the nationalist parties’ manifestos do not seem to explain always the patterns of party competition, since regional nationalist parties can espouse a more significant redefinition of centre–periphery relations at the same time as they engage in cooperative alliance behaviour in the central parliament. Other factors that could be regarded as centripetal tendencies of the Spanish system that at the same time avoid over-centralizing tendencies are the high degree of nationalization of the national parliament in its composition, and the fact that national parties or their branches are also represented in most regional parliaments. The presence of the two main national parties or their local branches and now of Podemos in the Basque Country or Ciudadanos in Catalonia, may account for and promote dual identities as still majoritarian in the country at large. At the same time, increasingly federalized but still integrated national parties also serve as alternative circuits of regional coordination when redistributive conflicts among territories arise, and they may compensate for the lack of intergovernmental forums. In the executive arena, the implementation capacity of ACs of many policies, both shared and exclusive, has also acted at certain points as a safeguard against abusive recentralization attempts (Del Pino and Ramos 2018). Finally, the requirements of European membership have promoted both horizontal and vertical cooperative behaviour of ACs and coordination with the centre both in the domestic and supranational arenas.
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Decentralization in Spain 75 In sum, we can observe the existence of centrifugal and centripetal dynamics in the Spanish federal model. Against the more pessimistic view, some of the previous centrifugal dynamics do not always, or no longer, obtain in the Spanish territorial dynamics, or are contingent on other situational circumstances, such as the parliamentary majority constellation or the party congruence between levels of government. Experience since the 1990s has shown that the coincidence of majority governments from the right with strong congruence between the two levels is the constellation more prone to the activation of many of these tendencies, such as some centralizing demands, due to ideological or adaptive reasons such as an economic crisis, that bring about countertendencies and demands in several ACs for more autonomy and institutional reforms. Minority governments and lack of party congruence at both levels may promote collaboration and centripetal tendencies, through party agreements and reduced polarization, but also through increased accommodation of regional demands.
5.5 Visions and Perspectives on the Estado Autonómico and its Performance In the last two sections we have already described the Spanish territorial system institutions and dynamics in their mutual relationships, and their consequences on stability and adaptability, conflict potential, and autonomy protection. We have also seen some of the characteristics that allow the system or prevent it from performing its originally intended functions without difficulties. In this section we look at some of the debates about the achievements and performance of the Spanish system in terms of governance, accommodation of diversity, and democratic quality.
5.5.1 Contrasting Visions and Debates Many of the existing assessments of the Spanish model of decentralization, are paradoxical or contradictory. Either they are too pessimistic or too optimistic about its past and future, regard the system as too flexible and open or as too rigid; too fragmented and obsessed with identity or too uniformizing and disrespectful of diversity; too favourable to economic growth and equality or impeding both. In sum, for some it is a resounding success and for many an utter failure or disaster. For some even a paradoxical “failed success” (Tudela 2016). Firstly, one should mention the debates on the very nature of the model. Among political scientists and other foreign scholars, there seems to be a consensus that the Spanish model can be regarded as a federal system with certain peculiarities, as all the others—evolutionary, devolutionary, multinational, asymmetric, etc.—, with several strengths and deficiencies due to its social and political basis and its peculiar form of emergence and institutional development. According to
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76 CÉSAR COLINO most empirical oriented definitions of a federation, the Spanish case is not different from other federations, having the main attributes and fulfilling the same functions in its institutions and dynamics. Since there is not a single yardstick of federalness and all federations lack, or have tensions with, some federal elements in some aspects, we see no conceptual or empirical reason for not including Spain within the group of federations (see Watts 2009; Sala 2013, Tudela 2016). Regarding the main existing visions on the achievements and failures of the Spanish territorial model (Colino and Hombrado 2014), we could distinguish between the federalist vision, who tends to be more optimistic, and argues that the system has worked well in terms of decentralization of power but still has some way to go in terms of accommodation, suggesting reform proposals that include features typical of other federations, such as a clarification of competencies and more participation by regions at the centre. For its part, the minority nationalist vision tends to assess the system pessimistically, arguing that its evolution and operation have produced low-quality or weak autonomy because of central encroachment and spending power, undue policy uniformity, fiscal imbalances, and unjust patterns of financial redistribution. It has produced insufficient asymmetry and therefore not enough recognition of existing substate national communities. The reforms proposed are formal recognition of a special status for the nationality-based ACs. Finally, the central oriented vision, still supports some degree of decentralization, more or less asymmetric, but is more pessimistic about its achievements and prospects. It argues that the centrifugal tendencies built into the system have necessarily led to a weakening of the common Spanish project, to an exaggerated emphasis on differences and diversity and eventually to secession. It criticizes the excesses of the regions in terms of their language and nation-building policies, and argues that reforms entailing further concessions to minority nationalists are not just undesirable but also useless, since the goal of accommodation seems virtually unattainable.
5.5.2 Assessment of Results in Governance, Diversity Management and Democratic Quality The Spanish model has been seen as an expression of the flexible adaptation of institutions to both economic globalization and Europeanization and to demands for the recognition of territorial identity, the efficient provision of public services, and new modes of governance and citizen participation. Other commentators, however, have been less optimistic and have contended that the model still requires reform to solve many of the problems which the original constitutional settlement was originally devised to address. For example, they argue that it still lacks the capacity to integrate various territorial demands or redistribute resources fairly, while others have argued that regions lack sufficient autonomy and capacity to promote their own development and that those problems of policy coordination within and between regions and central government remain outstanding (Kölling 2019).
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Decentralization in Spain 77 Regarding its governance and efficiency results or performance, we could argue that it has shown relatively high decision-making capacity, if with some duplication and coordination problems, but no decision gridlock or joint decision trap have been identified in the workings of the Spanish model, except for constitutional policies such as the reform of regional financing or the power distribution. There has usually been no capacity of the second chamber to block decisions of the lower chamber, despite occasional different compositions and attempts to do so. However, with regard to problems of governance and effectiveness in problem-solving, some authors have observed several failures attributable to the Spanish type of federation. Romero (2012) has pointed out a problem of institutional coordination and the absence of effective institutional mechanisms to develop public policies that involve or affect the four levels of administration with competencies (EU, central, regional, and local), or some of them. Sometimes this deficiency is more serious than just a problem of budgetary squeeze. According to this view, this organizational weakness, a consequence of the fragmentation of the institutional and regulatory arrangements, is particularly visible in the field of spatial or territorial policies, although it is found in many areas (agriculture, training, universities, research, social services, and immigration). There are also duplications (ministries with all their competences transferred continue to increase their staff). An example is the layout of large infrastructures and the lack of participation or consensus necessary in the making and approval of National Hydrological Plans. The lack of resources for a correct implementation in many regional administrations also leads to poor execution of the national framework laws or regional laws, which are sometimes innovative and technically advanced and progressive, but cannot be applied well. Often, there is a lack of regional expertise and of national inspectors to supervise and regional inspectors to correct problems. In terms of its accommodation capacity and management of diversity (as seen in factors such as integrative capacity vis-à-vis secessionism, degree of support for centralism, acceptance of asymmetry, confrontation), the Spanish model, by allowing for an extensive decentralization of powers and the constitutional recognition of certain specific characteristics of some regions, has entailed an autonomy-based strategy of accommodation and some recognition through historical rights or fiscal asymmetry and the protection of territorially concentrated ethnic and linguistic minorities. Considerable progress has been made in redressing historic territorial grievances, and protecting minorities’ rights, languages, and cultures. For some observers, the Spanish model of devolution would have thus become an example of coexistence where regional civic nationalism could exist without a state in some regions, to the point that until relatively recently it was regarded internationally as a virtuous decentralization model with high accommodation of diversity. With respect to its effects on democratic quality, there is a debate about the negative or positive consequences of the Spanish model of federalism on the working of democracy (see Colino and Hombrado 2014; Colino, forthcoming). It seems that Spain’s territorial institutions have paved the way for a growing balance of power between governments through the vertical and horizontal division of powers. This has permitted many different
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78 CÉSAR COLINO parties and groups to participate in regional executives and to influence public policy, acting as a check on other governments, for example through the existence of multilevel coalitional politics (Alonso 2011). In terms of participation and social capital, it is clear that decentralization has promoted the government’s proximity to citizens, favoured a higher level of political participation (both electoral and associational at all levels), and enhanced growth of social capital and trust in government, even if differences on this score persist across ACs. Some authors have pointed out some negative effects on democratic quality of the Spanish territorial model such as blame-shifting, credit-claiming, and lack of accountability that the system’s characteristics and dynamics seem to promote. The lack of regional fiscal responsibility, for example, makes it difficult for citizens to control the government as the link between the benefits obtained from public services and the cost of financing them through taxes is not visible (see León and Jurado, this volume). As mentioned previously, one could argue that eventual tensions between the democratic or parliamentary principle and the federal principle in Spain are exacerbated in moments of majority at the central parliament, but seem to soften, however, in situations of minority government through a series of mechanisms of multilevel political exchange or to vary with the degree of party congruence between levels (Colino, forthcoming).
5.6 Conclusion As we have seen, given the history and the social basis of the Spanish democracy, the Spanish model of decentralization has evolved along some predictable lines in terms of its institutional arrangements, political dynamics, and specific governance and integrative capacities. Due to the social forces in its origin, the ambiguous constitutional configuration and the political dynamics generated, the institutional development of the Spanish model has produced some operational features that make it a federation featuring traits of different federal models, so it could be regarded as an intermediate type between the separation or dual type and the integrated, cooperative, or collaborative type. The model has developed into a fairly decentralized one in comparative terms, with shared responsibilities and finance as the prevailing mechanism. This does not mean that continuous, decentralizing, centrifugal, and asymmetric tensions have not been at play in the Spanish model all along. But these tendencies have been counteracted by other institutional developments and logics and by the central government’s institutional policies attempting to avoid the negative effects of asymmetry and inequality among regions. Centralizing and decentralizing tendencies embedded in the institutions themselves, and reflected in partisan and government strategies and ideas have interacted with centrifugal and centripetal tendencies coming from a diverse social basis reflected in differentiated national and subnational party systems. This interaction has produced some long periods of stability and legitimacy, with high governance capacity, and some other more unstable periods shaped by legitimation crisis, due both to integration
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Decentralization in Spain 79 problems, in the form of a secessionist crisis, and occasional fiscal unsustainability and governance ineffectiveness, with a clear difficulty to formally reform its institutions, due to several factors such as a polarized party competition. Its political dynamics have partly shaped the evolution of the system through the participation at the centre of subnational parties supporting national parties and thereby leading the system in a decentralizing direction. In terms of its capacities, the type of federal system that has evolved in Spain has shown a relatively strong capacity for multilevel decision-making without the problems of other systems, but has also suffered from its own problems such as a lack of coordination and joint decision capacity. In terms of the management of diversity, although generally successful at the accommodation of diverse groups and several national identities in the same state, and due to social and political dynamics not only attributable to the system but to external factors and dynamics, it has lately been unable to accommodate some demands and provide for more recognition for minority nations within the country. In terms of democracy, finally, the Spanish decentralization model seems to have promoted more checks and balances for executive powers and parliaments, guaranteeing good participation and representation of citizens and different territorial groups but, as other similar federal systems, has been less successful at providing for equality and accountability of governments towards their citizens.
5.7 Bibliography Agranoff, R. 1999 ‘Intergovernmental relations and the management of asymmetry in federal Spain.’ In: Accommodating Diversity: Asymmetry in Federal States. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 94–117. Aja, E. and C. Colino. 2014. ‘Multilevel structures, coordination and partisan politics in Spanish intergovernmental relations’. Comparative European Politics 12: 444–67. Alonso, S. 2011. Representative democracy and the multinational demos. In: The Future of Representative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–90. Baldi, B. 1999. Beyond the Federal-Unitary Dichotomy, Working Paper 99-7, Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Bandrés, E. and A. Cuenca. 2016. ‘Las reformas de la financiación autonómica: elementos para una aproximación desde la economía política’. Revista de Estudios Regionales 105(1): 165–94. Barrio, A. and J. Rodríguez-Teruel. 2017. ‘Reducing the gap between leaders and voters? Elite polarization, outbidding competition, and the rise of secessionism in Catalonia’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(10): 1776–94. Benz, A. and C. Colino. 2011. ‘Constitutional change in federations: A framework for analysis’. Regional & Federal Studies 41(4): 381–406. Beramendi, P. and R. Máiz. 2003. ‘Nacionalismo y plurinacionalidad: un análisis institucional del Estado español de las Autonomías’. Zona Abierta 104: 191–321. Blanco, R. 2014. El laberinto territorial español. Madrid: Alianza. Caamaño, F. 2014. Democracia federal. Apuntes sobre España, Madrid: Turpial. Castellà, J. 2018. Estado autonómico: pluralismo e integración constitucional. Madrid: Marcial Pons.
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80 CÉSAR COLINO Colino, C. 2013. Varieties of federalism and propensities for change. In: Federal Dynamics, Continuity, Change, and Varieties of Federalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 48–69. Colino, C. and E. del Pino. 2017. The financial and political crisis of Spanish federalism: transformation or erosion? In: The Future of Federalism: Intergovernmental Financial Relations in an Age of Austerity. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 198–223. Colino, C. Forthcoming. Democracy and Federalism in Spain: Interactions, tensions and compatibilities. In: Federal Democracies at Work: Varieties of Complex Government. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Colino, C. and A. Hombrado. 2014. Territorial pluralism in Spain: Characteristics and assessment. In: Territorial Pluralism: Managing Difference in Multinational States. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 171–95. Colino, C. and A. Hombrado. 2017. Spain: Complexity, counteracting forces, and implicit change. In: Federal Power-Sharing in Europe. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 181–205. Colino, C. and J. Olmeda. 2012. The limits of flexibility for constitutional change and the uses of subnational constitutional space: The case of Spain. In: Changing Federal Constitutions: Lessons from International Comparison. Opladen: Barbara Budrich, pp. 190–209. Colomer, J. 2017. ‘The venturous bid for the independence of Catalonia’. The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 45(5): 950–67. Dardanelli, P. 2019. ‘Conceptualizing, measuring, and mapping state structures with an application to Western Europe, 1950–2015’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 49(2): 271–298. del Pino, E. and J. Ramos. 2018. ‘Is welfare retrenchment inevitable? Scope and drivers of healthcare reforms in five Spanish regions during the crisis’. Journal of Social Policy 47(4): 701–20. Fernández-Albertos, J. and I. Lago. 2015. ‘Gobiernos autonómicos e identidades regionales en España, 1980–2012’. Política y Gobierno 22(2): 283–315. Field, B. 2015. Why Minority Governments Work: Multilevel Territorial Politics in Spain. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Grau, M. 2010. The Spanish lower chamber of parliament: An intergovernmental arena? The representation and integration of territorial interests within the Congreso de los Diputados. In: Legislatures in Federal Systems and Multi-level Governance. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 1133. Gray, C. 2014. ‘Smoke and mirrors: How regional finances complicate Spanish-Catalan relations’. International Journal of Iberian Studies 27(1): 21–42. Harguindéguy, J., X. Coller, and A. Cole. 2017. ‘Why is the Spanish upper chamber so difficult to reform?’ Parliamentary Affairs 70(3): 530–47. Hombrado, A. 2011. ‘Learning to catch the wave? Regional demands for constitutional change in contexts of asymmetrical arrangements’. Regional & Federal Studies 21: 79–501. Kölling, M. 2019. The Catalan secession bid—between structural and contemporary tensions within the state of autonomies. In: Regional Governance in the EU: Regions and the Future of Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 88–105. Lago-Peñas, S., X. Fernández-Leiceaga, and A. Vaquero-García. 2017. ‘Spanish fiscal decentralization: A successful (but still unfinished) process’. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 35(8): 1509–25. Máiz, R., F. Caamaño, and M. Azpitarte, M. 2010. ‘The hidden counterpoint of Spanish federalism: Recentralization and resymmetrization in Spain’. Regional & Federal Studies 20(1): 63–82.
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Decentralization in Spain 81 Martínez-Herrera, E. and T. Miley. 2010. ‘The Constitution and the politics of national identity in Spain’. Nations and Nationalism 16(1): 6–30. Martínez-Tapia, O. 2016. Los problemas no resueltos de la democracia: Centro y periferia en España. Madrid: Arrebato Libros. Moreno, L. 2000. The Federalization of Spain. London: Frank Cass. Moreno, L. and C. Colino. 2010. Kingdom of Spain. In: Diversity and Unity in Federal Countries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp. 288–319. Novo, A., S. Pérez Castaños, and J. García Rabadán. 2018. ‘Building a federal state: Phases and moments of Spanish regional (de)centralization’. Italian Political Science Review: doi: 10.1017/ipo.2018.23: 1–15. Rodríguez, E., J. Harguindéguy, and A. Sánchez. 2019. ‘The perfect storm? How to explain the rise of intergovernmental conflicts in Spain? (1984–2014)’. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 32(2): 211–30. Romero, J. 2012. ‘España inacabada: Organización territorial del Estado, autonomía política y reconocimiento de la diversidad nacional’. Documents D’Anàlisi Geogràfica 58(1): 13–49. Sala, G. 2010. Can Courts Make Federalism Work? The Impact of the Constitutional Court on Federal Conflict in Spain. Yale University: Doctoral thesis. Sala, G. 2013. ‘Federalism without adjectives in Spain’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 44(1): 109–34. Toubeau, S. 2018. ‘Restructuring the state: Mainstream responses to regional nationalism’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 48(1): 76–101. Tudela, J. 2016. El Fracasado Éxito del Estado Autonómico: Una Historia Española. Madrid: Marcial Pons. Vallès, J. 2016. El Estado de las autonomías: una apuesta fallida. In: Ciencia y Política: Una Aventura Vital. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 391–418. Watts, R. L. 2009. Spain: A Multinational Federation in Disguise? Paper prepared for the Conference ‘The Federalization of Spain: Deficits of Horizontal Cooperation’. Saragossa, Spain, 27–8 March.
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chapter 6
Ter ror ism i n Spa i n Diego Muro
6.1 Introduction Spain’s recent history of terrorism has been characterized by two distinct cycles of political violence defined by the actions of ethno-nationalist and jihadist groups. The deadliest ethno-nationalist terrorist organization was the Basque group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, short for Basque Homeland and Freedom), which carried out its campaign of assassinations, bombings, and extortion from 1968 to 2011. There have also been other underground groups from the extreme left and the extreme right that also targeted the Spanish state in order to gain policy concessions. By the early 2000s, jihadist terrorism displaced ETA as the main terrorist concern for the authorities, and Spain’s two major cities—Madrid and Barcelona—were targeted by home-grown jihadists who had either been born or socialized in the country and believed that an offensive ‘holy war’ was required to defend and expand Islam. Spain thus joined a long list of Western countries that had seen their urban centres targeted by jihadist groups. None of the clandestine groups just mentioned managed to obtain their long-term goals, but the attacks were effective in causing deaths, injuries, emotional stress, and economic costs, not to mention a loss of public confidence in the Spanish authorities. The Spanish counterterrorist policy and instruments evolved as the country learned to counter and prevent threats of both an ethno-nationalist and a religious nature. As a result of their long experience in countering Basque terrorism, the authorities had been fine-tuning the security response for over fifty years. Being on the receiving end of terrorism since 1968 had forced the judiciary, the police, and the intelligence services to cooperate. Institutional competition and bureaucratic inertia had often made coordination difficult, but there was widespread agreement that a holistic response to terrorism needed the concerted effort of various state institutions, not to mention civil society. In fact, Spaniards demonstrated their resilience by quickly going ‘back to normal’ after each terrorist incident. The lessons learnt, the social capacity to withstand attacks,
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Terrorism in Spain 83 and the fact that Spain did not have a sizeable second generation of migrants helped to mitigate the threat of religious terrorism, a menace that is not going to disappear anytime soon. Terrorism is generally understood as the use of political violence by non-state actors to further a political cause. Although there is no commonly accepted definition of terrorism, the term is often used to describe the violent actions of clandestine organizations against their opponents, often a state. The definitional debate about this armed tactic shows no signs of exhaustion; suffice it to say that there are currently more than 250 definitions of terrorism in active use (Schmid and Easson 2011). The term is also loaded, and has been misused and misapplied so frequently that it is now seen as a pejorative term, hence the well-known cliché, ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. For simplicity, this chapter follows Bruce Hoffman, who defines terrorism as ‘the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change’ (Hoffman 2006, 41). The remainder of this chapter is organized in six sections and provides an overview of terrorism and counterterrorism in Spain between 1975 and 2018. The first section uses Rapoport’s wave theory as a theoretical lens to examine the history of terrorism during the twentieth century. The second section discusses ETA’s terrorist campaign, as well as the political violence of other ethno-nationalist, left-wing and right-wing terrorist groups. The third section analyses jihadist terrorism and focuses on the Madrid and Barcelona attacks. The fourth section provides an overview of counterterrorist instruments, with special attention given to the interactions between policing and ETA’s terrorism. The fifth section focuses on counterterrorist policies against religiously motivated terrorism, which aims to thwart specific attacks but also minimize their occurrence. After an examination of Spanish security policy, a final section summarizes the key findings and concludes with some considerations on the future of politically motivated violence in Spain.
6.2 Waves of Terrorism Between 1970 and 2017, Spain suffered 3,301 terrorist attacks from groups that wanted to overturn the political status quo. This number is demonstrably larger than the equivalent number during the same period in France (2,870), Italy (1,604), or Germany (1,355). It is second only to that of the United Kingdom, a country that suffered 5,263 terrorist incidents during the same period. The figures from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) clearly suggest that Spain has been an outlier as the second most targeted country in Western Europe since 1945. The statistical data for terrorist incidents after Franco’s death in 1975 also indicates that Spain has been attacked by groups of all ideologies or waves of modern terrorism. According to a well-known theory put forward by the political scientist David Rapoport, the history of modern terrorism can be divided into four successive ‘waves’
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84 Diego Muro (Rapoport 2004): the anarchist wave (1878–1919), the anti-colonial wave (1920s–early 1960s), the new left wave (mid 1960s–90s), and the religious wave (1979–?). Each of these terrorist waves lasted for approximately forty years, had a precipitant event, and was followed by an inevitable gradual decline that culminated in the birth of another wave. Groups within a specific wave were driven by a particular ideology, were aware of the actions of other contemporary terrorist groups in other countries, and were driven by a relentless energy that propelled them into violent action. Furthermore, these underground groups lasted for a generation and shared a common technological facility, including communications, weaponry, and logistics. This periodization of the history of terrorism has various critics, but the simplicity of Rapoport’s forty-year generational cycle has made his wave theory one of the most cited works in the academic study of terrorism (Parker and Sitter 2016). The fit between Spain and Rapoport’s wave theory is remarkable. The first victims of terrorism in Spain were the result of the anarchist wave, which emerged in Russia and quickly spread through Western Europe thanks to international communications technology. As pointed out by Rogelio Alonso, Spanish anarchists carried out an intense campaign of political violence that oscillated between assassinations and indiscriminate attacks. By way of example, in November 1893 an anarchist detonated two bombs at the Liceu Theatre in Barcelona killing fifteen people and injuring more than fifty. A tough repression from the authorities was triggered by this type of indiscriminate attack, as well as by other similar attacks against political and military figures; for instance, the killing of Canovas del Castillo, president of the Council of Ministers in 1897, and of José Canalejas, prime minister in 1912. Evidently, the so-called ‘propaganda by the deed’ was very prominent during a period where the Spanish King Alfonso XIII was also targeted on four occasions. This wave of anarchist terrorism in Spain also led to the first pieces of legislation in response to violent offences, which were the origin of the more thorough and complex counterterrorist framework developed in the twentieth century (Alonso 2019, 593). The second and third waves resonated with political developments during the dictatorship of General Franco (1939–75), but it is not possible to identify an archetypal terrorist group for each one of these two cycles. In fact, elements of both the anti-colonial and the new-left wave coalesced in the Basque terrorist group ETA, which found ways to survive various generations. During the Franco dictatorship, ETA was a weak terrorist group that lacked the capability to launch a conventional assault on government security forces. Incapable of mounting an effective insurgency, ETA members adopted the urban guerrilla tactic of ‘action-repression-action’ (first used in the Algerian war of independence), and followed the teachings of anti-colonial proponents of insurgency (Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Frantz Fanon, etc.). By the end of the autocracy, ETA replaced the anti-colonial rhetoric with a more nationalist ideology while continuing to engage in extortion and kidnappings in order to fund its operations. Chronologically, ETA was a third-wave actor, but its nationalist vision of the revolutionary future would fit just as comfortably in the second wave of Rapoport’s historical model.
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Terrorism in Spain 85 The fourth wave—that of religious terrorism—also affected Spain, but later than other Western countries such as France or the UK. In fact, there was a remarkable time lag between the 1979 Iranian Revolution that gave birth to the religious wave and terrorist attacks carried out by groups that follow an ultraconservative branch of Sunni Islam. Salafi jihadism struck Spain on two occasions at the hands of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (often abbreviated as IS, ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh). The deadly terrorist strikes of Madrid (2004) and Barcelona (2017) are well known, but there are many others that were prevented, most notably the suicide bomb attack planned by Tehrik-i-Taliban on Barcelona’s underground network in January 2008. Given the strength of the Salafi jihadist movement, the fourth wave of faith-based terrorism is likely to transcend the generation that gave birth to it. Rapoport’s prediction about a forty-year generational cycle might not apply to the current wave, which shows no signs of receding. To recapitulate, Spain has been on the receiving end of all types of terrorism since the late nineteenth century. Some clandestine groups battled to abolish the state, whereas others fought for national independence. Others yet fought to achieve the communist revolution, while others aspired to create a caliphate ruled by an Islamic leader. In total, militants of all ideologies produced 10,181 direct victims of terrorism in Spain between 1960 and 2017. That number included 1,429 deaths and 8,752 injured, threatened, or kidnapped, according to data from Spain’s Ministry of Interior. The tragic history of Spain is not unusual in the post-war European context, but few countries have suffered a higher death-toll. With the only exception of the IRA’s campaign in the United Kingdom, no other European country has had a long-term internal security threat like that of ETA, with a notable lifespan of fifty-two years.
6.2.1 ETA ETA was founded in 1959 and its campaign of political violence, extortion and threats lasted from 1968 until 2011, when it finally declared a unilateral cessation of hostilities. ETA killed 854 individuals during its 52-year history, the overwhelming majority of them during the democratic period. The data for its long campaign combines the killings of ETA and all its multiple factions and splinter groups: ETA-m, ETA-pm, Comandos Autónomos Anticapitalistas-CAA, Iraultza, Mendeku, etc. ETA’s strategic goal was to create an independent socialist state in what the organization considered to be the seven Basque provinces under Spanish and French jurisdictions. Its preferred tactic was the use of political violence to intimidate a large audience beyond that of the immediate victim(s). ETA’s ideology was based on a nostalgic and radicalized version of Basque nationalism that appealed to the alleged existence of a secular, ethnic conflict between Basques and Spaniards, of which ETA would be the most recent violent manifestation. But after five decades of bloodshed, ETA had little to show for its long campaign. The genesis of ETA was the result of a generational clash between the old moderate nationalists of the political party PNV who had fought the Civil War (1936–39) and a
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86 Diego Muro new generation of nationalists who were inspired by Third-World decolonization movements, Marxism, and the strategic use of the ‘armed struggle’ to further a political cause. By the time their first killing occurred in 1968, ETA had become an ultranationalist organization that feared the negative effect that the economic modernization of the 1960s (and the arrival of thousands of immigrants) could have on Basque identity and the usage of Basque language (Leonisio, Molina, and Muro 2017). With regard to the rise and decline of the group, the history of ETA can be divided into three distinct periods in accordance to the type of political regimes it fought and the tactics it used against its opponents. The first period covers the actions of the group during Francoism (1959–75), whereas the second and third periods (1975–95 and 1995–2011 respectively) cover ETA’s actions during Spain’s democratic period until the organization declared a truce in 2011 (Sánchez-Cuenca 2001, 65). ETA’s actions during the military dictatorship constitute a clean-cut period. Throughout this time, ETA killed forty-three individuals, a number that amounts to 5 per cent of killings during the organization’s terrorist campaign. The remaining 95 per cent (811 individuals) were killed after Spain transitioned to democracy (López 2015). Hence, ETA was not anti-Francoist (or pro-democracy) but clearly anti-Spanish, and it continued to target civilians even in the aftermath of the process of decentralization that gave the Basque Country and Navarre more self-government than any of Spain’s other sixteen Autonomous Communities. This self-rule meant that the Basque Country had its own police force, education system, and language, and a special financial relationship with Madrid. The first assassination carried out by ETA was that of José Antonio Pardines in 1968, but its most spectacular action was the 1973 killing of Prime Minister Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right-hand man. These actions were part of the action–reaction spiral, where initial attacks would prompt the security forces to act indiscriminately to collect information, a repressive measure that would benefit ETA as the population would turn away from supporting the state (Fernández and Domínguez 2018). During the period of democratization of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ETA launched a war of attrition to force the Spanish government to negotiate the principles of the ‘KAS Alternative’, which established the conditions for peace negotiations. This second period was characterized by ETA’s insistence that Spain was an autocratic state with a democratic façade, and that political violence was not only a legitimate but a necessary and effective form of coercion. This period was characterized by the use of car bombs and a failure to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. The majority of attacks took place in the Basque region and in neighbouring Navarre, but these were not the most deadly ones. Some of the attacks with the highest death toll included the 1986 attack at the República Dominicana Square in Madrid (12 deaths and 32 injured) and the 1987 car bomb in the supermarket Hipercor in Barcelona in 1987 (21 deaths and 45 injured). The military compounds of the Civil Guards (casa cuartel), where both policemen and their families lived, were also attacked on two separate occasions: in 1987 in Zaragoza (11 deaths and 40 injured), and in 1991 in Vic (10 casualties and 44 injured).
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Terrorism in Spain 87 The war of attrition during this second period obtained some tactical results in the shape of policy concessions and peace negotiations, as well as provoking an excessive violence on the part of Spanish security forces (as the theory of action–repression–action had predicted). Thus, between 1975 and 1995 ETA was supported both morally and logistically by a segment of the Basque population and was a resourceful organization capable of inflicting sustained damage on Spanish interests. As can be seen in Figure 6.1, the majority of killings were concentrated during the transition years, especially between 1976 and 1981, when ETA assassinated 302 individuals, and the level of violence declined from the 1980s onwards. The ‘years of lead’ made Spain’s transition to democracy particularly violent, especially when compared with other third-wave countries such as Portugal and Greece. In fact, the attacks of ETA, GRAPO, FRAP, Terra Lliure, and various groups from the extreme right challenged the foundational myth of democratic Spain that the transition of the late 1970s had been peaceful (Muro 2008). The third period—between 1995 and 2011—was characterized by ETA’s growing realization that a defeat was possible (due to the effectiveness of counterterrorism) and by a widespread rejection of its violent methods. In 1996, 6 per cent of adult Basques supported ETA both reservedly and unreservedly, while 53 per cent of those interviewed in opinion surveys called them assassins or terrorists, according to the Euskobarómetro’s time series. In 2006, only 4 per cent of Basque citizens referred to them in favourable terms, while those who considered ETA members as criminals rose to 60 per cent. This last period of decline was also characterized by the gradual loss of support for the armed 120
100
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1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
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Figure 6.1 ETA killings per year, 1968–2011. Source: Author’s own elaboration
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88 Diego Muro group, the increasing efficaciousness of police efforts, and the intimidating use of the ‘socialization of suffering’, a tactic by which ETA expanded its range of legitimate targets to politicians from non-nationalist parties. A total of fifty-eight businesspeople and thirty-nine politicians died at ETA’s hands. This latter period was also characterized by a ‘failed’ peace process led by the socialist government of the PSOE, which eventually contributed to ETA’s truce in 2011 and its ultimate disbandment in 2018. It is important to note that ETA was not the only active terrorist group during the transition and consolidation of democracy in Spain. Smaller ethno-nationalist groups such as the Catalan Terra Lliure, the Galician LAR (Loita Armada Revolucionaria), and EGPGC (Exército Guerrilheiro do Povo Galego Ceive), the Canarian FAG (Fuerzas Armadas Guanches), and DAC (Destacamentos Armados Canarios) also fought violently for the self-determination of their nations. In addition, Marxist-Leninist extreme-left groups such as the GRAPO (Grupo de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre) or the FRAP (Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota) fought for the rights of the working class and tried to trigger a revolutionary uprising. On the other hand, neofascist and vigilante groups such as Triple A (Alianza Apostólica Anticomunista), ATE (Antiterrorismo ETA), GAE (Grupos Armados Españoles), the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey or the Batallón Vasco Español (BVE) aimed to derail the process of democratization. Last but not least, Spanish counterterrorism confirmed the view that the Spanish state could also use indiscriminate violence: the non-sanctioned violence use of the GAL’s paramilitary squads was a case in point (this will be discussed in a later section on counterterrorism). All in all, the Spanish transition was a period of special virulence. ETA’s terrorist campaign was, however, the most lethal, making it one of the country’s three top problems, according to the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS). When ETA finally disbanded in May 2018, jihadism had already displaced ethno-nationalist terrorism as the top priority for Spain’s security apparatus.
6.2.2 Jihadism By the turn of the twenty-first century, Spain would converge with other European neighbours in countering the growing threat posed by Salafi jihadism: the ultraconservative branch of Sunni Islam known for its aggressive proselytizing and its sympathies for terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda or ISIS (Gerges 2016, 23). Spain’s proximity to the predominantly Muslim countries of North Africa made it a convenient base for recruiting, fund-raising, and channelling violent extremists. In addition, the country was depicted in terrorist propaganda as an active ally of the United States and a contributor to the international military coalition that ‘occupied’ Muslim lands. More specifically, jihadism viewed Spain as the illegitimate occupant of Al Andalus, a land seized and occupied by ‘infidels’, which naturally belonged to the umma of true believers. One of the goals of Salafi jihadist groups was the return of the Iberian Peninsula to Muslim hands and the reinstatement of the original borders of the mediaeval Caliphate (Torres 2017). The most conspicuous Salafi jihadist group was ISIS, which, from 2014 onwards, began to claim responsibility for a number of high-profile attacks outside Iraq and Syria. But during
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Terrorism in Spain 89 most of the 1990s and 2000s, the most prominent group was Al-Qaeda, a global terrorist threat made of a network of groups and franchises that paid loyalty to the organization founded by Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The group coordinated and took credit for the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and, in spite of being on the receiving end of a Global War on Terror led by the US, managed to strike multiple countries, including Spain. In March 2004, four near-simultaneous attacks on Madrid’s commuter train system killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800. The official investigation blamed those attacks on Al-Qaeda, although no direct Al-Qaeda participation was established. Subsequently, Fernando Reinares argued that the decision to target Madrid was taken in Karachi and Istanbul by Amer Azizi, a Moroccan national who wanted to avenge the 2001 disbandment of the Abu Dahdah cell. The police investigation concluded that Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, had led the Al-Qaeda cell in Spain and was aware of the plans to target the US in 9/11. Reinares’s definitive account of the Madrid bombings linked the attack to Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership and unveiled the connections between 3/11 (the date of the Madrid bombings) and 9/11. In other words, the Madrid bombings were a top-down act of revenge for a previous police operation, not an act of ‘leaderless jihad’ where no single agent or entrepreneur mobilized a group of militants to commit terrorism (Reinares 2014, 245). The Madrid blasts prompted Spanish authorities to reassess their internal security position, resulting in the hire of thousands of people whose job was to stop another attack by extremist jihadist groups. Furthermore, realizing that EU member states could no longer act as if security was a strict national prerogative, the European Union grew into a genuine actor in the field of transnational threats management. To date, the Madrid attacks remain the deadliest terrorist event to be carried out on European soil, and the European Remembrance Day for Victims of Terrorism is commemorated every 11 March. The Madrid blasts were very similar to the London bombings that killed fifty-six people the following year (2005). The modus operandi was analogous, as both attacks targeted the public transport system and were carried out in a coordinated fashion using bombs. Another resemblance of 3/11 and 7/7 was that the cells involved in the attacks included ‘home-grown terrorists’, that is, people who had been born, educated, or raised in Europe. In the cases of non-EU citizens, these ‘self-starters’ were members of the Muslim diaspora and, in spite of perceiving their countries of residence as ‘hostile habitats’, they moved at ease within them. As already mentioned, the perpetrators were all inspired by bin Laden’s organization, but very few had direct connections to it. Hence, the distinct and novel aspect of these European jihadists was that these cells had little or no affiliation to Al-Qaeda Central in Pakistan and their attacks occurred spontaneously, without direct orders from the organization’s central command. Noticeably, the members of the Spanish cell were not recruited and trained in a distant combat zone but in the West, frequently within close Muslim networks such as cliques of friends, discussion groups, student organizations, and radical mosques. But face-to-face interaction within a given network or circle of acquaintances was not the only possible path to radicalization. Online forums also facilitated the development of self-organized networks of extremist individuals, who were connected through the Internet.
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90 Diego Muro The Madrid attacks of 2004 were part of a larger European phenomenon, in which individuals became involved in home-grown jihadism and turned to political violence. For the policy community, the prevalent explanatory framework for involvement in terrorism was captured by the term ‘radicalization’. This became a widely used term from 2005 onwards, and referred to the path taken by an individual to endorse or commit a politically motivated act of violence (e.g. terrorism, kidnappings, assassinations, etc.). For the authorities, it became a priority to have a clearer picture of how young men of Muslim immigrant backgrounds were radicalized in the West and were swept up by a seductive outlaw culture of violent jihad. Needless to say, the interest in radicalization and violent extremism was not to understand how individuals adopted radical ideas, but why they came to ‘radicalize to violence’, and not just to any type of violence, but to a specific type of illegitimate violence directed against civilians and non-combatants, also known as terrorism. The scholarly community made the case that a comprehensive explanation of how ‘cognitive radicalization’ (adoption of extremist beliefs) and ‘behavioural radicalization’ (engagement in violent action) were connected could only be multi-causal and multilevel. Furthermore, an all-inclusive explanation had to stress that the factors that initiate involvement in violent extremism are separate from those that sustain it, which in turn are again likely to differ from those that bring some individuals to actual acts of terrorism (Vergani et al. 2018). There are multiple reasons why people with radical political agendas turn to violence, and there is no single motive or circumstance that explains involvement in European home-grown jihadism. In short, there is no general theory explaining why some people become killers. The Barcelona attacks of August 2017 were the deadliest in Spain since the March 2004 Madrid train bombings and the most lethal in Barcelona since the bombing of Hipercor by ETA, which had resulted in twenty-one dead and forty-five injured. The perpetrators of the attacks originally planned to use a truck bomb against tourist landmarks (e.g. FCB’s Camp Nou stadium or the Sagrada Familia basilica), but their materials detonated prematurely at the perpetrators’ bomb factory in the Catalan coastal town of Alcanar, prompting them to carry out a more rudimentary attack. On the afternoon of 17 August 2017, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub drove a van into pedestrians on La Rambla in Barcelona, a pedestrian thoroughfare popular with tourists and locals alike, killing 13 people and injuring at least 130 others. In the following twentyfour hours, the six members of the terrorist cell were killed in shoot-outs with the Catalan police in the seaside resort of Cambrils and nearby Subirats. ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the vehicle ramming attack in their magazine (Rumiyah) and bulletin (Al Naba), declaring that it was carried out in response to Spain’s participation in the anti-ISIS coalition. Yet, it was unclear whether the perpetrators had any direct connections with Islamic State. The attacks of 17 and 18 August could have been a copycat of the ramming attacks publicly encouraged by ISIS—such as those that had taken place in Nice (2016), Berlin (2016), Stockholm (2017), and London (2017)—where terrorist hired trucks and other large vehicles to run over victims in crowded public spaces. The Barcelona attack was inspired (but not planned) by ISIS, a terrorist group that had been successful at using brutal propaganda, recruiting fighters, capturing land,
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Terrorism in Spain 91 subduing some seven or eight million subjects, and founding a self-declared caliphate. By the summer of 2014, ISIS controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, and ruled over millions of people in its proto-state. However, the fall of its economic capital Mosul in July 2017 marked the beginning of its decline. Facing travel bans and administrative restrictions, the new European mujahedeen found it increasingly difficult to make a journey to the ISIS stronghold, prompting some to decide to virtually join the ranks of jihad in their home countries. The number of Spaniards who managed to perform Hijrah or emigrated to the self-proclaimed caliphate was estimated at 216, according to Spain’s domestic intelligence agency CITCO (Centro de Inteligencia contra el Terrorismo y el Crimen Organizado). Comparatively speaking, the number of Spanish individuals who travelled to an armed conflict abroad was much lower than equivalent figures from France, Great Britain, or Germany, and minute when compared to the figures of the top five countries of origin for ISIS foreign terrorist fighters (Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, and Jordan). Despite that, the Spanish authorities continued to monitor the flow of Islamic State fighters and returnees. Nonetheless, following the travel ban of 2015 (Ley Orgánica 2/2015), which criminalized the movement to a foreign territory controlled by a terrorist group to receive training by or collaborate with it, the authorities also had to worry about the wannabe jihadists who had stayed at home. It is important to note that the Spanish jihadi networks were similar to the European ones (Nesser 2015, 1). Spanish jihadist groups emerged through an intricate interplay between domestic and international factors, between online and offline radicalization, and between social and ideological considerations. The Spanish cells that perpetrated the attacks on Madrid (2004) and Barcelona (2017) contained terrorist leaders or ‘entrepreneurs’ who introduced recruits (not necessarily misfits) to a sub-culture of community and identity, where they could translate their far-flung grievances into violent activism. Needless to say, many other young people under the same circumstances eschewed radicalization, proving that there was nothing inevitable about the violent socialization of the first group. In the context of the Barcelona attacks of 17 August 2017, the imam of Ripoll (Abdelbaki Es Satty) was a clear example of what Bruce Hoffman called ‘leader-led jihad’, as this entrepreneur initiated a ‘top-down’ radicalization, and established a link between the cell and armed groups in conflict zones.
6.3 Counterterrorism: From ETA to Jihadism Spain’s counterterrorist instruments and policy were developed as a result of countering four waves of terrorism. The experience against domestic terrorism was crucial in developing the necessary legislation and expertise to deal with indiscriminate political violence against civilians. The lessons learnt were sometimes remembered, and Spain used its considerable experience to fine-tune its counterterrorist machinery to deal with
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92 Diego Muro new security threats. The institutional learning process that resulted from fighting terrorism since the late 1960s meant that Spain was better prepared to deal with jihadist terrorism than some of its European neighbours, which had not countered violent extremism in previous decades. The evolution of counterterrorism against ETA was typical of policy adaptation. Political elites, the judiciary and security forces gradually tested what policies were effective, and refined their response against separatist terrorism. The process of democratization was critical in abandoning the authoritarian crackdown (e.g. martial law, torture, ill-treatment, etc.) and implementing democratic tools that discriminated between perpetrators and sympathizers. Whereas the security policy mostly focused on ETA members, the socio-political transformations of democratization eroded the support for political violence and became a highly effective counter-recruitment tool. The process of decentralization, which devolved extensive powers to the Basque Country and Navarre, provided new opportunities for political participation and decision-making and helped pressure ETA sympathizers, who found it increasingly difficult to justify the use of political violence against citizens of an advanced democracy. Social support for terrorism declined because the organization targeted civilians in indiscriminate attacks (e.g. Hipercor) and increased the range of legitimate targets to include local politicians (e.g. town councillor Miguel Angel Blanco). As social support declined and victims’ groups became more vocal in showing the human cost of terrorism, ETA found it harder to recruit new waves of militants, hide amongst the Basque population, and extract the necessary financial resources, forcing it to resort to criminal extortion. The fiction that etarras were romantic revolutionaries using the ‘weapon of the weak’ to free an oppressed nation from an unresponsive dictatorship became a mobilizing myth that resonated with an ever-smaller section of supporters (Muro 2008). In addition to the democratization of security practices, Basque and Spanish political elites signed a series of political agreements (e.g. Castellana, Ajuria Enea, etc.) designed to isolate ETA and prevent its influence on democratic politics. The cumulative effect of these cross-party initiatives was to deny ETA any say in the future of the Basque citizenry and reiterate that only political parties that denounced violence would be considered as legitimate interlocutors. At the same time, Basque parties with connections to ETA were accused of funding terrorism, legitimizing unlawful tactics, and acting as its mouthpiece. These political initiatives were complemented by special legislation designed to outlaw ETA’s various political arms, most notably the parties Batasuna and Acción Nacionalista Vasca. The banning of political parties proved controversial, but the Spanish court rulings were upheld by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and became very effective in eroding radical Basque nationalism, the ideology and the network of organizations that supported ETA. The effectiveness of the counterterrorist effort was strengthened as additional training, equipment, and coordination contributed to rising professionalization. The various police forces involved in the fight against ETA learnt to collaborate, not only with each other, but also with the intelligence services, which provided them with the necessary information to begin investigations or carry out arrests. Competition between Spain’s
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Terrorism in Spain 93 two main police forces (Civil Guard and the National Police) as well as distrust towards the regional police forces (Ertzaintza and Mossos d’Esquadra) was common, but the jihadist threat required all of these to collaborate on high-profile operations. Police efficacy also increased as a result of the intelligence received from Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU), and the strengthening international cooperation between Spain and France, breaking with a previous history when ETA terrorists had used southern France as a safe haven to launch attacks on Spanish soil. Spain’s counterterrorist policy was far from impeccable, and two controversial initiatives against ETA proved contentious, if not also counterproductive. These were the dispersion policy of ETA inmates and the death squads of the GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación). Before the dispersion policy of 1989, ETA members were concentrated in only a handful of prisons, something that made it possible for inmates to organize and enforce prisoner cohesion, and dissuade individual disengagement from prisoners who could benefit from early release if they broke with ETA. The Spanish authorities realized that ETA inmates developed tight networks within and outside the prison, and that their internal coherence was often used outside the prison to amplify ETA’s message. The multiplier effect of prisoners was eroded as a result of the policy, which allowed the authorities to scatter ETA inmates and limit their symbolic power, but also punished relatives by forcing them to travel long distances to see loved ones. In addition, it allowed ETA members to argue that they were political prisoners who received different treatment from ordinary inmates. The other controversial initiative was GAL’s death squads, funded with money from the Ministry of Interior. Between 1983 and 1987 GAL killed twenty-three people, some of whom had unclear connections with ETA, thus clearly delegitimizing the work of security forces working within the law. An efficacious counter-terrorist policy was developed over the years, but governments of all colours were tempted to negotiate with ETA. They all failed, but helped dispel the idea that the Spanish government was not interested in a de-escalation of violence. The last attempt was carried out by the socialist government of PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who even got parliamentary backing to talk to ETA. In the end, the Basque separatist group did not take advantage of any of these ‘landing strips’, and was eventually defeated by the collective effort of the security forces and the judiciary. In 2018, the terrorist group formally announced its disbandment, almost exactly fifty years after claiming its first victim.
6.3.1 Against Jihadism The attacks on both Madrid (2004) and Barcelona (2017) tested the efficaciousness of the security apparatus, and confirmed Spain’s social resilience in regaining control following a terrorist incident, an ability that the citizenry had acquired as a result of enduring previous terrorist campaigns. Apart from these attacks, various cells and plots were thwarted. The most significant foiled attack was the attempted use of suicide bombers to target the Barcelona metro by a group with connections to the Islamic
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94 Diego Muro armed group Tarek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Acting upon information from the intelligence services, the Civil Guard arrested fourteen people—twelve Pakistanis and two Indians—in the ethnically diverse neighbourhood of Raval in Barcelona, and accused them of plotting terrorist attacks in January 2008. Of those who were finally sentenced for the attempted suicide bombing, six were legal immigrants to Spain, whereas five had arrived in Spain in the months prior to the plot. The arrests and indictment suggested that the new wave of terrorism was neither domestic nor international, but a combination of the two. From the point of view of prevention, the security forces monitored urban centres with a large number of migrants and/or Moroccan population, which were overrepresented in terrorist cells. Ethnic profiling was extensively used, as European-wide evidence suggested that milieus of second- and third-generation migrants were more likely to endorse or commit acts of violence. Thus, the main focus of interest to security forces were the autonomous communities of Catalonia and Madrid, and the two African city enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, where vulnerable individuals could be radicalized by friends, family, and recruiters. For example, the members of the jihadist cell that carried out the Barcelona attacks were radicalized by a 44-year old Moroccan imam (Abdelbaki Es Satty) in the town of Ripoll. The ten men who formed the cell were neighbours, friends, and even family (the cell included four pairs of brothers). Their ages ranged between 17 and 28. Nine of them had Moroccan nationality, whereas only one was Spanish. In spite of the fact that their parents were Moroccan, they had all been born or raised in Spain. Besides the issue of second generation, the ‘crime–terror nexus’ became an essential concept for comprehending the wave of jihadist violence. The relationship between criminal gangs and radicalized individuals was strong, and involved issues of both funding and recruitment. In contrast to previous cases of terrorism, some of the perpetrators of the Paris (2015) and Berlin (2016) attacks, such as Salah Abdeslam and Anis Amr, were known to the police and the intelligence services. Three members of the terrorist cell that carried out the attacks on the city of Barcelona and the seaside town of Cambrils in 2017 also had criminal records (Driss Oukabir, Houssain Abouyaaqoub, and Abdelbaki Es Satty), although they were integrated into the local community (Bourekba 2018). The real turning point for the history of jihadist activity in Spain—but also for the counter-terrorist response—was the Madrid attacks of 2004. The number of police operations after 2004 doubled, and mainly focused on stopping the development of terrorist cells by carrying out arrests during the indoctrination and preparation phases (Alonso 2019, 600–1). With regard to new counter-terrorist measures post-2004, the Spanish authorities focused on the significant increase in intelligence capabilities; the improvement and enhancement of coordination and cooperation between security agencies and governments; legislative reforms; the implementation of a programme designed to enhance the protection of targets and the response to terrorist attacks; and, finally, measures aimed at the prevention of radicalization and recruitment. The goal of prevention strategies was to delegitimize the use of violent means for political purposes and isolate violent radicals from their supporters and sympathizers.
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Terrorism in Spain 95 The so-called radicalization agenda also included measures such as the dissemination of counter-narratives to bring about attitudinal and behavioural change. As Peter Neumann has persuasively argued, the real long war against violent extremism entails delegitimizing extremist movements and engaging with the ideas, political conflicts, and social cleavages that make them resonate (Neumann 2016, xviii). Additional preventive measures were announced with the aim of meeting the objectives set out by the EU Action Plan for Combating Radicalization and Recruitment to Terrorism (approved in 2005 and revised subsequently). This specified the European Union’s strategy to disrupt the activities of networks of individuals who draw people into terrorism, ensure that voices of mainstream opinion prevail over those of extremism, and promote—yet more vigorously—security, justice, democracy and opportunity for all. The interest in funding pilot programmes related to the prevention of radicalization and fortifying the ‘Prevent’ pillar was further ratified by the Counterterrorism Strategy of the European Council for 2018–22, but the area of prevention was rather underdeveloped in comparison with the other three counterterrorism strategy pillars (Protect, Pursue, and Respond). Similarly, Spain’s deployment of various programmes designed to Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) was embryonic, and concentrated on perfecting its detection policies (Jordán 2009). The Spanish commitment to early detection continued with the approval of the National Strategic Plan to Fight against Violent Radicalization (PEN-LCRV) in January 2015, which was coordinated by the CITCO and consisted of implementing at national level both the EU’s Strategy for Combating Terrorism and the Strategy for the Fight Against Radicalization and the Recruitment of Terrorists. The national plan did not explicitly consider any specific group, but was evidently designed to tackle violent religious extremism within Muslim communities. The appeal of Islamic State also concerned the Spanish authorities, as the terrorist organization motivated an exceptional jihadist mobilization after it proclaimed itself a caliphate. By 2015, over 40,000 foreign fighters from 110 countries headed to Syria and Iraq, more than four times the number of mujahedeen who had travelled to Afghanistan to battle the Soviet Union in the 1980s. An estimated 7,000 European foreign fighters specifically travelled to the caliphate from the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium, but fewer did so from Spain. Between 2013 and 2016 the Spanish authorities reported that 160 foreign fighters had travelled from Spain to Syria, while 124 individuals had been arrested for their connections to Islamic State (Reinares and García-Calvo 2018). The authorities’ main concern was that some of these foreign fighters would eventually return to Europe as a result of the collapse of the so-called caliphate and the morphing of the proto-state back into an insurgency. The government was reluctant to take back former fighters, fearful of attacks or efforts to radicalize prison cellmates. There was also unease about whether some of the traumatized returnees and their spouses could be reintegrated into Spanish society, as well as about what to do with the children born in ISIS territory, who were stateless and lacked proper documentation on births. Fortunately, ISIS’s loss of territorial control and the dismantlement of the caliphate came at a faster rate than any researcher had forecast. For three years, terrorists controlled a huge stretch of territory in Iraq and Syria, but by early 2019 all but 1 per cent of that
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96 Diego Muro territory was gone. Similarly, the number of returnees was lower than expected, possibly because militants relocated to other countries or were killed in the war zone. Out of the fifty Spanish radicalized individuals who returned, thirty were released and twenty served prison sentences, but these detainees are likely to remain a potential security threat until they are reintegrated into society. To conclude, Spain’s counter-terrorist response is now characterized by increasing coordination and cooperation between the different state institutions (especially the police and intelligence services). Since 2015, Spain has contributed to the European fight against radicalization and violent extremism by applying mechanisms that are now common in the European context. For example, there is more vertical cooperation between the various levels of the administration (state, regional, and local), making multilevel governance something more than just rhetoric. There has also been horizontal cooperation between the different ministries, as well as between the security forces. For example, the full integration of the Ertzaintza and Mossos de Esquadra into the CITCO during the summer of 2018 allowed the regional police forces to gain access to international databases and intelligence. The challenge remains to change the ‘security culture’ and transform counterterrorism into multi-stakeholder policy, where citizens are integrated in both the detection and prevention phases. With this idea in mind, the government launched the initiative ‘Stop Radicalismos’, which allowed citizens to anonymously report individual cases of radicalization towards violent extremism through a website, an app, or by email or phone. The initiative was launched in the aftermath of the Barcelona attacks, in order to gather local intelligence that could trigger police investigations. In short, Spanish cities have now become obvious settings in which to implement the motto ‘think globally, act locally’.
6.4 Conclusion The use of terrorism involves violence or the threat of violence intended to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate object of the terrorist attack. Ultimately, terrorist acts are meant to instil fear and intimidate a wider target audience, which might include a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country, a national government, or public opinion in general. In essence, terrorism is designed to create power where there is none, or to consolidate power where there is very little (De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca 2009). In the case of Spain, multiple terrorist groups have used strategic violence to attract media attention, obtain leverage, and advance their policy preferences. However, neither the secessionist groups nor the religiously inspired groups examined in this chapter have managed to advance their strategic goals significantly, hence confirming the view that indiscriminate violence is an ineffective tactic that does not pay politically (Muro 2018, 3). Home-grown jihadism displaced ETA as the main security threat for the Spanish authorities in the aftermath of the Madrid attacks. The emergence of Salafi jihadism in
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Terrorism in Spain 97 Spain in the early 2000s (still with us today) came as a surprise to most Spaniards. Contrary to France or the United Kingdom that had an active foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa and had sizeable pockets of migrants from their former colonies, Spain resembled Italy in that it neither asserted itself internationally nor did it have many second-generation migrants. The sense of outrage generated by perceptions of Western foreign policies being adversarial to Muslims (e.g. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) and the appeal of violent extremism present in neighbouring states (sense of belonging, lifestyle, material incentives, etc.) did not seem to be present in equal measure in Spain. In other words, the political grievances or root causes of terrorism (‘push’ factor) and the lack of a solid jihadist, ideological, and organizational tradition in Spain (‘pull’ factors), which were necessary for a process of individual radicalization into violent extremism, were not present in the same intensity. Societal explanations such as immigration policies and failed integration may continue to play a role in the process of radicalization, but the role of ideology, group dynamics, and individual agency are an essential part of a comprehensive explanation of why individuals are radicalized and turned into killers. In other words, indiscriminate murder might be too complex a subject to synthesize in a single model. Spain’s security response since 1975 developed as a result of countering ethno-nationalist and religious terrorism. In the case of ETA, the authorities put together an effective counter-terrorist response, and were robust enough to deny territorial control to Basque terrorists. As a result, ETA never had the chance to mount an effective rebellion or insurgency, and lost popular support as its campaign progressively became indiscriminate and ineffective. Furthermore, the long experience of terrorism allowed Spain to develop policies that made an important point of distinguishing between perpetrators and supporters of political violence. Whereas not all radicals are terrorists, all terrorists are radicals. Hence, a combination of ‘carrot and stick’ policies are necessary to develop both counter-terrorist and counter-recruitment responses. Spanish security forces have also been successful in preventing and countering jihadist attacks, which now cause more deaths and casualties than any other terrorism. With regard to Salafi jihadist groups, they first took base in Spain in the 1990s, but their first significant attack took place in Madrid by a terrorist cell with connections to Al-Qaeda. The year 2004 marked the increase in the number of jihadist mobilizations but also counter-terrorist operations, which would be aided by additional resources, legal instruments, and international cooperation. The emergence of ISIS and its appeal in both recruiting foreign fighters and inspiring attacks in Europe resulted in the ramming attack on Barcelona in 2017, which was akin to the ones perpetrated in Nice, Berlin, Stockholm, and London. As in other policy areas, Spanish counterterrorism has converged with that of other European member states. The EU is now facing a range of jihadist threats and attacks from both networked groups and lone actors. Since 2001, more than 2,400 people have died in terrorist attacks in Europe, and a 2018 Europol report indicates that the number of people arrested for terrorism-related offences almost doubled between 2014 and 2017. There is also credible information that violent jihad will continue to be fought on European soil. That means that the security apparatus will need to remain vigilant, since
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98 Diego Muro perfectly secure societies do not exist. Security officials may thwart dozens of terrorist plots, but they need fail just once. Likewise, it is virtually impossible to stop someone truly intent on attacking civilians, especially if (s)he is using a low-tech weapon such as a van or knives. Despite the loss of territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS will continue to pose a significant challenge, as the group’s militants shift to guerrilla strategy and tactics, including targeted assassinations, ambushes, raids, and bombings. Although the group has largely reverted to an insurgent organization, its online propaganda can still reach sizeable audiences. Last but not least, the military setback of Islamic State has provided a window of opportunity for Al-Qaeda and its affiliates to revive and present a likely threat once again. Western audiences can find comfort in the fact that terrorists overwhelmingly fail to accomplish their long-term goals when societies invest in resilience and remain united against terrorism.
6.5 Bibliography Alonso, R., 2019. Spain. In: Routledge Handbook of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 593–603. Bourekba, M., 2018. Revisiting the Barcelona Attacks: Reactions, Explanations and Pending Discussions. Barcelona: CIDOB. de la Calle, L. and I. Sánchez-Cuenca. 2009. ‘Domestic terrorism: The hidden side of political violence’. Annual Review of Political Science 12: 31–49. Fernández Soldevilla, G. and F. Domínguez Iribarren. 2018. Pardines: Cuando ETA empezó a matar. Madrid: Tecnos. Gerges, F. 2016. ISIS: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hoffman, B. 2006. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press. Jordán, J. 2009. ‘Políticas de Prevención de la Radicalización Violenta en Europa: Elementos de Interés para España’. Revista Electrónica de Ciencia Penal y Crimonología 11: 1–25. Leonisio, R., F. Molina, and D. Muro. 2017. ETA’s Terrorist Campaign: From Violence to Politics, 1968–2015. London: Routledge. López, R. 2015. Informe Foronda: Los Efectos del Terrorismo en la Sociedad Vasca. Madrid: La Catarata. Muro, D. 2008. Ethnicity and Violence: The Case of Radical Basque Nationalism. London: Routledge. Neumann, P. 2016. Radicalized: New Jihadists and the Threat to the West. London: I.B. Tauris. Parker, T. and N. Sitter. 2016. ‘The four horsemen of terrorism: It’s not waves, it’s strains’. Terrorism & Political Violence 28(2): 197–216. Rapoport, D. 2004. The four waves of modern terrorism. In: Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy. Washington: Georgetown University Press, pp. 46–73. Reinares, F. 2014. ¡Matadlos!: Quién estuvo detrás del 11-M y por qué se atentó en España. Madrid: Galaxia Gutenberg. Reinares, F. and C. García-Calvo. 2018. Barcelona y Cambrils, un año después: ¿cuál era el riesgo de atentados?, ¿qué lecciones están pendientes? [Online] Available at: http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/rielcano_es/contenido?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ elcano/elcano_es/zonas_es/comentario-reinares-garciacalvo-barcelona-cambrils-ano-despues-riesgo-atentados-lecciones-pendientes (accessed 30 July 2019).
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Terrorism in Spain 99 Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 2001. ETA contra el Estado: Las estrategias del terrorismo. Barcelona: Tusquets. Schmid, A. and J. Easson. 2011. Appendix 2.1: 250-Plus academic, governmental and intergovernmental definitions of terrorism. In: Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 99–148. Torres, M. 2017. ‘Jihadist propaganda as a threat indicator: The case of Spain’. Terrorism & Political Violence. doi: 10.1080/09546553.2017.1374255. Vergani, M., M. Iqbal, E. Ilbahar, and G. Barton. 2018. The Three Ps of Radicalization: Push, Pull, and Personal. A Systematic Scoping Review of the Scientific Evidence about Radicalization into Violent Extremism. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.
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chapter 7
Econom ic a n d Soci a l Ch a nges Si nce th e R estor ation of Democr acy Miguel Requena
7.1 Introduction After Franco’s death (1975), when Spain initiated its transition to democracy, the modernization of Spanish society lagged behind most of Western Europe. After almost a century of increasing control over mortality (Pérez Moreda, Reher, and Sanz 2015), the end of the baby boom had closed the cycle of demographic transition. However, the country still did not manifest the characteristic traits of post-transition societies. There were no immigrants at the time, because Spain’s secular tradition of pushing them away had intensified in the 1970s (Vilar 2000). Further, although progress in urbanization and internal migration had been notable, in 1980 a sizeable portion (27%) of the population continued to live in villages and small towns of less than 10,000 inhabitants. Agriculture represented a relatively large part of the economy (more than 7% of GDP). Thus, despite Spain’s economic growth, (which had been intense since the 1950s), and the reduction of its wealth gap with advanced countries, its economic position was lower than most developed countries in America and the rest of Europe (Prados de la Escosura 2003, 2017). Spanish values, lifestyles, and customs largely reflected a traditional culture, strongly influenced by religion (Toharia 1989). Civil society, limited by decades of authoritarian political regime, was poorly developed (Pérez Díaz, 1983). In the four decades since 1978, Spain has undergone dramatic change that has transformed every aspect of society, from its demographics and economy, to its politics, morality, customs, and lifestyles (González and Requena 2008). More specifically, the country has modernized in four decisive areas: (i) in the second half of the 1990s, its
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Economic and Social Changes 101 population dynamics began to incorporate a growing number of immigrants, leading the country towards its second demographic transition; (ii) its protected and uncompetitive economy was replaced with an open economy that has steadily integrated into the European and global markets; (iii) its authoritarian dictatorship has successfully mutated into a completely consolidated liberal democracy that has generated a more vigorous and dynamic civil society; and (iv) what had been a poorly educated, provincial, and culturally traditional society has become increasingly metropolitan, open, and cosmopolitan. This chapter reviews some of the main demographic and occupational tendencies that have defined the change in post Franco Spain. To the degree that they have survived the fluctuations of the economic cycle, these are considered decisive for the future of the country. Between 1978, when the new Constitution was approved and came into effect, and 2018, the country entered into a new demographic regime characterized by a combination of low mortality and fertility. This has resulted in population stagnation and accelerated ageing. At the same time the change in the country’s sectoral and occupational structure has led to a more developed society, with new middle classes, an older workforce, more women, more skilled workers, and more immigrants. The causal primacy of these changes is not asserted here. However, their mutual dependencies are very clear. Moreover, they provide meaningful narrative threads to follow in the search for a consistent interpretation of Spain’s modernization. As seen in the following pages, the trends selected for discussion allow the magnitude of the change to be retrospectively evaluated in a way that is not only meaningful but also revealing. Not all recent social and economic changes can be evaluated positively. Nonetheless, without a doubt the continual modernization of the country has produced gradual and nearly constant improvement to the living standards and welfare of Spanish citizens. This chapter is divided into four main sections. After this introduction, the next section reviews the recent demographic changes that have paved the way to the second demographic transition. An overview of the unexpected migratory boom experienced since the late nineties and some of its main effects on Spanish society are provided in the third section. Finally, changes to the sectoral and occupational structure are addressed before the principal conclusions are presented in the last section.
7.2 The Path to the Second Demographic Transition On 1 January 2018, the Spanish population was estimated at 46,659,302. In 1978 it had been estimated at 36,694,077. Thus, in the forty years between 1978 and 2018 the Spanish population increased by nearly 10 million, a growth of 27 per cent, or an average annual growth rate of 0.6 per cent. Analysing the components of the change provides the key to the country’s new demographic regime. Between 1978 and 1998 the population increased
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102 Miguel Requena at an annual rate of 0.45 per cent, mostly attributed to natural increase (births minus deaths). Over the next twenty years, the population increased at a greater rate (0.75% per annum); however, the rate of natural increase declined. The new most important factor behind the growing population was positive net migration. Between 1978 and 2015, the Spanish population grew comparatively faster than most Northern, Western (except Switzerland) and Southern European countries (including Italy and Portugal). The available data (Figure 7.1) indicate that between 1978 and 1996, the number of births in Spain declined, then grew from 1996 to 2008 and subsequently contracted again to the present. Throughout this entire period, the number of deaths rose slightly, not due to greater mortality rates, but rather because of the increasingly aged structure of the Spanish population. Recently, very small and even negative natural growth rates have been observed. This is precisely the situation expected of a society that has completed its demographic transition and now operates in a new regime in which population growth is limited and family size is reduced in response to growing control over mortality. During the twentieth century the Spanish population underwent its first demographic transition (Reher 2003), shifting dramatically from high to lower birth and death rates. At the start of the twenty-first century a new scenario emerged, referred to as the second demographic transition. This new demographic situation has been characterized by a low natural increase in the population. At the same time, the natural increase has reflected the change in demographic patterns at the end of the first transition. Low fertility has been the first factor in demographic change. In 1978, Spain had one of the highest total fertility rates (TFR) in Europe (2.54 children per woman). From 1978 350,000
700,000
300,000
600,000
250,000
500,000
200,000
400,000
150,000 300,000
100,000
200,000
50,000
100,000
–50,000
1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
0
Natural Increase
Births
0
Deaths
Figure 7.1 Spanish population 1978–2018. Births and deaths (right axis) and natural increase (left axis). Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística
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Economic and Social Changes 103 until 1998 the TFR continually dropped. By 1981 it had fallen below 2.10, the generational replacement rate. In 1986, it declined even more, to 1.55. In 1993, it fell to 1.26, below the threshold for contemporary populations with very low fertility (Köhler, Billari, and Ortega 2002). In 1998, it fell to 1.16, the lowest point during this period. Since 1999, fertility has recovered slightly (increasing to 1.44 children per woman in 2008). However, this has mainly been due to the reproductive patterns of foreign women living in Spain, who have more children than Spanish nationals. According to Eurostat data, in 2016 Spain, along with Italy, had the lowest TFR (1.34) in Western Europe, well below other countries like Austria (1.58), Germany (1.60), Netherlands (1.66), United Kingdom (1.79), Sweden (1.85) and France (1.92). Linked to the sharp reduction in fertility among Spanish women (mitigated, probably only temporarily, by the contribution of immigrant women) there has also been a considerable delay in the timing of maternity and very high levels of childlessness. At the same time, the drop in fertility has taken place within the context of a radical transformation to family life. This can be summarized as the prolonged domestic dependence of young people; a fall in marriage rates and a delay in the age of marriage (Martínez-Pastor 2009); the growth of consensual unions (Castro, 2003) and reproduction outside of wedlock1 (Baizán, Aassve, and Billari 2003); and an increase in marital instability, and correspondingly, in divorce (Bernardi and Martínez-Pastor 2011). The three phenomena that synthesize the changing way in which couples are now constituted—delayed marriage, a drop in marriage rates, and growth in consensual unions and divorces—also have obvious implications for late-forming families in Spain, an increasingly common phenomenon. The second factor implicated in the low natural increase has been mortality. This evolved favourably during the twentieth century, with the sole interruptions resulting from the last epidemic shocks and the consequences of the Spanish Civil War, and continued to improve until the start of the twenty-first century. For example, within the last forty years the Spanish population has gained almost nine years of life expectancy. In 1977, Spanish women had one of the highest life expectancies at birth in Europe (77 years), and therefore the world. In 2016, their lifespan reached 86.3 years, longer than the women of France (85.7), Italy (85.6), Sweden (84.1), Germany (83.5), Britain (83.0), and Denmark (82.8). The life expectancy at birth for men, always lower than women, was 74.3 years in 1977 and 83.1 in 2017. As a result, Spanish society today has one of the lowest aggregate mortality rates in the world, especially among women. According to Eurostat, in 2016 Spanish women were the longest living women in Europe, and only Swiss, Maltese, Icelandic, Swedish, and Norwegian men had slightly longer life expectancies than Spanish males. Life expectancy gains in Spain have not ceased over the past few decades, even during the recent economic recession (Regidor et al. 2016). Interestingly, during a large part of the twentieth century, increased life expectancy was largely due to a drop in infant 1 In 2016 (the latest available data) 46% of all births in Spain were by single mothers. In 1978, the proportion of children born out of wedlock was 2.5%.
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104 Miguel Requena mortality. More recently, however, it has mainly been due to a drop in mortality at older ages (Pérez Moreda, Reher, and Sanz 2015). Therefore, the crucial achievement of the past few decades has been concentrating the mortality risk at the final stage of the life cycle. Even though all ages have contributed to increasing life expectancy, the greatest positive contribution has been made at advanced ages (Gómez-Redondo and Boe 2004).2 The overall evolution of vital rates (low levels of fertility and mortality) registered in Spain in recent years has impacted the age structure of its population, generating an ageing population, in which the proportion of older ages has become increasingly higher. The following data provide a summary of the process the Spanish population has been undergoing (Table 7.1). In 1978, the mean age of the Spanish population was 33.1 years (median age 29.3) and in 2018 it was 43.2 years (median age of 42.6). In 1978, the population under 15 years old represented 26.9 per cent of the total Spanish population, whereas in 2018 it represented only 15 per cent. In 1978, the population aged 65 and over constituted 10.7 per cent of the population, and in 2018 it reached 19.2 per cent. During the past forty years, the over 80 population has multiplied almost seven times, now representing 6.2 per cent of the total. All of the previous indicators show that the ageing process of the Spanish population will continue to accelerate throughout the twenty-first century. In sum, after forty years of intense change, Spanish society’s new demographic regime displays the main characteristics defining the second demographic transition in advanced societies: the baby bust, the systematic postponement of marriage and parenthood, sub-replacement fertility, and the rise in alternative forms of partnerships and parenthood outside of marriage (Lesthaeghe 2014). In addition, in the new context of
Table 7.1. Age structure of Spanish population (1978–2018). 1978
1983
1988
1993
1998
2003
2008
2013
2018
Mean Age
33.1
34.4
35.9
37.4
38.9
40.1
Median Age
29.3
30.2
31.6
33.4
35.4
37.1
40.6
41.8
43.2
38.2
40.3
42.6
Population 0–14
26.9%
24.7%
21.7%
18.1%
15.4%
14.5%
14.6%
15.2%
15.0%
Population 15–64
62.4%
63.8%
65.6%
67.5%
68.6%
68.6%
68.9%
67.1%
65.8%
Population 65+
10.7%
11.5%
12.7%
Population 80+
1.7%
2.1%
2.6%
14.3%
16.0%
17.0%
16.4%
17.7%
19.2%
3.1%
3.5%
4.0%
4.5%
5.5%
6.2%
Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística.
2 The result of ageing mortality is the predominance of late-life degenerative diseases as the cause of death. Infectious diseases have given way to chronic illnesses and those related to certain environmental factors. Among the main causes of death for Spaniards over recent years have been ischaemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, tumours, and respiratory ailments.
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Economic and Social Changes 105 demographic ageing, the number of people of advanced age and their corresponding needs is continuing to rise, a tendency that Spain shares with all demographically advanced countries.
7.3 The Unexpected Migration Boom Along with the rate of natural increase, the other component of population change has been net migration (the difference between the number of immigrants entering a country and the emigrants leaving it). In this regard, during the first decade of the new century, Spain received a very large contingent of immigrants. This was striking compared to other inflows of migrants into Europe during the same period. Although migration is not a new phenomenon, for at least the past two centuries, Spain’s predominant experience has been emigration. The last large international emigration from Spain started at the end of the 1950s, intensified during the second half of the 1960s, and rapidly decreased after 1973–75. The preferred destination was Europe, where Spanish immigrants numbered over a million at some points in time. The abrupt end of the outflow to Europe (from the economic crisis of the 1970s) gave rise to a mostly stable situation at the start of the 1980s, characterized by very low net migration. When its democratic transition began, Spain had among the fewest immigrants in Europe, a situation that continued for ten more years. According to UN DESA data, from 1975 to 1980 the net number of migrants (the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants), expressed in thousands, was 77 in Spain, whereas it was 89 in Sweden, 146 in the Netherlands, 147 in France, 165 in Italy and 229 in Germany. According to the census data, in 1981 there were 631,546 foreign-born individuals residing in Spain, amounting to 1.7 per cent of the total population. Almost twenty years later, at the end of the 1990s (1998), there were just over a million foreign-born living in Spain. A large percentage of these came from highly developed countries. However, with a native population of 38.7 million people, the foreign-born population was still only a small fraction of the country’s total population (2.9%). Except for some returning emigrants from Europe, during those nearly two decades there was no significant migration to Spain. The proportion of immigrants residing there was, therefore, quite different from other European countries (like Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, or the United Kingdom), with much longer traditions of immigration. Nonetheless, to everyone’s surprise, by 2008, 6 million foreign-born individuals were living in Spain along with 40 million natives. The proportion of immigrants had unexpectedly risen from 3 per cent to 13 per cent (Reher and Requena 2009), reaching levels similar to Sweden (14%), Belgium (13%), Germany (12%), France (11%), the United Kingdom (11%) and the Netherlands (11%). During the ten years between 1998 and 2008, the immigrant population of Spain increased remarkably by 5.2 million people, accounting for three-quarters of the total growth in the Spanish population during that period (Figure 7.2). Although the native
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106 Miguel Requena 1,000,000
7,000,000
800,000
6,000,000
600,000
5,000,000
400,000
4,000,000
200,000 3,000,000
0
2,000,000
–200,000
Net migration
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
0
2000
–600,000
1999
1,000,000
1998
–400,000
Absolute numbers
Figure 7.2 Spain 1998–2018. Population born abroad. Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística
population of Spain grew at the relatively modest level of 3.7 per cent (that is, a compound annual growth rate of 0.36%) during those ten years, the foreign-born population grew by 415 per cent (a compound annual growth rate of 17.8%). As a result, Spain not only decisively contributed to the growth of the European immigrant population over those years, but also went from being one of the European countries with the fewest number of immigrants to one in which immigrants constituted a large percentage of its population. This was due to the magnitude, continuity, and persistence of its arrivals. Between 1995 and 2000, the net migration rate3 in Spain (4.5) was already higher than any other large country in Europe. Over the next five years, it rocketed to 13.4, a figure well above that of Italy (5.6), Belgium (4.2), Sweden (3.2), the United Kingdom (3.2), Germany (2.0), or France (1.6). The massive, constant, and sustained flow of migrants was related to Spain’s rapid economic growth during that period, which made it a more attractive destination for people from countries with worse living standards and social and welfare levels. Without trying to cover all the causes of a necessarily complex phenomenon, and only considering the pull factors attracting migrants to the country, it is worth noting the following: (i) the Spanish population had been immersed in a rapid ageing process and already had a 3 The net migration rate is the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants over a given period, divided by the person-years lived by the population of the receiving country over that period. It is expressed as the average annual net number of migrants per 1,000 population. These data come from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), United Nations.
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Economic and Social Changes 107 serious slant in its age structure; (ii) there was a heavy demand (differentiated in terms of sectors and regions) for low-skilled labour; and (iii) successive governments maintained generous migration admission policies. In 1998, almost half of the foreigners in Spain were from developed countries, mostly European, who had come to Spain to study, work, or retire. The next largest group was from Africa, with many Moroccans. However, this changed during the migration boom (2000–2007). The relative importance of Africans and Western Europeans gradually diminished, replaced first by immigrants from Latin American countries, and later by immigrants from the rest of the world (particularly Eastern Europeans). Compared with other European countries (Table 7.2), immigrants to Spain came primarily from Latin America (39%), followed by other European countries (38% combined), a percentage close to France and the Netherlands. Although Asian immigrants were relatively scarce (6%), Spain’s share of Africans (17%) was similar to Italy’s and the Netherlands’, but smaller than France’s or Belgium’s. There has been great variety among the immigrants living in Spain: young and old, individuals with hardly any education and highly skilled professionals and managers. Some have lived in small, overcrowded flats and others have resided in luxury homes located in upscale neighbourhoods. Most of the recently arrived immigrants in Spain have been people from Andean, African, Eastern European, and Asian countries, with all the characteristics of economic immigrants: relatively young, employed in low-skill jobs, and participating in highly cohesive migration support networks (especially family ties). Alongside these there has been another group with a very different profile: immigrants from developed countries with high levels of education, often retirees, and a large percentage of unipersonal homes and jobs (if they work) in the highest skill sectors. Significantly, during the Spanish migration boom, most of the immigrants coming to Spain were economic immigrants or retirees, with a much smaller contingent of refugees.
Table 7.2. Immigrants by continent of origin as a percentage of total immigrants. Selected European countries, 2015. Continent of origin Receiving country
Europe
Africa
America
Asia
Others
Total
Belgium France Spain Italy Netherlands Sweden United Kingdom
60.1% 35.8% 38.4% 54.5% 41.7% 50.3% 63.9%
26.1% 44.1% 16.5% 18.4% 16.3% 10.3% 6.2%
4.2% 5.6% 38.6% 11.7% 19.0% 6.4% 3.9%
9.4% 14.5% 6.3% 15.1% 22.2% 32.6% 24.1%
0.3% 0.1% 0.2% 0.4% 0.7% 0.4% 1.9%
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Source: Eurostat and Insee for France.
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108 Miguel Requena With its massive inflow of immigrants, Spain has joined the group of developed countries viewed as very attractive migration destinations. Domestically, the arrivals have caused a decisive demographic and social shift away from what had been ‘normal’ over the past two centuries of Spanish history. During the migration boom, immigrants contributed to the country’s economic development, mitigated the imbalance in the population age structure, halted (at least temporarily) the sustained decline in fertility, and made Spain more culturally diverse and heterogeneous. Spain’s metamorphosis into a country of immigrants has generated the most potential for social change in the country. The complexity and scope of the change has not only been due to its magnitude, but also to its novelty, because it has been unprecedented in Spain’s recent history. As should be expected, the Great Recession heavily impacted the volume of the migration flow (see chapter 8). Since 2007, net migration began to diminish and between 2012 and 2015 it became negative (more exits than arrivals), the same as in other South European countries. The severe contraction of the labour market, with high unemployment rates, especially among immigrants, made the country a less attractive migration destination. After the harsh labour market adjustment, few new immigrants were interested in Spain, and some who had already settled there (basically Latin Americans) returned to their countries of origin or moved to third countries. However, in 2016 net migration once again became positive (more arrivals than exits) and the number and proportion of immigrants residing in Spain has continued to be high compared to other developed countries. According to Eurostat, in 2017 the proportion of immigrants in Spain was on the same order of magnitude as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. In other words, the migration phenomenon survived the economic recession. Negative net migration in the difficult times had not extinguished the positive net migration from the boom periods. Although it is difficult to make precise predictions on future migration to the country, it is clear that in just a few decades Spain has left behind its deeply rooted tradition of pushing its own population away.
7.4 The Change in the Sectoral and Occupational Structure of the Economy In the last four decades Spain’s economic structure has changed considerably due to the modernization of its production model that began in the middle of the twentieth century. In the 1950s Spain began to move from an agricultural economy whose industrial development lagged behind that of other European countries, towards a modern service economy. The dynamics of the change have not been linear, but rather have followed an irregular pattern in which expansive phases have alternated with periods of contraction and stagnation that have almost always been accompanied by massive job loss. The short but intense industrialization phase of the 1960s and the early 1970s was interrupted by the economic crisis of the 1970s, followed by almost a decade of economic stagnation
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Economic and Social Changes 109 and deindustrialization. Thus, the restoration of democracy took place during adverse economic conditions. In the middle of the 1980s, Spain again began to grow economically, with an expansion of the services sector. After the economic contraction at the start of the 1990s, the second half of that decade and a large part of the following one were characterized by intense development, with a heavy focus on construction and services. This lasted until 2007, when the first indicators of the imminent economic crisis appeared. In 2014, the Spanish economy started to grow again. The magnitude of sectoral change is usually measured by the sectors’ contributions to GDP, or as in this case, by the size of the labour force employed. At the end of the 1970s (Figure 7.3, left panel), agriculture was still a relatively important part of the Spanish economy. One out of five workers was employed in this sector. However, in the following four decades the working population of the agriculture sector diminished greatly. Today Spanish agriculture only employs one out of every twenty-two workers, a ratio however that is still higher than Italy (1:26), France (1:38), Netherlands (1:49), Germany (1:72), and the United Kingdom (1:73). Industry has also declined in Spain’s sectoral structure, as would be expected in an economy that has increasingly become focused on services. In 1978, 3.4 million people worked in Spain’s industrial sector, more than a quarter of the workforce. Forty years later, 2.7 million people have industrial jobs, representing only 14 per cent of the working population. Construction has been different, because it is highly sensitive to changes in the business cycle. Employment in the building sector dropped at the beginning of the 1980s, expanded in the 1990s and the start of this century, then radically contracted during the recent recession. Overall, the services sector best illustrates the transformation of the Spanish economy. The service sector, whose absolute and relative weight in total employment has grown, has contributed the most to GDP and job growth. Between 1978 and 2018 the number of workers employed in service has risen from 42.5 per cent to 75.4 per cent of the labour force. If the data are observed more closely, commerce, transport, and accommodation 100%
Health
90%
Education Public administration
80%
Other services Financial & insurance
70% 60%
Trade, transportation & accomodation
50%
Non-skilled manual
80% 70%
Skilled manual
60% 50%
White-collar
Construction Agriculture
1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
0%
30%
Small Proprietors
20% 10%
Professionals & Managers
0% 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Industry
30%
10%
90%
40%
40%
20%
100%
Figure 7.3 Sectoral and occupational distribution of Spanish labour force 1998–2018. Source: Labour Force Survey (Instituto Nacional de Estadística)
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110 Miguel Requena and food services employ most workers, and their growth has been remarkable (almost 3 million workers, +6.5%). There has also been a notable increase in the weight of workers in the most productive services (finances, insurance, and business services). In addition, employment in public administration, education, and healthcare (in the last two brands the weight of the public sector has also been notable) has quadrupled in absolute terms and increased by 2.5 per cent in relative terms. Sectoral change has involved parallel changes in the structure and distribution of jobs (Figure 7.3, right panel). Spain’s occupational structure has followed three main tendencies that are largely consistent with what would be expected in a developed economy. They summarize the evolution of its occupational structure over the past four decades (Requena, Salazar and Radl 2013). First, professionals and managers (the highest quality jobs, requiring more human capital, offer better work conditions, and are most productive) have gained weight within the structure (+18%) whereas at the same time small business owners have diminished (−13%). This has been a change in which the new middle classes have begun to replace the traditional petty bourgeoisie. These are also the jobs that have increased the most in Spain. Among the approximately 7.5 million net jobs created during this period, almost six of every ten were for professionals or managers. Second, the balance between non-manual and manual workers clearly has tended toward the former. The proportion of routine white-collar workers has grown more (+5%) than skilled manual workers (−15%) and approximately the same as unskilled workers (+5%). Third, within the working-class domain, which shrank overall by around 10 per cent, unskilled workers grew more than skilled workers. A large part of this growth was due to the unskilled and low salary jobs created by the service sector, many of which have been occupied by immigrants since the 1990s. All of these changes have meant that the growth of employment in the upper part of the occupational structure has dominated the transformation of the Spanish labour market. Like other European countries (Oesch 2013), in recent decades Spain has significantly upgraded its occupational structure through massive professionalization. Professional and managerial jobs have increased, whereas lower-middle class and industrial jobs have declined. Technology is a long-term factor that leads to sectoral and occupational change everywhere. However, there are also socio-demographic tendencies of considerable scope that, combined with technological innovation, impact labour markets, driving them to adapt to the type of workers available. In other words, the supply of certain kinds of workers creates its own demand. In Spain, four of these large tendencies, feminization, ageing, immigration, and the improved skills of the workforce (Figure 7.4), should be noted because they have already left a mark on the country’s occupational structure, and almost certainly will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The feminization of the Spanish workforce during this period has been constant, and the ratio of working women to working men has doubled. This process has been driven by the changes that have transformed the social position of women. Specifically, women
Less than Primary
Primary University
Upper Secondary
Lower Secondary
% women in the labour force
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
16%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Figure 7.4 1978–2018 Spanish labour force, by sex, education, and immigrant status.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
100% 90%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Source: Labour Force Survey (Instituto Nacional de Estadística
% foreigners in the labour force
16–29
30–44
45–54
55+
1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
90%
1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
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112 Miguel Requena have become more committed to education and training than they have to reproduction (Garrido 1992). The greater endowment of human capital has elevated the opportunity costs of reproduction, promoted participation in the workforce, discouraged female labour force exits traditionally associated with marriage, and offered women the possibility of having a career throughout their lives. Spanish women, who in growing numbers have followed this trajectory, have found their place in highly feminized work sectors, such as education, healthcare, and other services. A recent study by Reher and Requena (2018) offered a plethora of evidence on the ageing of the Spanish workforce in every area of employment. In large part it could be attributed to the protracted drop in economic activity rates among young Spanish, based on two factors: their increasingly long education, and their loss of jobs during economic crises. However, given that the Spanish population is living longer, and that this dynamic is growing at an accelerated rate, the ageing of the workforce is here to stay and in the future is likely to create enormous challenges for families, businesses, and public institutions. It is impossible to understand the improvement to the sectorial and occupational structure of the Spanish economy without considering the increased skill level of the workforce. Successive reforms of the structure, content, and organization of the educational system, and the growing allocation of resources it receives, have allowed more Spanish children to enrol in school. Further, there has been a relative convergence of Spain’s level of educational achievement with other European countries. At the same time, families have invested more in education, partly due to increased expectations for the advancement of their children and decreased fertility. Spain’s general educational progress4 has been reflected in the workforce and, as in other countries, has been especially visible among women. Many immigrants who have come to the country (with the exception, of course, of retirees from rich European countries) have done so as economic migrants occupying low-skilled jobs, especially in agriculture, construction (men), and domestic service (women). As a result, they suffered a particularly harsh blow during the economic crisis. Between 2008 and 2014 their number dropped by a million (-35%). However, with the economic recovery, the jobs occupied by immigrants have once again grown. The possibility that they will return in the numbers observed in the boom years and become a permanent part of Spain’s labour market cannot be ignored. In the next few years, the pressure from exterior migration on Spain is likely to grow. Accordingly, there will continue to be a need to fill low-skilled jobs that increasingly educated native workers have tended to abandon.
4 There is no doubt that younger generations of Spanish are the most educated in history, although it is often argued that they are also the best educated. The quality of the entire Spanish education system has become a hot issue in the country following the results of international evaluations of school performance, the OCDE’s well-known PISA reports (Programme for International Student Assessment).
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Economic and Social Changes 113
7.5 Conclusion Spain’s transformation in the forty years since democracy was restored has eliminated the last vestiges of economic, social, and cultural backwardness in the country. To that extent, the change can only be viewed as positive. The quality of Spaniards’ lives, evidenced for example by life expectancy, has become superior to what it was forty years ago. Among the many aspects in which it has changed have been health and education, economic opportunities, working conditions, and security. The country has improved in almost every conceivable area of welfare. Spain has achieved many of the known benefits of demographic transition (Lee and Mason 2011). Gains in health and life expectancy, and declining mortality, have allowed fertility to be dramatically reduced. At the same time, low fertility has made it possible to dedicate an increasingly larger portion of the life cycle to investing in human capital and education. The economic benefits from human capital investments are very clear. More educated populations have elevated consumption levels per capita, and generate more productive jobs. Ultimately, demographic change offers opportunities to intensify investments that promote economic growth. It seems that Spain has taken advantage of these opportunities. Two additional arguments to those already presented in this chapter support this thesis. They provide a good summary of the country’s progress and the prosperity it has achieved. Over the past forty years, the economic performance of Spain has been as good as or better than that of other developed countries, particularly in Europe. Between 1978 and 2015 Spain’s GDP at market prices (2010=100) rose 2.5 per cent per year (Prados de la Escosura 2017, Table S4). This growth rate is comparatively high, and has shortened the income gap between Spain and several European countries. According to IMF data, in 1980 Spain’s GDP expressed in constant international dollars per person (purchasing power parity; 2011 international dollars) was well below that of Italy (75%), France (73%), Germany (70%), and the UK (89%). Estimates for 2018 show that although the difference between Spain and the UK (89%) should be approximately the same, its distance from France (89%) and Germany (76%) should decrease and Spain should surpass Italy (102%).5 These results are even more remarkable considering that the economic recession was harsher in Spain than in these other countries. The upgraded occupational structure resulting from the expansion of professional and managerial jobs at the upper end has meant that throughout these years Spaniards have undergone more absolute upward social mobility—the type of mobility individuals experience in a more direct and personal way (Carabaña 1999)—than in the past. 5 This rise in wealth is clearly manifested by the decreasing percentage of income spent on food consumption by Spanish households, a secular trend that has proven to be protracted in recent years. The proportionate expenditure on food in the early 80s was estimated to be 30 per cent of total consumption (Maluquer de Motes 2005). In 2017, food and non-alcoholic beverages represented only 13 per cent.
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114 Miguel Requena Comparing the positions of parents and children, much of the social mobility observed in Spain has been absolute or forced, for example brought about by improvement of the occupational structure and driven by growing levels of educational achievement. A country with more upward mobility is a more affluent and prosperous place in which to live. Children are better educated, have better occupations, and hence better social and economic positions, than their parents. Therefore, it is not surprising that an observer of the Spanish situation summarized the country’s recent social and economic progress by stating that Spain has been walking tall (Chislett 2008). This has primarily been evidenced by its advances in healthcare and life expectancy, and in the income and wealth of Spaniards. Growing prosperity has allowed living conditions in the country to improve. This has clearly been seen in the development of a modern infrastructure network and the implementation of broad public and private social protection schemes. From a comparative and historical perspective, the improvements in welfare achieved in Spain over the past forty years of continuous modernization have been remarkable. Today it can hardly be said that Spain is a backwards society in any relevant sense.
7.6 Bibliography Baizán, P., A. Assve, and F. Billari. 2003. ‘Cohabitation, marriage, and first birth: The interrelationship of family formation events in Spain’. European Journal of Population 19(2): 147–69. Bernardi, F. and J. Martínez-Pastor. 2011. ‘Divorce risk factors and their variation over time in Spain’. Demographic Research 24: 771–800. Carabaña, J. 1999. Dos estudios sobre movilidad intergeneracional. Madrid: Fundación Argentaria-Visor. Castro, T. 2003. ‘Matrimonios de hecho, de derecho, y en eterno aplazamiento: la nupcialidad española al comienzo del siglo XXI’. Sistema 175: 87–112. Chislett, W. 2008. Spain Going Places, Economic, Political and Social Progress. Madrid: Telefónica. Garrido, L. 1992. Las dos biografías de la mujer en España. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. Gómez Redondo, R. and C. Boe. 2004. Tendencias de la mortalidad en la población española: longevidad creciente, juventud recuperada y hacia la convergencia por sexo. In: Informe sobre la situación demográfica en España. Madrid: Fundación Fernando Abril Martorell, pp. 105–33. González, J. and M. Requena. 2008. Tres décadas de cambio social en España. Madrid: Alianza. Köhler, H., F. Billari, and J. Ortega. 2002. ‘The emergence of lowest-low fertility in Europe during the 1990s’. Population and Development Review 28(4): 641–80. Lee, R. and A. Mason. 2010. ‘Fertility, human capital, and economic growth over the demographic transition’. European Journal of Population 26(2): 159–82. Lesthaeghe, R. 2014. ‘The second demographic transition: A concise overview of its development’. Procedures of the National Academy of Sciences 111(51): 18112–15. Maluquer de Motes, J. 2005. Consumo y Precios. In: Estadísticas históricas de España. Bilbao: Fundación BBVA, pp. 1247–96. Martínez-Pastor, J. 2009. Nupcialidad y cambio social en España. Madrid: CIS.
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Economic and Social Changes 115 Oesch, D. 2013. Occupational Change in Europe: How Technology and Education Transform the Job Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pérez Moreda, V., D. Reher, and A. Sanz. 2015. La conquista de la salud: Mortalidad y modernización en la España contemporánea. Madrid: Marcial Pons. Pérez-Díaz, V. 1983. The Return of Civil Society: The Emergence of Democratic Spain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Prados de la Escosura, L. 2003. El progreso económico de España (1850–2000). Madrid: Fundación BBVA. Prados de la Escosura, L. 2017. Spanish Economic Growth, 1850–2015. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Regidor, E., F. Vallejo, J. A. T. Granados, F. J. Viciana-Fernández, L. de la Fuente, and G. Barrio. 2016. ‘Mortality decrease according to socioeconomic groups during the economic crisis in Spain: A cohort study of 36 million people’. The Lancet 288: 2642–52. Reher, D. 2003. ‘Transformación demográfica y modernización de la sociedad española durante el siglo XX’. Sistema 175: 35–50. Reher, D. and M. Requena. 2009. Las múltiples caras de la inmigración en España. Madrid: Alianza. Reher, D. and M. Requena. 2018. El envejecimiento de la fuerza de trabajo y los trabajadores mayores en España. In: Los trabajadores seniors en la empresa española: Realidades y retos. Madrid: Instituto de Empresa, pp. 20–166. Requena, M., L. Salazar, and J. Radl. 2013. Estratificación social. Madrid: McGraw Hill. Toharia, J. 1989. Cambios recientes en la sociedad española. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Económicos. Vilar, J. 2000. ‘Las emigraciones españolas a Europa en el siglo XX: algunas cuestiones a debatir’. Migraciones & Exilios: Cuadernos de la Asociación para el estudio de los exilios y migraciones ibéricos contemporáneos 1: 131–59.
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chapter 8
The Cause s a n d Legacy of th e Gr e at R ecession i n Spa i n Sebastián Royo
8.1 Introduction The establishment of democracy in the 1970s helped to bring Spain the best decades since its Golden Age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since the 1980s Spain has become a stable and prosperous democracy and its economic performance and modernization are particularly remarkable. Indeed, before the global crisis that hit Spain in the second half of 2008 the country had become one of Europe’s most successful economies: when it first joined the European Economic Community, EEC (later European Union, EU), GDP per capita was about 73 per cent of the EEC average, and by 2007 Spain had achieved a GDP per capita of 105 per cent of the European Union’s average, which placed it slightly ahead of Italy (103%); and between 1986 and 2016 the country’s GDP doubled, from €461.4 billion to €921.7 billion (2013) and its exports were up eightfold. The country’s accession to the EEC/EU in 1986 was instrumental in this regard as it fostered a process of adjustment and allowed the country to benefit extensively from EEC/EU’s funds. The culmination of this process was the country’s participation in the European Monetary Union (EMU), as Spain was among the first eleven countries to adopt the Euro in 1999.1 Indeed, economic performance prior to the Great Recession was nothing short of spectacular. In 2008 Spain was in its fourteenth year of uninterrupted growth and it was benefiting from the longest cycle of continuing
1 This chapter borrows from and builds upon: Royo 2013, 2015; Otero-Iglesias, Royo, and Steinberg 2017; and Royo and Steinberg 2019. I want to thank in particular Federico Steinberg for all his contributions.
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The Great Recession in Spain 117 e xpansion of the economy in modern history: between 1996 and 2008 the country grew on average 1.4 percentage points more than the EU. This economic success, however, hid some serious structural shortcomings, notably the persistent loss of competitiveness and reliance on the construction sector, which came to the fore when the global financial crisis of 2007–08 hit the country. Productivity contributed only 0.5 percentage points to GDP growth between 1998 and 2006, and growth was largely based on labour-intensity economic sectors, such as services and construction, which are not exposed to international competition. Finally, inflation was a recurrent problem, which gradually eroded the price-competitiveness of Spanish exports. The aim of this chapter is to examine the causes of the crisis and its impact in Spain. In the next section, I outline the initial success of the Spanish economy following integration into the EMU and the reason that drove this success. Then, I analyse the key factors that led to the crisis, followed by a brief examination of the responses from the government to the crisis. The following section looks at the economic, social, and political consequences of the crisis. The chapter closes with an analysis of the country’s current performance, and concludes with some considerations on the future reform agenda.
8.2 From Boom to Bust Following Spain’s accession to the EMU in 1999, which created a monetary union that included eleven European countries and introduced a common currency—the Euro, the country experienced an extraordinary period of economic growth until 2008. During that period, Spain’s GDP grew at an annual average close to 4 per cent. At the same time, unemployment fell from 20 per cent in the mid-1990s to 7.95 per cent in the first half of 2007 (the lowest level since 1978), the public deficit was also eliminated (the country had a surplus between 2005 and 2006, which reached 1.8 percent of GDP), and the public debt was reduced to 39.8 per cent of GDP, one of the lower levels in the euro zone (Royo and Steinberg 2019) (see Table 8.1).
8.2.1 The Reasons for Success What made this transformation possible? The modernization of the Spanish economy in the 1980s and 1990s was intimately connected to the country’s integration in the EEC/ EU. Indeed, European integration was a catalyst for the final conversion of the Spanish economy into a modern Western-type economy. Yet, membership was not the only reason for this development. The economic liberalization, trade integration, and modern ization of the Spanish economy started in the 1950s and 1960s and Spain became increasingly prosperous over the two decades prior to EU accession. However, one of the key consequences of its entry into Europe was that it consolidated and deepened that
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118 SEBASTIÁN ROYO
Table 8.1. The Boom Years (2000–2007). GDP, constant prices
Units
2000
2001
% change
5.053
4.001
GDP per capita, National current prices currency
2002 2.88
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
3.188
3.167
3.723
4.174
3.769
15,935 17,160 18,088 19,041 20,099 21,313 22,722 23,893
Output gap in % of potential GDP
% of potential GDP
1.775
2.712
2.357
2.466
2.765
3.725
5.037
6.048
Inflation, average
% change
3.484
3.585
3.099
3.041
3.039
3.371
3.518
2.789
13.857
10.54
11.45 11.485 10.965
9.153
8.453
8.233
Unemployment % of total rate labour force General government structural balance
% of −2.095 −2.064 −1.723 −1.732 −1.575 −0.832 −0.546 −1.423 potential GDP
General government net debt
% of GDP
48.138 45.271 41.732 39.127 36.375 32.196 27.059 22.609
Current account balance
% of GDP
−4.401 −4.391 −3.738 −3.884 −5.586 −7.494
−8.99 −9.648
Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, April 2018
process, and it accelerated the modernization of the country’s economy. EU membership facilitated the micro- and macroeconomic reforms that successive Spanish governments undertook throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Royo 2015). Spain has also benefited extensively from European funds: Between 1986 and 2013, Spain received €151.4 billion from the EU (and €45 billion that has been earmarked for Spain until 2020). The social impact has also been enormous: In 1986, life expectancy in Spain was 76.4 years; in 2016 it was 83.2 years. There is virtually no sector that has not benefited from European funds. For instance in infrastructure: Spain has gone from having 483 kilometres of highway in 1986 to nearly 14,000 kilometres in 2016, and 40 per cent of it was funded by the EU; and European funds were also crucial to the 2,500 km of high-speed train tracks and the modernization of airports.2 Moreover, EMU membership has also been very positive for the country: it contributed to macroeconomic stability, it imposed fiscal discipline and central bank independence, and it lowered dramatically the cost of capital. Indeed, one of the key benefits 2 See ‘Spain observes 30 years in EU club amid growing euro-skepticism’, in El País, 22 July 2016. https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/07/18/inenglish/1468830899_413671.html (accessed 30 July 2019).
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The Great Recession in Spain 119 was the dramatic reduction in short-term and long-term nominal interest rates: from 13.3 per cent and 11.7 per cent in 1992, to 3.0 per cent and 4.7 per cent in 1999, and 2.2 per cent and 3.4 per cent in 2005. The lower costs of capital led to an important surge in investment from families (in housing and consumer goods) and businesses (in employment and capital goods). Indeed, EMU membership (and the Stability Pact) has provided the country with unprecedented stability because it forced successive governments to implement responsible economic policies, which led to greater credibility and the improvement of the ratings of Spain’s public debt (and consequently to lower financing costs). Another important factor to account for the country’s economic success was the remarkable economic policy stability throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, there have been few economic policy shifts during those two decades, and this despite changes in government. This pattern was further strengthened by the ideological cohesiveness of the political parties in government and the strong control that party leaders exercised over the members of the cabinet and the parliament deputies. In addition, this stability was reinforced by the shared (and rare) agreement among Conservative and Socialist leaders regarding fiscal consolidation, as well as the need to hold firm in the application of restrictive fiscal policies and the achievement of budgetary surpluses: As a result, a 7 per cent budget deficit in 1993 became a 2.2 per cent surplus in 2007, and public debt decreased from 68 per cent of GDP in 1998 to 36.2 percent in 2007. Finally, other factors that contributed to this success included the fact that politics were relatively open, and that Spain had a flexible economy, as well as the success of Spanish multinationals such as Telefonica, Endesa, Inditex, Banco Santander, and BBVA: There were eight firms in the Financial Times list of the world’s largest Multinationals in 2000, and fourteen in 2008. The contrast with other Southern European countries was notable. For instance, the Portuguese economy had a strong performance during the initial years of EEC/EU membership. However, this initial success ended with the adoption of the single currency. After that, Portugal embarked on a clear process of economic divergence within the Euro area. In Portugal the absence of macroeconomic policy stability, lack of consensus among the leading political parties, poor performance in educational attainment, insufficient fiscal consolidation, political instability, and the erosion of comparative advantage helped to account for the country’s poor economic performance and fiscal problems during the first decade of this century (Abreu 2006, Royo 2018).
8.2.2 The Shortcomings that Led to the Crisis However, this long expansion period was marred by an accumulation of excessive macroeconomic and financial imbalances led by excessive private indebtedness, a bubble in the real estate market, external competitiveness losses, and high dependence on external financing (Royo and Steinberg 2018). These glaring deficiencies came to the fore in 2008 when the global financial crisis hit the country, because the country’s
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120 SEBASTIÁN ROYO economic growth was largely a ‘miracle’ based on bricks and mortar (Martinez-Mongay and Maza Lasierra 2009). The problem in Spain was the giant inflow of capital from the rest of Europe; the consequence was rapid growth and significant inflation (see Royo 2015). First, the foundations of economic growth were fragile because the country had low productivity growth and deteriorating external competitiveness. Over the decade that preceded the 2008 crisis Spain did not address its fundamental challenge, its declining productivity, which only grew an average of 0.3 per cent during that decade, one whole point below the EU average, placing Spain near the bottom of the EU and ahead of only Italy and Greece. Since joining the EMU the gap between German and Spanish productivity has increased, rather than decreased. As a result, Germany developed a large surplus on its current account; while Spain and the other periphery countries had large current account deficits that were financed by capital inflows and led to high dependence on foreign savings that made the Spanish economy more vulnerable. The loss of competitiveness was also the result of the persisting positive inflation differentials with the EMU, which reduced the competitiveness of Spanish products abroad: the inflation average in 2006, just before the crisis, was 3.52 per cent, and the inflation differential with the EU averaged almost 1 percentage point in the decade prior to the crisis. This inflation differential was explained by the combination of higher corporate margins and unit labour costs, which expanded more than 25 per cent than those in the Euro counties due to wage increases higher than productivity growth. This was compounded by a process of deindustrialization, a low value-added model, and low insertion in global value chains. In this regard, one could argue that the incentives introduced by the EMU worked exactly in the wrong way. Capital inflows in the south made the structural reforms that would have been required to promote convergence less necessary, thus increasing divergence in productivity levels. Private capital flowed freely into Spain and, as a result, the country ran current account deficits of close to 10 per cent of GDP. These capital flows largely led to a massive bubble in the property market (the average price of a square metre of residential property went up from 700 Euros in 1997 to 2,000 at the end of 2006, even though the housing stock had doubled), higher consumption, and unsustainable levels of borrowing. Second, growth was largely based on low-intensity economic sectors, such as services and construction, which were not exposed to international competition. Just before the crisis, in 2006, most of the new jobs were created in low-productivity sectors such as construction (33%), services associated with housing such as sales and rentals (15%), and tourism and domestic service (30%). These sectors represented 75 per cent of all the new jobs created in Spain in 2006 (new manufacturing jobs, in contrast, represented only 5%). Third, there was a problem with private debt. Contrary to some perceptions Spain did not have a public debt problem prior to the crisis: the ratio of Spain’s general government debt was just 39.6 per cent of GDP in 2006 (it reached 84% by 2012). In contrast the level of debt was 67.6 per cent of GDP in Germany, 63.7 per cent in France, 64.7 per cent
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The Great Recession in Spain 121 in Portugal, and 106.5 per cent in Italy. Moreover, Spain ran budget surpluses in 2005, 2006, and 2007. The deficit and the debt were the result, not the cause, of Spain’s problems: The real estate bubble burst, unemployment soared, and the budget went into deep deficit when the government responded to the crisis with a massive €8 billion public works stimulus. This decision, combined with a dramatic fall in revenue, blew a hole in government accounts, resulting in a large deficit that reached 8.5 per cent in 2011. On the contrary, the conditions for the crisis in Spain were created by the excessive lending and borrowing of the private sector rather than the government. Indeed, there was a problem of ever-growing private-sector debt, which reached 227.3 per cent of GDP at the end of 2010, compounded by reckless bank investments and loans. Family indebtedness reached a record 115 per cent of disposable income in 2006, and the gross debt of households increased dramatically in the decade prior to the crisis. By 2009 it was 20 percentage points higher than the Eurozone average (86% of GDP versus 66%). The dramatic increase in indebtedness was driven by the significant reduction in interest rates that followed Spain’s accession to the European Monetary Union (EMU), and it was further fuelled by the subsequent expansionary policies of the European Central Bank between 1999 and 2004. Since inflation in Spain was well above the Euro area, real interest rates were comparatively low, particularly given the growth of the Spanish economy. The combination of these factors, provided an extraordinary expansive impulse to the Spanish economy, and fostered increases in private spending that led to the dramatic surge in private indebtedness. However, most of the household investment was directed towards the housing market, and was driven by easy access to cheap credit, high home prices and income expectations, and the increase in population led by immigration. As a result, residential investment almost doubled between 2000 and 2007, up to a maximum of 12 per cent of GDP (which represented over 5 percentage points higher than in the euro area). Fourth, there was a problem with the mismanagement of part of the financial sector (see Otero, Royo and Steinberg 2017). Indeed, the crisis was compounded by reckless bank investments and loans, particularly from the cajas (or savings and loans/building societies). This problem was slow to develop. Between 2008 and 2010 the Spanish financial system, despite all its problems, was still one of the least affected by the crisis in Europe. In December 2010 Moody’s ranked the Spanish banking system as the third strongest of the Eurozone, only behind Finland and France. Nevertheless, this success proved short lived. When the crisis intensified, the financial system was not able to escape its dramatic effects. The government and the Bank of Spain responded with a series of measures, including a major restructuring of the financial system, mainly affecting the savings and loans, which went from forty-five to fifteen institutions/groups, of which thirteen converted into banks. In the summer of 2012, Spanish financial institutions seemed to be on the brink of collapse and the crisis of the sector forced the EU and the ECB to devise an emergency €100 billion rescue plan for the Spanish banking sector (Santos 2017). There were a number of factors that help account for the deteriorating performance of the Spanish banks after 2009. The deep recession and record-high unemployment
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122 SEBASTIÁN ROYO triggered successive waves of loan losses in the Spanish mortgage market, which led to a rising share of non-performing loans. The Bank of Spain classified €180 billion euros as troubled assets at the end of 2011, and banks were sitting on €656 billion of mortgages of which 2.8 per cent were classified as nonperforming. An additional factor was related to the country’s sovereign debt, a problem that had already afflicted Greece and Portugal and led to their bailout (Walter 2016; Armingeon and Baccaro 2012). The sustainability of the Spanish government debt was affecting Spanish banks because they had been some of the biggest buyers of government debt in the wake of the ECB long-term refinancing operation liquidity infusions (the percentage of government bonds owned by domestic banks reached 30 per cent in mid-2012). Finally, the crisis also exposed weaknesses in the policy and regulatory framework. The Bank of Spain, whose policies had been widely praised prior to the crisis, bore also some responsibility because it chose the path of least resistance—alerting about the risks but failing to act decisively. From a comparative standpoint, for most euro periphery member states the crisis was also largely a balance of payments crisis, due to the building-up of persistent macroeco nomic imbalances from the launch of the single currency in 1999. Ultimately, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal were subject to EU adjustment programmes and additional conditionality. Greece was a very different case from Spain because the Greek crisis was largely a fiscal crisis caused by the country’s startling long-term fiscal problems, and the debt crisis turned into a banking crisis because Greek domestic banks held large amounts of depreciating government bonds (Sotiropoulos 2018). Ireland was the most similar to Spain: as in Spain, the Irish crisis was largely a problem of ever-growing private-sector debt, compounded by reckless bank investments and loans, as well as aggravated by competitiveness and current account imbalances, which ultimately led to the 2010 bailout of the country (Dellepiane and Hardiman 2011). In Ireland and Spain, the crisis confirmed the finding that a banking crisis often precedes a sovereign debt crisis (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009) and accompanies a balance of payments crisis (Kaminsky and Reinhart 1999). In contrast, the sovereign debt crisis in Italy did not initially turn into a banking crisis. Indeed, Italy did not have a banking crisis at that time. Italy’s main problems were the high level of debt and the low level of growth, which raised concerns about the sustain ability of the debt. Whereas Spain took advantage of the record low interest rates to tackle decisively the high level of debt, Italy failed to do so. With a debt to GDP ratio of 133 per cent (€2.17 trillion) in 2017, Italy was the second most heavily indebted nation in the European Union, second only to Greece. However, only a limited part of the Italian public debt was foreign owned as compared to Spain, which also had a significant current account deficit. Moreover, unlike Spain, Italy did not suffer major capital outflows that could have triggered a balance of payments crisis. In addition, Spain had a private debt far higher than Italy. All this explains why Spain had a fully-fledged sovereign debt crisis, resorting to EU financial aid, whereas Italy did not. For Italy the main risk was that a potential sovereign debt crisis could turn into a banking crisis, because Italian banks held large amounts of national government bonds. Hence, whereas in Spain the (late) banking crisis became a sovereign debt crisis, in Italy the risk was that the
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The Great Recession in Spain 123 sovereign debt crisis could turn into a (late late) banking crisis (Quaglia and Royo 2015). Ultimately, that fear materialized, and the debt crisis turned into a banking crisis because Italian domestic banks held large amounts of depreciating government bonds and a high volume of non-performance loans (which rose from 5.8% to 21% percent of total lending, or 12% of Italy’s GDP between 2000 and 2017), which led to a banking crisis and the bailout of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena in 2017. In sum, unlike Italy or Greece, at the outset of the crisis Spain had a strong fiscal pos ition, hence the financial crisis in Spain originated from private-sector over-indebtedness (as in Ireland) (Bermeo and Pontusson 2012; Armingeon and Baccaro, 2012). Indeed, the crisis was largely the result of ever-growing private-sector debt, compounded by reckless bank investments and loans, particularly from the cajas, as well as aggravated by competitiveness and current account imbalances. Therefore, three dimensions of the crisis (financial, fiscal, and competitiveness) were interlinked in their origins. Finally, the financial and fiscal crisis were made worse by the incomplete institutional structure of the EMU and by bad policy choices at the EU level (excess austerity and refusal to act as a lender of last resort for sovereigns by the ECB) (Royo 2015).
8.3 The Responses to the Crisis The Spanish economy unexpectedly entered into recession in the second half of 2008 as a result of the tightening of global financing conditions; the decrease in private-sector wealth caused by the implosion of the real estate market; the increased uncertainty; and the declining exports caused by the global crisis (see Table 8.2). According to government statistics, 2009 was the worst year since there has been reliable data: GDP fell 3.7 per cent, unemployment reached over four million people, and the public deficit reached a record 11.4 per cent of GDP (up from 3.4% in 2008). Initially the Spanish government responded to the crisis with expansive fiscal p olicies, activating the automatic stabilizers, like unemployment benefits, and implementing some discretionary measures, like the Plan E that included over 100 measures to stimulate the economy, including subsidies to business and funds for municipalities to spend on infrastructure and public works to create jobs, which led to a sharp deterioration in the fiscal position of the country from a surplus of 2 per cent of GDP in 2007 to a deficit of 11 per cent in 2009. However, that approach proved short lived and fiscal tensions in the EU sovereign debt markets after the Greek and Irish crises, which led to the bailout of both countries, forced the Spanish government to do a sharp policy turn, and fiscal policy became contractive. The Spanish government approved the Fiscal Consolidation Plan 2010–13, which was based on reductions in public spending and on tax increases, including a rise in Value Added Tax and the suspension of housing investment deductions. The intensification of tensions in the EU sovereign debt markets, which hindered access to wholesale financial markets and eroded confidence, forced the government in 2010 to bring forward an important part of the adjustment foreseen in that plan to 2010 and 2011,
Units GDP, constant prices GDP per capita, current prices Output gap in % of potential GDP Inflation, average Unemployment rate General government structural balance General government net debt Current account balance
% change National currency % of potential GDP % change % of total labour force % of potential GDP % of GDP % of GDP
2008 1.118 24,375 4.717 4.076 11.245 −7.297 25.554 −9.25
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
−3.574 0.014 −1 −2.928 −1.706 1.38 3.432 3.274 23,309 23,215 22,897 22,213 21,915 22,283 23,071 23,832 −0.591 −1.58 −3.1 −6.127 −7.761 −6.75 −4.616 -2.53 −0.289 1.798 3.197 2.443 1.413 −0.147 −0.496 −0.203 17.855 19.86 21.39 24.788 26.095 24.44 22.058 19.64 −10.57 −8.46 −7.41 −3.264 −2.287 −1.865 −2.397 −2.844 36.575 46.05 56.51 71.761 81.096 85.54 85.734 86.48 −4.281 −3.92 −3.18 −0.231 1.52 1.081 1.128 1.921
Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, April 2018
2017 3.052 24,594 −0.888 1.959 17.23 −2.515 86.34 1.652
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Table 8.2. Economic Performance 2008–2017.
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The Great Recession in Spain 125 and to announce further reforms of the pension system (to extend gradually the retirement age and the period to calculate the pension and introduction of the sustainability factor); the labour market (to increase the flexibility of the hiring instruments); and the financial system (to introduce new regulations for the cajas, as well as measures to increase transparency and capital requirements of credit institutions). In 2011 GDP fell by 1 per cent, unemployment continued increasing, the real estate adjustment intensified, and the non-performing loan ratio continued to grow, especially in the case of the cajas. There was a deviation of the public deficit that reached 9.6 per cent, bringing public debt close to 70 per cent of GDP, thirty percentage points higher than in 2007. Following the intensification of the crisis in Greece, conditions deteriorated even further in 2012, as capital outflows intensified, reaching 29 per cent of GDP, which increased the dependence in the Eurosystem financing. Against this backdrop, in June 2012 the Spanish government requested assistance from European institutions to restructure and recapitalize the weakest Spanish financial institutions. The financial bailout had onerous conditions attached, and it limited national economic autonomy by constraining fiscal policies and forcing reforms, such as the ones in the financial sector and the labour market (Dellepiane and Hardiman 2011). The government followed up by approving the Organic Law of Budgetary Stability and Financial Sustainability (to strengthen budgetary discipline by setting budgetary balance objectives for all levels of public administrations, as well as limits on public debt and requirements of transparency), and the Law on Urgent Measures for Labour Reform, which reduced dismissal costs and the conditions to rescind permanent contracts, decentralized collective bargaining further, and increased the internal flexibility of companies. It also introduced a Payment Scheme to Suppliers (PSP) to alleviate the liquidity constraints of firms as a result of delays in payments by territorial administrations. Finally, it launched the Liquidity Fund to autonomous regions to provide liquidity to the autonomous regions that would need it in times of limited access to credit in international markets (Royo and Steinberg 2019). In Spain, despite the austerity measures, the country still faced in 2013 the worst economic recession in half a century. GDP declined by almost 5 per cent, domestic demand by 8 per cent, and the level of activity fell in cumulative terms by 10 per cent, with decreases in private consumption and investment close to 15 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached an all-time high of 27 per cent in the first quarter of 2013. There was also a sharp correction in the real estate sector: the number of home sales in 2013 reached only 300,000 units, down from almost one million in 2006; residential investment fell to 4 per cent of GDP, and the accumulated drop in housing prices in real terms reached 40 per cent by 2013 (see Table 8.2). It is important to note that not all countries followed austerity policies so blindly. Portugal, for instance, was forced to undergo painful reforms in exchange for 78 billion euros in funding as part of the conditionality programme included in the 2011 bailout. However, following the surprise election of Costa as prime minister in 2015, the country cast aside austerity measures, and focused on higher growth and better jobs. Among other measures, he reversed cuts to wages, pensions, and social security; offered tax cuts
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126 SEBASTIÁN ROYO and incentives to business; raised public-sector salaries, the minimum wage, and pensions; cut the working week from forty hours to thirty-five; and cut income tax, especially for the low paid. The result of these policies has been remarkable. Although the stimulus was small, it changed the country’s gloom and ignited a virtuous circle that put economy back on a path to grow. Public-sector wages fuelled domestic demand, but exports have also been a main engine of growth. As a result, growth reached 2.7 per cent in 2017, the highest in a decade; unemployment fell below 7 per cent, down from 12.5 per cent in 2015, and Costa was able to keep fiscal consolidation targets: The budget deficit was less than 1 per cent (down from 4.4% when he took office and 8.5% in 2010), and was on track for surplus by 2020, while production and exports took off. Portugal’s response to the crisis showed a different path out of the recession.
8.4 The Impact of the Crisis Following the pain of austerity, since 2014 the Spanish economy has experienced a remarkable recovery, completing at the time of writing four years of sustained expansion, with growth rates in activity and employment well above those in the other main euro area countries (in both macro-magnitudes about 1.5 percentage points above the corresponding averages of Germany, France, and Italy) (Royo and Steinberg 2019). This recovery was driven by the expansionary impulses of fiscal and ECB monetary policies; the global decline in oil prices (particularly helpful for Spain since it imports all its oil); and the reforms already described, which contributed to re-establish external competitiveness and hence increase exports, which became a major engine of growth. By mid-2017 the Spanish economy had recovered pre-crisis activity levels (see Table 8.2). However, the impact of the recovery has been imbalanced and the economy still faces significant challenges: while unemployment, inequality and the risk of falling under the poverty line have all been declining, progress has been both slow and uneven (see Royo and Steinberg 2019).3
8.4.1 Unemployment Unemployment has been declining sharply from a high 5.04 million unemployed in February of 2013, to 3.16 million in June 2018, the lowest level since December 2008. However, the quality of many jobs has deteriorated and the crisis has also left a legacy of longterm unemployment: Spain is ranked next to last in the EU in long-term unemployment 3 Data in this section from: The Economist, Special report: Spain Democracy is about to turn 40. How well has it worn?, 26 July 2018; ‘La recuperación económica no reduce la brecha entre las rentas altas y las bajas’, in El País, 8 July 2018; ‘Atrapados por la Desigualdad’, in El País, 9 December 2017; and ‘Los salarios ganan solo dos puntos a la inflación en los últimos diez años,” in El País, 13 January 2018.
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The Great Recession in Spain 127 as a percentage of active population. This economic cycle has reaffirmed the rollercoaster pattern from previous crisis: the Spanish economy has a strong tendency to destroy employment very rapidly during periods of recession, and it creates employment at a very fast rate during periods of growth. The cost of this model, however, is significant in terms of productivity, instability, and low salaries.
8.4.2 Precariousness and Lower Quality of Employment Precariousness and employment instability still remain two important structural weaknesses of the country’s labour market. The temporary rate remains stubbornly high at 27.4 per cent, the highest rate in the EU. Furthermore, real wages in most new jobs have gone down, and there is more precarious self-employment. Despite increases to the minimum wage (the government increased it 4% in 2018) salaries also stagnated, and purchasing capacity barely improved between 2007 and 2017 because the accumulated inflation between 2007 and 2017 was 14.20 per cent, and salaries only increased 15.13 per cent for managers, and 16.36 per cent for regular workers during the same period. Civil servants saw their wages frozen for almost a decade. In sum, despite strong employment growth, the quality and stability of employment remains a problem and exacerbates inequality. This problem is particularly acute for younger workers: At 55.5 per cent, Spain still had in 2018 the second highest (after Greece) youth unemployment rate of the EU, and their salaries were very low: entry salaries for young people with university degrees average 21,000 euros (as a comparison, in Portugal the average is 19,390 euros and in Germany 48,560) (see Royo and Steinberg 2019).
8.4.3 Increasing Inequality Despite the notable employment progress described above, the country has not yet re-stablished the levels of income equality that it had prior to the economic crisis, and the benefits of the economic recovery have not been equitably distributed among the different segments of the population. According to a recent EU employment report, while in the EU the richest 20 per cent of households received an income share that was 5.2 times that of the poorest 20 per cent, in Spain that proportion is a little over 6.5 times (European Commission 2018).
8.4.4 Poverty According to the European Commission, in 2016, 28 per cent of Spaniards were suffering, or were likely to suffer, from poverty and social exclusion. Indeed, despite improvements in the Gini coefficient, which descended in 2016 from 34.5 to 34.1 points in just one year (as a point of reference before the crisis the Gini coefficient was 32.4 and the
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128 SEBASTIÁN ROYO average in the EU is 30), the economic recovery for people with low income has been too slow and has not helped to reduce inequalities between the top and bottom 20 per cent of earners. At the same time, according to EU data, the depth and persistence of poverty remains high: the relative median at-risk-of poverty gap is still close to 30 per cent, the rate of quasi-joblessness remains worrisomely high at 14.9 per cent, and the in-work atrisk-of-poverty rate is still one of the highest in the EU at 13.1 per cent (European Commission 2018).
8.4.5 Political Impact Initially Spain followed the pattern of other countries such as Greece, Ireland, or France, which punished severely the parties that were in government when the Great Recession started. The Socialist Party (PSOE) suffered a humbling defeat in the November 2011 election and lost fifty-nine seats in parliament (from 169 in 2008 to 110 in 2011), while the Popular Party (PP), under its leader Mariano Rajoy, obtained an absolute majority with 10.8 million votes (or 44.5%) and 186 seats in Parliament (up from 154). As noted in other chapters of this handbook, this election was also instrumental in the process that led to the fragmentation of the Spanish political system. Indeed, from a political standpoint one of the most important consequences of the crisis has been the rupture of the two-party system that had characterized the country’s political system since the 1990s, in which the PSOE and the PP had been alternating in power. The pain caused by the crisis, the endemic corruption in which largely all traditional parties (both national and regional) were implicated to different degrees, and internal divisions within the traditional parties (particularly the PSOE) all fuelled a wave of discontent that led to the erosion of support for the traditional national parties (PSOE and PP), and the emergence of new political parties, notably the leftist-populist Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos, which have led to the fragmentation of the political system. This fragmentation crystallized in the December 2015 election in which both Podemos (with 69) and Ciudadanos (with 40) entered the Spanish Parliament. In that election the PP lost sixty-three seats (from 186 to 123) and the PSOE twenty (from 110 to 90). The PP suffered the consequences of the economic pain caused by the recession at a time in which the benefits of the reforms were not yet fully evident, as well as the anger over the growing corruption scandals that the party was involved in, and the PSOE was punished by the voters for its internal divisions and inability to present a clear alternative to the PP. As noted in other chapters of this handbook, voters looking for alternatives to the trad itional parties flocked to the new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos. These electoral results introduced a new political landscape characterized by increasing fragmentation, volatility, unpredictability, and the need for parliamentary agreements to form a government and get any initiative approved in parliament. This new scenario led to paralysis following the election when none of the parties was able to build a sufficient majority to form a government, which led to a new general election in June of 2016.
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The Great Recession in Spain 129 The 2016 election produced a similar result: the PP got 137 seats, the PSOE (ravaged by internal divisions) 85, Podemos 71, and Ciudadanos 32. However, this time the PP was able to negotiate an investiture agreement with Ciudadanos and other smaller parties, and Rajoy was re-elected as prime minister with the abstention of the PSOE, which led a rupture within the party and a painful leadership election process that brought back its leader, Pedro Sánchez. Following a period of stability, the PP government was still marred by growing corruption scandals involving the party. A judicial sentence that confirmed the party’s involvement in a corruption scheme and sentenced some of its leaders to long-term prison precipitated a motion of no-confidence in June 2018 that led to the defeat of the Rajoy government and the unexpected election of the Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez as prime minister, with the support of Podemos and other smaller regional parties, despite the PSOE’s exiguous parliamentary representation of eightyfive seats. At the time of writing (September 2018) Sanchez has been able to build support from Podemos and other regional parties to pass his parliamentary initiatives. Amidst questions about the parliamentary fragility of the PSOE government, at the time of writing, Sanchez was still ploughing on, and a new election does not have to be called until June of 2020. In the end, the economic crisis has ushered a new era in Spanish pol itics that will likely be characterized by the continuing erosion of the two-party system, enduring fragmentation and hence, more instability. This situation has been compounded, as examined in other chapters of this handbook, by the crisis in Catalonia. Finally, one of the notable outcomes that separated Spain from other European countries was during the crisis the fact that the country did not produce a radical rightist, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant party until 2018 with the emergence of Vox (Royo and Steinberg 2019). In fact, Euroscepticism in Spain remains extremely low. This is a measure of the strong pro-European consensus that all major parties adhere to, including the new Socialist Government, as proved by their commitment to adhere to the cautious 2018 budget that had been approved by its conservative predecessor.
8.5 Conclusions Since the end of the recession in mid-2013, the Spanish economy has experienced a remarkable recovery, although in terms of employment and inequality, as we have seen, this convergence has been far less advanced. The reasons for the successful recovery of the Spanish economy are both endogenous and exogenous. The country has benefited clearly from the fall in oil prices in 2015–17, which boosted real incomes and lowered production costs (with estimated savings equivalent to two points in GDP); from the lower euro exchange rate (the euro fell 21% in that period), which helped exports; and from the loose monetary policies of the European Central bank, with interest rates close to zero, which lowered the cost to finance the debt. However, these are all temporary factors that were winding down in 2018. At the same time, the economic recovery has also
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130 SEBASTIÁN ROYO been the result of the structural reforms implemented in recent years, notably the labour market reform, the recapitalization and reform of the banking system, and the tax reforms, which lowered corporate tax from 30 per cent in 2015 to 25 per cent in 2016. These reforms have boosted Spain’s competitiveness and brought about a recovery in domestic confidence that have been instrumental in the economic recovery. However, the Spanish economy still faces significant challenges, and the negative consequences of the Great Recession are still felt across the country. Spain still needs to increase its potential growth, reduce inequality, reform its welfare system, address its demographic challenges, and raise its productivity level. The crisis has provided an important reminder that in the context of a monetary union, countries only control fiscal policies and relative labour costs. Spain did not take advantage in the boom years to implement the structural reforms that would have diminished the vulnerabilities of the country’s economy (notably its low productivity growth and its high dependence on the construction sector), and which would have placed it in a stronger position to confront the inevitable downturn. The recent crisis has provided the impetus, often marshalled from Brussels, to implement the structural reforms that had been previously hindered by domestic political constraints (see Royo and Steinberg 2019). As we have seen, the crisis-imposed exigencies of increasing competitiveness on the Spanish economy, which compelled the country (under Brussels’ insistence) to deregulate its labour market, welfare systems, and industrial relations. These reforms were designed not only to lower unit labour costs and make its markets in products or labour more intensely competitive, but also to reduce the role of the state in the economy. At the time of writing, it is fair to conclude that one of the outcomes of the crisis has been the transformation of the Spanish economy into a more liberal market economy, in which inequality is higher and the overall role of the state and welfare policies is lower (Hassel 2014, and Hall 2016). At the same time, although the new growth model seems more based on exports, it remains to be seen if current account surpluses can be sustained over time. Indeed, this is no time for complacency. In spite of its recent vigorous economic performance, the country still needs to address persistent labour precariousness, social inequalities, the high level of debt (over 100% of GDP in 2018), the impact on public finances of population ageing, as well as the high structural and youth unemployment rates. To do so, it needs to consolidate a different model of economic growth that is not just based on low costs and low value added, and instead deepens the country’s competitive capacity. Hence Spain should foster knowledge-based investment and implement the necessary reforms (including in education) that will stimulate productivity.
8.6 Bibliography Abreu, O. 2006. Portugal’s Boom and Bust: Lessons for Euro Newcomers. Brussels: European Commission. Armingeon, K. and L. Baccaro. 2012. The sorrows of young euro: The sovereign debt crises of Ireland and Southern Europe. In: Coping with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 162–98.
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The Great Recession in Spain 131 Bermeo, N. and J. Pontusson. 2012. Coping with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Dellepiane, S. and N. Hardiman. 2011. Governing the Irish Economy (UCD Geary Institute Discussion Series Papers). Dublin: University College Dublin. European Commission. 2018. Joint Employment Report. Brussels: European Commission. Hall, P. 2016. Varieties of Capitalism in Light of the Euro Crisis. Philadelphia: Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Hassel, A. 2014. Adjustments in the Eurozone: Varieties of Capitalism and the Crisis in Southern Europe. London: London School of Economics and Political Science. Kaminsky, G. and C. Reinhart. 1999. ‘The twin crises: The causes of banking and balance-ofpayments problems’. The American Economic Review 89(3): 473–550. Martínez-Mongay, C. and L. Maza Lasierra. 2009. ‘Competitiveness and growth in the EU’. Economic Papers 89(3): 1–42. Otero-Iglesias, M., S. Royo, S. and F. Steinberg. 2017. ‘War of attrition and power of inaction: The Spanish financial crisis and its lessons for the European Banking Union’. Revista de Economía Mundial 46: 191–214. Quaglia, L. and S. Royo. 2015. ‘Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain’. Review of International Political Economy 22: 485–507. Reinhart, C. and K. Rogoff. 2009. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Royo, S. 2013. Lessons from the Economic Crisis in Spain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Royo, S. 2015. After austerity: Lessons from the Spanish experience. In: Lessons from the Current Eurozone Crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Royo, S. 2018. Introduction: Portugal, forty-four years after the Revolution. In: Portugal, Forty-Four Years after the Revolution. Cambridge: Portuguese Studies, pp. 5–19. Royo, S. and F. Steinberg. 2019. Using a sectoral bailout to make wide reforms: The case of Spain. In: The Political Economy of Adjustment Throughout and Beyond the Eurozone Crisis: What Have We Learnt? New York: Routledge. Santos, T. 2017. El Diluvio: The Spanish Banking Crisis, 2008–2012 (Working Paper). New York: Columbia University. Sotiropoulos, D. 2018. Too little, too late. In: Socioeconomic Fragmentation and Exclusion in Greece under the Crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 89–108. Walter, S. 2016. ‘Crisis politics in Europe: Why austerity is easier to implement in some countries than in others’. Comparative Political Studies 49(7): 841–73.
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chapter 9
Eu ropea n iz ation of Politica l Struct u r e s a n d Pu blic Policies Javier Arregui
9.1 Introduction The European Union (EU) as an innovative case of regional integration has become a significant component of national politics, especially regarding public policies. Since the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), it is increasingly difficult to find domestic public policies that are not somehow related to European ones. In fact, at this stage of the integration process, the EU embraces normative powers in almost all policy areas and ‘it is beyond doubt that EU outputs have a significant impact on the authoritative allocation of values’ (Hix 2005, 4). Thus, the EU has become a permanent feature of political life in member states and this is why it is relevant to analyse the impact that the EU has had on Spain’s polity since 1986, when Spain became a member of the European Economic Community (EEC). This chapter is concerned with the incremental impact and the extent of change that Spanish domestic policies, politics, and polities have experienced as a consequence of the EU integration process. The analysis and study of the impact of European integration upon member states is usually characterized as Europeanization. The origins of the Europeanization process that is currently taking place in most EU member states started to emerge from the middle 1980s with the ratification of the Single European Act in 1986, and the subsequent accomplishment of the single market in the Treaty of Maastricht. Both steps represented cornerstones in the history of European integration. The Treaty of Maastricht included, in addition to the completion of the market, the monetary union and increasing cooperation in highly sensitive policies for member states such as justice and home affairs. After Maastricht, the EU has gradually gained capacities and now it is a key political actor with considerable economic, legal, and political implications for member states.
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Europeanization 133 The central idea of Europeanization is ‘the reorientation or reshaping of politics in the domestic arena in ways that reflect policies, practices and preferences advanced through the EU system of governance’ (Bache and Jordan 2006, 30). Within the literature some studies analyse the EU’s influence on member states (‘top-down’ Europeanization) while others the influence of member states on EU policy (‘bottom-up’ Europeanization). Both types of studies have been defined by Ladrech (1994, 69) within the concept of Europeanization. This concept is explained as ‘an incremental process reorienting the direction and shape of politics to the degree that EC political and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policy-making.’ Within this general frame, most scholars have attempted to scrutinize how the various characteristics of EU dynamics are increasingly having influence at the domestic level. This notion is best explained in the most complete definition of what Europeanization means, provided by Radaelli (2003, 30): Europeanization is defined as a set of ‘Processes of (a) construction (b) diffusion and (c) institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, ´ways of doing things` and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the making of EU decisions and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public policies.’ Thus, a standard categorization of the impact of Europeanization in member states distinguishes among the impact on public policies, the impact on the polity (structures and patterns of governance), and the impact on politics (including political actors, public opinion, and informal institutions). This is the notion this chapter uses in order to explore the weight that the Europeanization process has had so far in Spain. More specifically, the research question that guides this chapter is the following: What consequences and effects have Spain’s membership of the EEC/EU had on the institutional evolution of the Spanish Political System (SPS) since 1986? This chapter focuses on the inputs introduced in the SPS that have the potential to determine any relevant institutional change in the different arenas of decision- and policy-making. Institutional theory identifies structures (such as ideas, rules, norms) that become established as authoritative guidelines for the working of a polity. This view understands Europeanization in the broadest possible view insofar as it beats a process of domestic transformation and adaptation to the European integration. In fact, the EU imposes not only regulatory standards in several policy domains (related to the correct working of the European market) but also policy styles to member states (Risse et al. 2001). These policy styles refer to different ways in which member states are supposed to handle EU policy issues. Therefore, this chapter is going to increase our knowledge of the gradual transformation of the Spanish polity over the last three decades as a consequence of being part of the EU polity. This means that the process of Europeanization acts as an explanatory variable of the possible changes, transformations, or processes of institutional adaptation. However, it is necessary to note the difficulty of isolating the ‘effect of the EU’ from other important transformative processes that have taken place over these years, such as the consolidation of the democratic process, the decentralization process, or the same impact that the process of globalization has on the economy. From the methodological point of view, I must recognize that the extension of the variation is not
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134 Javier Arregui enough to identify the cause. This is because multiple processes have taken place over these thirty years and unravelling the role of each of them is not an easy task. The central focus of this chapter is theoretical and proceeds as follows. In the first section, I define Europeanization and the relationship that exists between this process and the processes of institutional transformation that are taking place in EU member states. Subsequently, I show the main inputs and outputs of Spanish membership in the EU. The third section analyses the impact of the EU on Spanish political institutions and governance. The fourth section examines the policy change and adaptation of Spanish public policies. Finally, the conclusion brings together the main determinants of Europeanization in the Spanish case.
9.2 Theory and Background In this section I introduce the main ideas and arguments elaborated within the literature in political science to explain the impact and scope of the Europeanization process on the domestic policies and structures of member states. The concept of Europeanization is related to other ideas that help us to understand the adjustments that are taking place in contemporary Europe in relation to the shifting role of governance as well as on the nature of the state itself. For example, the multilevel governance theory considers the EU as a political structure that interconnects levels of governance where different domestic actors interact with European institutions (Hooghe and Marks 2001). Thus, the EU integration process has created a multi-level system of governance where supranational, state and sub-state actors interact with each other in different stages of the policy process. This means that the EU has transformed/is transforming the system of governance in EU member states. As Kohler-Koch (1996) argues, European integration has shifted both the distribution of power between multiple levels of authority as well as the boundaries between the public and private spheres. As a consequence the nature of the state (formal and informal institutions and political processes) is being transformed (Kohler-Koch 1996; Kohler-Koch and Eising 2000). Institutional theory in political science is focused on the role that (formal and informal) institutions play in policy-making processes as well as in the functioning of the political system and governmental structures. Institutional theory has developed different approaches to explain the Europeanization process. First, the historical institutionalism approach has developed relevant studies about Europeanization (see Bulmer and Burch 1998; Bulmer 2009). The focus of those studies relied on the domestic adaptations in relation to EU policies, strategies, and institutions. Thus, policy change in member states is explained through structural factors (such as ‘path dependency’) or incentive factors (‘positive feedbacks’). Second, the sociological institutionalism has focused on the construction and diffusion of EU norms, values, ideas, etc., and the extent to which those informal institutions have been a motor of change both in member states but also in the EU (Checkel 2007). Third, the institutional rational choice approach has been
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Europeanization 135 focused on the introduction of the adaptation displayed by different domestic actors to the incentives provided by the EU policy process (from national governments to regional governments or interest groups) in order to promote predefined preferences in EU policy-making (Arregui 2007). The literature has also made clear that the EU’s influence on member states is not only a consequence of the growing integration process and the subsequent processes of transposition and/or implementation of EU legislation, but also the normative influence that the EU has on national policies is relevant (Conzelmann 1998). Moreover, political and institutional transformation can also happen in political sectors in which the EU does not have a direct normative capacity. This is a consequence of the spill-over effect produced by the integration process. According to this process, when new inputs are introduced into a political system, the preferences of the actors, the alliances, and strategies they carry out can be altered, transforming the content, processes, and political results of the same (Borrás et al. 1998). Europe becomes, in this way, not only an important issue of national politics but also an agent of change of the political and institutional system itself.
9.3 Spain in the EU Spain joined the EEC in 1986. Thus, it has been a member of the EU for more than thirty years. Across all these years, Spain has experienced a significant change in the content of public policies as well as in the configuration of formal and informal institutions. After the accession to the EU, Spain grew in self-confidence, and its economy became more liberalized, capitalized, and competitive (Elorza 1997, 29). As Closa and Heywood (2004) argued, the macroeconomic impact had two clear consequences. First, there was a direct economic impact related to a deep change in the patterns of production and consumption, mainly due to the introduction of the single market. Second, there has been a substantive impact on policies: the EU has encouraged competition as well as provided the institutional framework and essential legitimation for national macroeconomic policies (Fernandez Albertos, ch. 33 of this volume). Membership in the EU has also been relevant for local and regional governments insofar as they have had the opportunity to participate in European networks that facilitate processes of sharing interests, knowledge, and values. The main drivers of this change are probably those related to the consolidation of Spain as a democracy and the decentralization process (Colino, ch. 5 of this volume) as well as Spain’s membership of the EU. The combination of those three major changes has produced a great transformation process within the Spanish polity. Furthermore, as Morata (2013) argued, Spain is most likely the member state where the restructuration of the state has taken place both from ‘above’ and ‘below.’ This has been more intense as a consequence of both European integration and political decentralization. Although they are not directly related to each other, these three main drivers have clearly reinforced
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136 Javier Arregui each other. Thus, the consolidation and modernization of the Spanish democracy has been facilitated by the membership of Spain in the EU (Sánchez-Cuenca, ch. 2). At the same time, the EU membership has consolidated the role of Spanish Autonomous Communities in the policy-making and implementation of policy areas as relevant as agriculture, fisheries, rural development, or the environment. Spain is the only country in the EU where accession to the EEC has so far been supported by all political parties (Alvarez Miranda 1996). Indeed, all EU politics in Spain have been so far rather consensual. This has been a constant in the Spanish polity when ratifying the EU Treaties: (1) The ratification of the Maastricht Treaty had the support of 96.62 per cent of members of the Spanish parliament (MPs); (2) The ratification of the Treaty of Amsterdam was supported by 95.03 per cent of MPs; (3) The ratification of the Treaty of Nice achieved 87.64 per cent of MP support; (4) The Treaty of Lisbon gained 97.57 per cent of the support of MPs. Thus, we can talk about a consensus of positive opinion of Spanish parties towards the EU integration process. This might be attributed to initial broad public support towards EU membership and the subsequent political and economic benefits attained through membership. Spain has benefited enormously from the cohesion funds: the difference between what Spain has received and what it has contributed to the community funds in the period 1986–2017 is 144 billion euros in Spain’s favour (own calculation according to the Financial Annual Reports of the European Commission). The cohesion funds and also the CAP and fisheries funds have been a key financial instrument for the development of rural areas. Since 1992, Spain has been part of the single market with economic growth since 1992 until 2017 being on average 2.05 per cent per year. The year 2000 was the year in which Spain displayed the highest economic growth (5.3 per cent) while 2009 was the worst with a negative economic shock of -3.5 per cent. However, taking the whole period together (1992–2017), the Spanish economy has experienced an economic growth of 53 per cent. The Spanish economy has been fairly dynamic and these results have favoured an incremental convergence with the core of the EU countries as well as with the internationalization of the Spanish economy. A visible consequence of this transformation is the ratio between emigrants and immigrants. Spain that had traditionally been a country that exported population has become now a large recipient of immigrants. Thus, by the end of 2017 there were in Spain over five million immigrants (half of those came from EU member states and other half came from third countries). Another aspect is the dynamism of Spanish firms in the international arena. For example, Spanish firms have been in the last decade the largest European investors in Latin America, particularly in Argentina and Brazil. Spanish firms are also active investors in Asia, particularly in Singapore and China. Since 1986, one of the most important challenges facing Spain has been its ability to integrate itself into the structures and political process of the EU. Three Spaniards have been president of the European Parliament (Enrique Barón, José María Gil-Robles, and Josep Borrell), Javier Solana served as secretary general of the Council and high representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy between 1999 and 2009, and Gil Carlos Rodriguez held the presidency of the Court of Justice of the European Union
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Europeanization 137 (CJEU) between 1994 and 2003. Spain has also led relations with Latin American countries and is a key player within the Mediterranean Partnership and Arab countries. Spain has held four presidencies where it has promoted topics as relevant as the social dimension of the European market, the establishment of cooperative ties with Latin America and Mediterranean southern countries, the establishment of more cohesion funds, strengthening European cooperation in justice and home affairs (particularly in the fight against terrorism), the liberalization of the energy market, and the promotion of rights and freedoms within the European citizenship framework. Furthermore, Spain has been one of the member states that historically has called for further integration. Therefore, Spain has certainly been transformed in social, economic, and political terms. These processes have been facilitated to an important extent thanks to the nature and scope of the institutional adaptation processes that have taken place in the main political structures within the country since 1986. I analyse these changes in the next section.
9.4 Institutional Adaptation Processes Membership to the EU has certainly introduced significant variation and adaptation within the Spanish legislature, executive, and judiciary. The Spanish actors and institutions of the three branches (legislature, executive, and judiciary) have made an effort to adapt to and comply effectively with the demands of the EU political process. Next, I recount and explain the main institutional innovations and developments that have taken place so far within the three main political branches.
9.4.1 The Impact on the Legislature In the Spanish legislative arena there has, to date, not been any real party conflict over European integration. As mentioned earlier, the most important debates have taken place when the legislature had to approve international treaties and/or EU international agreements. These treaties and/or agreements have been widely accepted by a vast majority of the members of the Spanish Parliament. Thus, the traditional consensus on European issues that has existed in Spain between the different political parties has meant that ‘parliament has been favorably disposed to adapt the Spanish legal system to the demands of European integration, and is accustomed to act promptly, approving the laws required in the foreseen terms’ (Cienfuegos 2001, 201). But to what extent has the Europeanization of the Spanish Parliament been more a passive (understood as something that merely happens) or an active (a dynamic process of adjustment to the EU rules) phenomenon? This is a relevant question insofar as it will
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138 Javier Arregui provide information not only about the level of Europeanization of the Spanish legislative arena but also about the nature of the Europeanization process itself. In order to answer this question I analyse two types of data. Firstly, the level of debate and laws passed as a consequence of Spanish membership of the EU. Secondly, the number of oral questions that MSPs actually asked related to policies decided in Brussels. In principle, I expect that areas in which the EU holds more competences, the more attention legislative arenas should pay to EU-related issues (Rauh and De Wilde 2018). Palau (2018) has collected a data set that brings together both types of items. In relation to the number of European laws that must be approved in the Spanish Parliament, Palau considers a law as Europeanized if it is (totally or partially) defined by a European binding regulation (directives, regulation, decisions, Treaty provisions, or European Court of Justice decisions). According to her research, on average 42 per cent of legislation passed in the Spanish Parliament is totally or partially decided in Brussels (taking the whole period 1986–2015). However, the Europeanization process intensified after the Great Recession (2008–2018) reaching up to 75 per cent of legislation (Palau 2018, 12). Therefore, empirical evidence shows that in the last decade there has been a clear turning point (mainly as a consequence of the economic crisis and the subsequent new economic governance introduced in the Eurozone) in relation of the relevance of the EU in the daily working of the Spanish Parliament. A second indicator to measure the Europeanization of the Spanish legislative arena is to identify the number of oral questions that opposition parties ask members of the government related to EU policies. This is a good proxy to measure the degree of deliberation and competition among Spanish parties with reference to EU issues. Palau (2018) has collected data between 1982 and 2015. The analysis shows that oral questions raised by members of the Spanish Parliament that include EU content are rather limited in number: only 7 per cent of all oral questions introduced by Spanish parties have an EU content. Palau illustrates the example of environmental policies: while the EU produces 74 per cent of Spanish legislation on this policy, only 8 per cent of oral questions asked by members of the Spanish Parliament are in reference to this area. Furthermore, according to this study the number of oral questions with European content did not increase significantly after the economic crisis. Palau (2018) also mentions that this is a relevant difference compared to other member states, for example Germany, where with the outbreak of the crisis the presence of the EU in plenary meetings has considerably increased. There are some policy areas which are more Europeanized than others within the Spanish Parliament. Europeanization signals the increasing power of the EU to set the new legislative agenda in Spain predominantly in areas related to agriculture, the environment, economics, science and technology, and trade. In other policy areas such as defence, health, education, crime and justice, and transport, the level of interest is much less (Palau and Chaqués 2012; Palau 2018). The capacity of the EU in setting the Spanish legislative agenda has been increasing gradually since 2008. However, overall, it only accounts for legislation in specific areas. Furthermore, and according to the information presented, the Spanish legislative arena
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Europeanization 139 shows low levels of inquiry and scrutiny of EU affairs, considering the important level of Europeanized legislation. This seems to reveal that members of the Spanish government bring EU issues into the legislative game mainly to provide visibility to successful policies, while the opposition parties show a tendency to bring EU issues into the legislative arena when they believe they can wear down the party in office. Thus, EU politics and policies are brought into play in the Spanish Parliament more as a domestic strategy of parties rather than as a way to exercise deliberation and public control over EU policies. This is the case of, for example, the Danish Parliament where there is a long tradition of control and consideration over European policy. An increase in the debates over EU issues has also been identified in the German Bundestag while in other members states (France, UK, Finland, or the Czech Republic) this tendency has not been identified (see Zbiral 2016; Auel and Raunio 2014).
9.4.2 The Impact on the National Executive The scale and scope of European policy initiatives have required that all ministries (and the administrative structures on which they are supported) focus to a greater or lesser extent on European issues. The processes of adaptation in the administrative and executive structure in Spain have had some kind of impact on at least three levels. Firstly, in the creation of new institutions; secondly, in the creation of coordination mechanisms among all the ministerial departments; and thirdly, in adapting the structure of certain ministries to make them compatible with the demands and characteristics of the European political process itself (Closa and Heywood 2004; Arregui 2007). Regarding institutional creation and adaptation, the European integration process has had a moderate influence. Some new ministerial departments and ministries have been created with the aim of establishing political and programmatic coherence between the European and national political processes. This is why a General Secretariat of the Environment was created in 1990 and, later, in 1996, for the first time in Spanish history, a Ministry of the Environment. Until 1986, the moment that Spain became a member, there were no environmental policies and, therefore, the European Commission pressurized the subsequent Spanish governments to create new institutions in this policy area. Another ministry that has been profoundly transformed as a result of joining the EEC is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE). Prior to this accession, there was only one Directorate General for International Economic Relations (with a General Subdirectorate for European Integration) until 1978, and a Ministry of Relations with the European Communities was created thereafter. This has been transformed since 1986 to ensure the defence of Spanish interests in each of the different forums in which decisions are made in Brussels. The merger of the Ministries of Public Works and Transport and Telecommunications that took place in 1991 was as a result of pressure from the EU to improve the efficiency in the coordination of the structural funds that Spain was receiving at that time (Closa and Heywood 2004). This transformation facilitated the centralization of the distribution of these funds through a single ministry:
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140 Javier Arregui the Ministry of Infrastructure. Another reconverted ministry has been the former Ministry of Industry and Energy, which in the government stage of the People’s Party (1996–2004) became the Ministry of Science and Technology. The creation of this ministry clearly had its origin in European premisses (Molina 2001, 185–6). The objective of these changes was to achieve greater competitiveness in Spanish companies and provide an institutional response to the commitments made by member states to enhance policies in the fields of scientific research and knowledge development (Closa and Heywood 2004). A second type of institutional change refers to the creation of various ad hoc units to meet the requirements of European policy. These changes, although less visible, are no less relevant. An example of the first is the creation in 1996 of the Secretariat of State for Budgets and Public Expenditure in 1996, which depending on the Ministry of Economy, had as its main objective to ensure the Spanish fiscal and budgetary balance in view of the convergence of the monetary policy established by the EU. Another example is the creation of different national agencies that are in charge of ensuring the proper functioning of the market policies advocated by the EU, such as the Agency for the Defence of Competition, the National Stock Market Commission, the National Energy Commission or the Telecommunications Market Commission. The creation of these types of agencies reflects the transformation and modernization process experienced by the administrative and institutional structures in Spain in the last decades. The most recent agency that has been created is the Council for Financial Stability. This is an organization independent of the government, that is responsible for preventing and mitigating the systemic risk of the financial sector in the private sector as well as supervising the finances in the public sector. This new institution was also created in 2018 as a consequence of pressure from the European Commission.
9.4.3 The Impact on the Judiciary The CJEU is the institution in charge of guaranteeing compliance with and the application of European legislation in member states. After the process of Spain’s accession to the EEC in 1986, judicial institutions of the EU and Spain have progressively articulated their institutional action. Spain’s membership of the EU has meant the absorption of new legal norms and doctrines. The principles of primacy and direct effect are the two fundamental principles on which the relations between the Spanish legal system and the European legal order have been articulated. When Spain became part of the EEC, the CJEU had already secured the principles of primacy and direct effect for European legislation. The first refers to the idea that European laws prevail over national laws when both enter into collision. Therefore, this doctrine requires that national judges solve litigation by referring to European legislation. The doctrine of direct effect refers to the fact that European legislation creates rights that can be legally demanded by individuals in national courts of justice. Both doctrines have created new judicial argumentation frameworks and the processes of constructing such frameworks have been
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Europeanization 141 institutionalized in an expansive way. The number of judicial decisions that use arguments of precedents increases over time. This is because since the beginning of the 80s, the CJEU made it very clear that the courts of the member states should be based on judicial precedents (Stone Sweet 2004). In order to know to what extent the Spanish courts have acted as interlocutors of the CJEU I use the preliminary references made by Spanish judicial actors. Spain has a system of centralized judicial review. Within this system, judges may refer a question to the Constitutional Court when they have doubts about the constitutionality of national legislation regarding any issue. This mechanism allows for cooperative relations between national judicial bodies and the CJEU. A judge of any member state may make use of the preliminary reference whenever he/she has to apply a European law whose interpretation arouses some kind of doubt or is not (in his/her opinion) clear enough to resolve a dispute. The immediate effect of this procedure is to associate the European jurisdictional bodies with the administration of justice of member states. Preliminary rulings have had a key role for the construction of a legal order at the European level. The action of the Spanish courts regarding the European integration process has been described more according to patterns of collaboration with the CJEU than of conflict (Díez Peralta 2001; Martín and Liñán 2002). The success of the integration process in Spain has depended on the commitment that national courts have had when applying Community legislation. As Table 9.1 shows, Spanish lower courts have submitted most of the preliminary references to the CJEU (83 per cent). Thus, it is relevant to see that both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court have very rarely used this type of procedure. Indeed, as Morata (2013) argues, the Constitutional Court has declared itself incompetent to rule about the compatibility of Community law with domestic law, except for the protection of fundamental rights. Thus, lower courts are clearly more compromised with EU legislation. As a consequence, the succeeding preliminary references submitted mainly by lower courts have led to an adjustment process through which the Spanish authorities have been forced to adopt reforms on different issues, for example the position of mortgage debtors (Mayoral and Torres, Forthcoming), where decisions adopted by the CJEU forced a change to domestic consumer law. Table 9.2 shows the total number and the EU-mean of preliminary rulings brought by Spanish courts to the CJEU in the period 1986–2017. There have been 460 preliminary rulings, which is above the average of the EU-28 with 311 preliminary rulings.
Table 9.1. Preliminary rulings made by Spanish Judicial Actors (1986–2017). Spain Constitutional Court Supreme Court Lower courts Source: CJEU Annual Reports.
460 1 (0,2%) 78 (16,9%) 381 (82,9%)
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142 Javier Arregui
Table 9.2. Total and EU-Mean References for Preliminary Rulings (1986–2017). Germany 1930
Italy 1282
Netherlands 773
EU-28 mean 311
Spain 460
Denmark 176
Portugal 174
Sweden 134
EU-15 mean 525
Source: CJEU–Annual Reports.
The main factors that explain judicial mobilization of EU law in Spain are factors related to the identity of national judges as EU judges. A second factor is related to the dynamics of ideological judicial politics. This factor may activate EU law, particularly in those cases in which there is a public concern about economic and social issues. There are several recent examples, such as cases related to the EU housing and consumer law against the abusive clauses of banks, the ban made by the TCEU on the tax charged selling hydrocarbons in order to finance the health system, or about the right to be forgotten in the protection of data of physical persons. Therefore, Spanish national courts have institutionalized/are institutionalizing European norms as a key component of domestic legislation.
9.5 The Implementation of EU Legislation in Spain If we understand European integration as integration through the law, the laws adopted and implemented acquire great importance. The mechanisms through which the process of Europeanization have been carried out have been both the modification of existing laws and the introduction of new European laws. These processes have produced different types of responses. Based on these responses, we can talk about the degree of convergence of European policies and the level of Europeanization that these policies have acquired. Therefore, an objective indicator of the Europeanization of policies is the amount of EU legislation that Spain has implemented successfully: the higher the deficit in the implementation of EU law, the lower the Europeanization (Arregui 2016). Figure 9.1 displays the number of infringement resources opened by the European Commission against each of the twenty-eight member states. The data presented in this table refer to all the legislation adopted by the EU since 1995 until the end of 2017, and includes both secondary legislation (directives, regulations, and decisions) and legislation relating to the rules established in the successive EU Treaties. According to the information provided in Figure 9.1, and taking into account the large number of existing European legislation, the European Commission has opened 2,161 infringements against Spain. This figure is above the average of EU-28 (1,342 infringements). However, from the 2,161 opened infringements, only 186 were finally declared by the CJEU (see Figure 9.2). This means that the vast majority of infractions were resolved successfully
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Europeanization 143 4000 3262 3000
2000
2809 2281 1872
2630
2470
2161
2131
1844
1843
1686
1642
1326 1000
784
853
900
347
526
650
594
604 565
0 AT BE BG CY CZ DE DK EE EL ES FI FR HR HU IE IT LT LU LV MT NL PL PT RO SE SI SK UK
0
694
538
416
1229
911
Total infringement procedures (letter of notification, reasoned opinion, appeal to the Court of Justice)
Figure 9.1 Open infringement procedures (1995–2017). Source: Annual Reports—Court of Justice of European Union Annual Report
400
IT, 285
300 FR, 253
200
EL, 218
BE, 200
ES, 186
DE, 163
LU, 158
PT, 135
IE, 117 100
0
AT, 85
FI, 80
5
4
17 DK, 17
EE, 3
UK, 81
NL, 64
0
7
3
5
SE, 39
PL, 32 4
1
7 4
AT BE BG CY CZ DE DK EE EL ES FI FR HRHU IE IT LT LU LV MT NL PL PT RO SE SI SK UK
Figure 9.2 Infringements declared by the CJEU (1995–2017). Source: Court of Justice of European Union—Annual Reports
before they reached the CJEU, and the number of cases in which repeated infringements occur (and, therefore, declared infringements) are very limited. Thus, taking into account the vast amount of EU legislation, Spain has been rather successful when incorporating most of the EU legislation. Indeed, the transformation of normative and legal aspects as a result of EU legislation has been an incremental process being due to a great extent to the willingness of Spanish national courts to apply European legislation.
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144 Javier Arregui Agriculture and Rural development
142
Competition
45
Economic and financial issues
23
Employment and Social issues
103
Energy, Transport and Mobility
223
Innovation and Industry
86
Environment
885
Fisheries
20
Health and Consumption
179
Information and media
26
Internal market and Services
510
Justice and Internal issues
79
Taxation and Customs
150 0
250
500
750
1000
Figure 9.3 Infringement procedures opened to Spain through policy arenas (1995–2017). Source: European Commission
Thus, the process of Europeanization that is taking place through the implementation of European legislation is a slow and gradual process, but without interruptions and with great potential to transform both the content and the regulatory framework in the formulation and implementation of public policies in Spain. Figure 9.3 is focused on the variation of opened infringements by the European Commission between different policy areas. This figure shows that the policy areas where there are more problems in Spain are environmental policies (885 infringements), Internal Market and Services (510 infringements) and Energy, Transport, and Mobility (223 infringements). On the other hand, the areas with fewer infringements (and therefore better integrated) are fisheries, competition, and economic and financial issues. In other words, Europeanization of Spanish legislation varies considerably across policy areas. Summing up, these data and information show the gradual Europeanization of the main Spanish political arenas (legislature, executive, and judiciary) over the last decades. In order to complement this information, I focus in the next section on the effect of the EU public policies in Spain, particularly on these public policies that are related to the EU market-making.
9.6 The Impact of EU Membership on Market-Making and Economic Public Policies This section focuses on the EU public policies that have been most relevant in the construction of the EU integration process for member states. These are mainly related to
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Europeanization 145 the construction of the EU market as well as policies related to the monetary and the economic union. These are the most clearly Europeanized policies (competition policy, environmental policy, common agriculture policy, transport policy, and economic, financial, and fiscal policies). This does not mean than other policy areas have not had an impact from the EU integration process. In fact, the deepening of economic integration over time has triggered spill-over effects across different policy areas. However, this impact has been obviously less. In other words, some of the most important policy areas (those related to the ‘market-making’ policies and/or macroeconomic policies) have not only had a great influence but also a certain dependence on the EU. For example, the EMU served to undertake important economic reforms that probably would not otherwise have occurred or, in any case, they would have done so more slowly. Many of the reforms initiated in different sectors have been rather innovative within the Spanish political system. Such is the case of virtually all environmental policies, many regulatory and competition policies, the modernization of fishing and agriculture policies, etc. This means that in the last thirty years a new legal and institutional framework has been introduced in all these policy areas, facilitating the integration of the Spanish economy within the EU and the international context. The Common Agriculture Policy is the oldest common policy and one of the most important in the EU, both for its sophisticated regulatory mechanisms and its high budgetary weight. This policy guarantees the supply of quality food as well as ensuring minimum standards of living in rural areas. It has become a hallmark of the EU. Spain is one of the member states that has benefited most from community funds through three types: agro-environmental aid, aid for early retirement in agriculture, and aid for the reforestation of agricultural land. These policies have affected the modernization of rural areas and have made the Spanish agroindustry one of the most competitive in the EU. Europeanization with regard to Economic, Financial and Fiscal Policies has been highly relevant, particularly after the euro crisis of 2008. After the post-2008 crisis, Spain was one of the EU member states that had to face an increasing distrust of international markets and the subsequent escalation in public debt. Both put Spain at risk. In this situation the adoption of certain measures that would guarantee budgetary stability and control of the public deficit were necessary. This is why the Spanish Parliament—on the initiative of the Executive—decided in September 2011 to ratify a modification of article 135 of the Spanish Constitution. The aim was to be able to guarantee budgetary stability as well as the economic sustainability of the state itself. Another important aspect of the Europeanization of economic policy in Spain has been the institutionalization of the European Semester. This is a cycle of coordination of economic and budget policies within the EU. It is part of the new economic governance framework of the EU. The European Semester focuses on three economic policy coordination blocks: 1) Structural reforms, dedicated to promoting growth and employment in accordance with the Europe 2020 Strategy. The Labour Reform implemented in Spain in 2012 would be an example. 2) Budget policies in order to guarantee the sustainability of public finances. This means that the annual budget of Spain (like that of the rest of member states of the Eurozone) must be supervised by the Commission and Ecofin before its
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146 Javier Arregui final approval in the Spanish Parliament. The recommendations made to Spain to correct their excessive deficits in 2016 and 2017 would be an example. 3) Prevention of excessive macroeconomic imbalances. In relation to this point, the European Commission has recommended that Spain continue on the path of creating stable employment—in particular, the promotion of permanent contracts—as well as improving training for employment and social policies, increasing investment in research and innovation, and adopting cost efficiency measures in public procurement. All these policies are being incorporated to a great extent into domestic policies. Environmental Policy in Spain has been transformed in a radical way since Spain has been part of the EU. In fact, Spain did not have a proper environmental policy before becoming a member of the EU. At that time the only environmental laws were related to the establishment and protection of national parks. This means that the new legal and institutional framework has been driven mainly by the EU policies themselves (for example, the establishment in 2002 of the National Climate Council after the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol). Action and transformation have focused on areas such as climate change, nature and biodiversity, the environment and health, natural resources and waste. These areas cover important policies such as air pollution, the prevention and recycling of waste, the protection and conservation of the marine environment, the protection of soils, the use of pesticides and the sustainable use of resources. In spite of the fact that environmental policies is the area in which Spain has the most infringements of EU legislation, this area has been transformed drastically in the last three decades within the Spanish polity. The Europeanization of Transport Policy started to become relevant after the Maastricht Treaty when programmatic and financial instruments were created. However, the turning point took place after 2011 when the Commission sought to create a truly European single transport area, eliminating all residual barriers between modes of transport and national systems, promoting the integration process, and facilitating the emergence of multinational operators. The EU has also been involved in the policy of building transEuropean networks that will form the backbone of a multimodal transport capable of providing transport solutions facilitating the best functioning of the internal market. Furthermore, through the Structural Funds, Spain has constructed the most extensive high-speed train network in the EU (2,919 km in 2017). The investment made in the construction of this high-speed rail network has been 45 billion euros (Albalate and Bel 2015). Finally, through the European Structural and Investment Funds, more than 110 billion euros have been made available, a part of which has been allocated to the financing of the low-carbon economy throughout the EU, which includes investments in sustainable energies and multimodal urban transport. There has also been ample support for investments related to energy efficiency and decarbonized transports, as well as some aid for smart energy infrastructures on a large scale. Therefore, these policies have changed drastically the content and nature of transport policies (and its relevance for economic development) implemented in Spain in the last years. The Europeanization of Competition Policies in Spain can be seen through the creation of a series of institutions that are responsible for the good functioning of competition
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Europeanization 147 policies at the domestic level, for example the National Commission of Markets and Competition (NCMC), which is the body in charge of preserving and guaranteeing the correct functioning and transparency, and the existence of effective competition and efficient regulation in all productive sectors in Spain. The NCMC was created in 2013 from the integration of six organisms: the National Competition Commission, the National Energy Commission, the Telecommunications Market Commission, the National Postal Sector Commission, the State Council of Audiovisual Media, and the Committee of Railway Regulation and Airports. Courts for the defence of competition have also been created in some regions: Galicia, Murcia, Valencia, Extremadura, Castilla-León, Catalonia, Aragón, and the Basque Country. Andalusia has an Agency for the Defence of Competition. Another consequence of the Europeanization of competition policies has been to make Spanish companies more competitive at the international level. In fact, according to Fortune Global 500, the number of Spanish companies among the 500 largest companies in the world has increased from three in 1995 to nine in 2018.
9.7 Conclusion This chapter shows that the Spanish polity has experienced an incremental change since 1986 as a consequence of its EU membership. Membership has had a significant impact on the main political structures and on the public policies that are related to the creation of the EU market and the subsequent monetary and economic union. EU membership has introduced a substantial adaptation within the Spanish legislature, executive, and judiciary. All these arenas have made a major effort in the last three decades to comply effectively with the demands from the EU polity. Thus, the Europeanization process has produced significant change in the legislature in the last decade (2008–18) when the EU has begun controlling the economic governance of the Eurozone countries. The Spanish Parliament has also improved its monitoring function over the executive’s European policy. This is particularly evident in policy areas such as agriculture, the environment, economics, trade, and science and technology. This chapter has also shown that the executive arena has generated remarkable innovations by creating new institutions (for example, the Ministry of the Environment), by making new mechanisms of coordination among ministerial departments (Directorate General of European affairs), and through the adaptation of different departments and ministries to EU governance (Ministry of Science and Technology). Thus, the main mechanism of Europeanization has been the ‘goodness of fit.’ This concept is related to the idea that the degree of pressure created by Europeanization depends on the degree of ‘fit’ or ‘misfit’ between European and domestic norms or political structures. In the Spanish case, the degree of Europeanization has been clearly higher on those norms and structures with a high ‘misfit’ such as, for example, environmental policies. Furthermore, in these processes, agency factors have been crucial (Risse et al. 2001, 9) insofar as Spanish actors have been willing to cooperate and adapt to the main demands made by the EU
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148 Javier Arregui governance. The integration process has also meant the absorption of new legal norms and doctrines in Spanish Courts. The CJEU has transformed the action of a set of horizontal agreements between sovereign states into an integrated and vertical legal regime. Spanish courts have acted as interlocutors of the CJEU, and the relationship between the two levels has taken place in terms of cooperation. In other words, there has been a process of legislative and normative Europeanization through the action of Spanish courts. In addition, a robust Europeanization process has also taken place through the content and the regulatory framework in the formulation of public policies. This impact can be clearly seen in the formulation of budget or market-making policies, and in the frames of reference that elites use when making policy decisions. This along with significant levels of implementation of the policies decided in Brussels, has introduced relevant innovations within Spanish public policies. Perhaps the most visible adjustment made by Spanish elites was the modification of the Spanish Constitution that took place in September 2011 in order to guarantee budget stability and the economic sustainability of the state itself. Therefore, the Spanish political system has experienced/is experiencing a process of substantive institutional transformation as a consequence of EU membership. This process is characterized by being an incremental and silent process, but nevertheless it has sufficient power to introduce a number of inputs with great capacity for altering the Spanish polity. This chapter has been made with the support of the Erasmus + Programme of the EU (Grant Reference 600488-EPP-1-2018-1-ES-EPPJMO-CHAIR) as well as thanks to the support of the Spanish Minister of Economy and Competitiveness through the project with reference CSO 2015-67213 -C2-2-P.
9.8 Bibliography Albalate, D. and G. Bel. 2015. ‘La experiencia internacional en alta velocidad ferroviaria.’ (Working Paper). Fedea. Álvarez Miranda, B. 1996. El Sur de Europa y la Adhesión a la Comunidad. Madrid: CIS. Anon. 2004. ‘Bureaucrats, politicians, and societal interests: How is European policy making politicized?’ Comparative Political Studies 37(10): 1119–50. Arregui, J. 2007. Europeización y transformación institucional del sistema político español. In: España en Europa, Europa en España (1986–2006). Barcelona: Fundació Cidob, pp. 123–48. Arregui, J. 2016. ‘Hasta qué punto cumplen los estados miembros con la legislación de la UE? Teoría y factores empíricos sobre el proceso de implementación’. Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto 55: 165–91. Auel, K. and T. Raunio. 2014. ‘Debating the state of the union? Comparing parliamentary debates on EU issues in Finland, France, Germany and the United Kingdom’. Journal of Legislative Studies 20(1): 12–28. Bache, I. and A. Jordan. 2006. Europeanisation and domestic change. In: The Europeanisation of British Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Europeanization 149 Borrás, S., N. Font, and N. Gómez. 1998. ‘The Europeanisation of national policies in comparison: Spain as a case study’. South European Society and Politics 3(2): 23–44. Börzel, T. 1999. ‘Towards convergence in Europe? Institutional adaptation to Europeanisation in Germany and Spain’. Journal of Common Market Studies 37(4): 573–96. Börzel, T. 2005. How the European Union interacts with its member states. In: The Member States of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 45–69. Bulmer, S. 2009. ‘Politics in time meets the politics of time: Historical institutionalism and the EU timescape’. Journal of European Public Policy 16(2): 307–24. Bulmer, S. and M. Burch. 1998. ‘Organizing for Europe: Whitehall, the British state and the European Union’. Public Administration 76(4): 601–28. Checkel, J. 2007. Constructivism and EU politics. In: Handbook of European Union Politics. London: Sage Publications, pp. 57–76. Cienfuegos, J. 2001. Las Cortes Españolas ante la integración Europea. In: La Europeización del sistema político español. Madrid: Istmo, pp. 198–221. Closa, C. and P. Heywood. 2004. Spain and the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Conzelmann, T. 1998. ‘Europeanisation of regional development policies? Linking the multilevel approach with theories of policy learning and policy changes’. European Integration online papers 2(4). Díez Peralta, E., 2001. ‘La adaptación judicial: jueces y derecho comunitario’, in C. Closa (ed.), La europeización del sistema político español (Madrid: Istmo), pp. 263–96. Elorza, F. 1997. ‘Reflexiones y balance de diez años en la Unión Europea’. Información Comercial Española 776: 15–29. Hix, S., 2005. The Political System of the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hooghe, L. and G. Marks. 2001. Multi-level Governance and European Integration. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Kohler-Koch, B. 1996. ‘Catching up with change: The transformation of governance in the European Union’. Journal of European Public Policy 3(3): 359–80. Kohler-Koch, B. and R. Eising. 2000. The Transformation of Governance. London: Routledge. Ladrech, R. 1994. ‘Europeanisation of domestic politics and institutions: The case of France’. Journal of Common Market Studies 32(1): 69–88. Martín, P., and D. Liñán. 2002. ‘La aplicación del Derecho Comunitario en España durante 2000 y 2001’. Revista de Derecho Comunitario Europeo 6(12): 583–627. Mayoral, J. and A. Torres. Forthcoming. ‘On judicial mobilization: Entrepreneuring for policy change at times of crisis’. Journal of European Integration. Molina, I., 2001. La adaptación a la Unión Europea del poder ejecutivo español. In: La Europeización del Sistema Político Español. Madrid: Istmo, pp. 160–96. Moller Sousa, M. 2008. ‘Learning in Denmark? The case of Danish parliamentary control over European Union policy’. Scandinavian Political Studies, 31(4): 428–47. Morata, F. 2013. Spain: Modernization through Europeanisation. In: The Member States of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 134–160. Palau, A. 2018. The Impact of Europe on Parliamentary Behaviour: A Multi-Level Perspective. Barcelona, Paper presented at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Palau, A. and L. Chaqués. 2012. The Europeanisation of law-making activity in Spain. In: The Europeanisation of Domestic Legislatures: The Empirical Implications of the Delors’ Myth in Nine Countries. New York: Springer, pp. 173–96. Radaelli, C. 2003. The Europeanisation of public policy. In: The Politics of Europeanisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 27–56.
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150 Javier Arregui Rauh, C. and P. de Wilde. 2018. ‘The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states’. European Journal of Political Research 57(1): 194–216. Risse, T., M. Green Cowles, and J. Caporaso. 2001. Europeanisation and domestic change: Introduction. In: Europeanisation and Domestic Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–20. Stone Sweet, A. 2004. The Judicial Construction of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Torreblanca, J. 2001. La Europeización de la Política Exterior Española. In: La Europeización del Sistema Político Español. Madrid: Istmo, pp. 483–511. Zbiral, R. 2016. ‘Comparing the intensity of scrutiny for “domestic” and implementing bills: Does transposition of EU law reduce political contestation in national parliaments?’ Journal of European Public Policy 24(7): 1–20.
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Pa rt I I I
I NST I T U T IONS
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chapter 10
Politica l I nstitu tions i n a Compa r ati v e Perspecti v e Josep M. Colomer
10.1 Introduction The establishment of the current political and institutional regime in Spain in the second half of the 1970s was broadly celebrated and has often been taken as a model for other processes of political change from authoritarian rule by relatively peaceful means. The ‘Spanish model’ was identified with negotiations and pacts among polit ical elites and a consensus among the citizenry which avoided acts of revenge, violent confrontation, and civil war. Spanish politicians presented themselves abroad as proud leading figures in this process, and numerous politicians from other countries in transition—in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s, Latin America in the 1980s, and Eastern Europe in the 1990s—made glowing references to the Spanish experience and sought inspiration from it. More than forty years later, some virtues of the transition have become vices of democracy. The path to change left its trace on the outcome. The working of the insti tutions, partly because it is still largely inspired by a kind of private negotiations among politicians similar to those who led the transition, has eventually become exclusionary and has consolidated the power of an oligarchical political class. This chapter reviews the design and the performance of the main political institutions of Spain in a comparative perspective with other countries, especially within the European Union.
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154 Josep M. Colomer
10.2 A Parliamentary Monarchy The main constraint on constitutional design in Spain in the mid-1970s, after General Franco’s dictatorship, was the monarchy. The dictator had appointed as his successor Juan Carlos of Bourbon, who was proclaimed king in December 1975, forty-four years after his grandfather was overthrown. This was, by far, the longest period of vacancy for any restored monarchy in modern times. It contrasted, in particular, with the fate of other royal dynasties in Southern Europe: in Portugal the monarchy was ended by a military coup in 1910; in Italy it was defeated by the official results of a referendum in 1946; and in Greece it was submitted to five referendums in fifty years by which it was abolished in 1924, restored in 1935 and 1946, and abolished in 1973 and 1974.1 After the first open election in Spain in 1977, the incumbent government, formed by reformers of the dictatorial regime, made the preservation of the monarchy a major issue. During the further parliamentary negotiations, they turned out to be ready to bargain the monarchy for the bill of rights and freedoms that was promoted by the democratic opposition, which facilitated the elaboration of a full new constitution (Colomer 1995). Out of about two hundred countries in the current world, forty have monarchies, about half of them autocratic and half more or less democratic (including the members of the British Commonwealth). They include seven democratic parliamentary mon archies in Europe: the United Kingdom, together with Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands (in addition to a few micro-countries: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and the Vatican) (Stepan, Linz, and Minoves 2014). Trying to fit the institution of a hereditary monarchy with democracy discarded the establishment of a presidential or semi-presidential regime with an executive Chief of State—like those of the neighbour countries, France and Portugal at the time. It has been argued that parliamentary regimes tend to have relative advantages regarding the dur ation of democracy and consistent policy-making (Linz 1990). It has also been argued that democratic parliamentary monarchies perform better than democratic republics in terms of promoting moderation, protecting property rights, and favouring better eco nomic performance (Guillen 2018), an advantage that may be due to the negative effects of partisan and often polarizing presidential elections. In contrast to partisan presidential elections, getting a hereditary king or queen is a lottery with a wider range of possible qualifications of the blessed. So far, in comparison with almost all previous kings and queens of Spain, the recent Spaniards have attained 1 Other cases of abolition of monarchies in the twentieth century include Korea in 1910 and China in 1912, four great empires after World War I: Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey; four more cases after World War II: Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia; and eight cases in the Middle East and Northern Africa in processes of decolonization, from Egypt in 1953 to Iran in 1979. There were also failed referendums for restoring the monarchy in Brazil in 1993 and for abolishing it in Australia in 1999.
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Political Institutions 155 jackpot. Juan Carlos I was called ‘the democratizer’ for his active role in promoting pacted regime change during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. He was, however, pressured to abdicate after a few scandals when he was 77 years old, in 2014, about a year after the monarchs of the Netherlands and Belgium had done it solely for reasons of age. His son and successor, Philip VI, has enjoyed broad popularity, up to the point to make the leader of the far-left party acknowledge that he would likely win a hypothetical election for Chief of State.2 According to the Constitution, the king of Spain is the head of state and the symbol of its unity and permanence, like the monarchs in other countries. His protocolary duties include the accreditation of ambassadors and the representation of the state in some international gatherings. Following a long, never-cancelled tradition derived from the British Crown, it is also incumbent on the king of Spain to summon and dissolve parlia ment, to propose to parliament a candidate for president of government, and to sanction and promulgate laws and decrees. But, like his colleagues in parliamentary democratic regimes, it is expected that he will fulfil these duties in accordance with election results. Although it has been claimed that the Spanish king’s role as the supreme commander of the Armed Forces is exceptional, in fact it is also common to the Chiefs of State of most democracies, whether monarchical or republican. More interesting is the king’s constitutional role to ‘arbitrate and moderate the regular functioning of the institutions’. Juan Carlos I not only promoted democratization and stopped a military coup d’état, he also convened party leaders discreetly, from behind the curtains, on several occasions, for instance to encourage the formation of an unforeseen parliamentary majority between the People’s party and the Catalan nationalists and to call the Populars and the Socialists to stop fighting on disparaging education laws. Philip VI has been more circumspect. Some opinion circles missed more active intermediation of the Crown in the crisis produced by the lack of parliamentary majorities and govern ment after two successive elections within six months in 2015 and 2016—like the mon archs of Belgium or the Netherlands are more used to do. His government-led, sharp televised speech after the illegal unilateral declaration of independence of Catalonia in 2017 also disappointed some expectations that he could act as a broker of dialogue.
10.3 Sovereignty without Europe The Preliminary Part of the Spanish Constitution establishes the fundamental principles of the political regime. Article 1 proclaims Spain’s ‘national sovereignty’; article 2 enshrines ‘the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards’; and Article 8 conveys that ‘the mission of the Armed Forces, comprising the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, is to guarantee the 2 Pablo Iglesias, leader of We Can (Podemos), 9 March 2015.
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156 Josep M. Colomer sovereignty and independence of Spain and to defend its territorial integrity and the constitutional order.’ These principles strongly contrast with those in the current constitutions of most European countries. Out of the twenty-eight members of the EU, in eight of them the notion of ‘sovereignty’ is not even mentioned (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom). In most of the others, ‘sover eignty’ is referred to the people or the nation as a synonym of democracy. Only in two cases are the Armed Forces given the mission to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country: Bulgaria and Spain. This Spanish eccentricity derives from the constraints under which the 1978 Constitution was drafted and the lack of reforms of it during more than forty years. The basic tenets quoted above were not the work of the parliamentary Drafting Committee of the Congress of Deputies that was elaborating the constitutional text, but they were secretly negotiated and pacted in the Moncloa Palace, the President of Government’s residence, by his host, Adolfo Suarez, and the chiefs of the Army (most of whom had fought on General Franco’s side during the Civil War forty years previously). The pacts found their way in the form of handwritten sheets of paper delivered by Suarez to a member of the parliamentary Drafting Committee, Gabriel Cisneros, who read them aloud to the other Committee members with the instruction of not altering a single comma in them. Another member of the Committee and future chairman of the Congress of Deputies, Gregorio Peces-Barba, frankly acknow ledged that they accepted the letter of these articles ‘to reassure the Francoist bunker and the military’ (Sole Tura 1985; Colomer 1995; Peces-Barba 2003). Nowadays, the actual sovereignty of states is fatally challenged by transnational technological and economic developments, the global institutions and, in particular, the increasing integration of the European Union. Yet Europe or the EU were not ini tially mentioned in the Constitution of Spain. The only mention was included twenty-five years after Spain had become a member-state of the EU, in 2011, just to include the principle of budgetary stability and a reluctant acquiescence not to enter ‘into a structural deficit beyond the limits stipulated, if applicable, by the European Union for its Member States’. This also makes Spain an outlier. The constitutions of twenty-two of its member states refer to the European Union—often in a specific title or chapter devoted to the topic—to confirm their membership, to affirm the sharing of its values, laws, institutions, and citi zenship, and, in particular, to regulate the country’s participation in the elections of the European Parliament. In most cases there are explicit references to ‘transfer’ or ‘confer’ to the EU state’s sovereignty, sovereign rights, competences, authority, power or deci sion-making authority, and to consent to ‘limit’ the exercise of sovereignty according to the EU’s treaties and the subsequent obligations and commitments (and not only those referred to the deficit or the debt). The average number of mentions of the European Union in those constitutions is twenty-four, in contrast to the single, skimpy reference in the Spanish Constitution just mentioned.
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10.4 The Federal-Proportional Trade-Off Any design of political institutions for a durable democracy must take into account the size, the diversity, and the complexity of the country. In a small, homogeneous country, simple institutions such as a unitary territorial structure, a single chamber parliament, and a majority-rule electoral system typically associated with two-party systems and single-party governments, may produce sufficiently satisfactory results, be accepted by most people, and enjoy long duration. For larger and more diverse countries, however, more complex institutions, including federalism with a second upper chamber and pro portional representation associated with multiparty systems and coalition govern ments, may be needed (Colomer 2001). Spain is a medium-large size country with high levels of internal economic and cul tural diversity where the establishment of a new democratic regime required clear choices regarding its institutional design. During the transition and the constituent period in the late 1970s, the notion of democracy was associated with freedom for all political parties with varied ideological allegiances, which led to establishing an elect oral system based on the principle of proportional representation. At the same time, the economic and cultural diversity of the country demanded a decentralized, federal-like structure. Numerous political leaders and broad sectors of the population in the traditional industrial regions of Catalonia and the Basque Country, the also bilingual Baleares, Galicia, Navarre, and Valencia, the remote Canary Islands, and other territor ies, were not ready to assent to a simple regime with a unitary profile. To some degree, proportional representation and federalism can be alternative for mulas to facilitate good governance. Multiple political parties may play the role of aggre gative, non-territorial ‘administrations’, while territorial governments can be considered as kinds of intermediate, aggregative, non-ideological ‘parties’. Then, a large assembly based on proportional representation and multipartism can be aggregative because it can lead to the formation of some broad government multiparty ‘coalition’, while a large number of territorial political units in a federal structure can be the basis for a large, aggregative ‘union’. Both ‘coalition’ and ‘union’ can keep a large and varied country together by using democratic means of governance. Yet, the trade-off between multipartism and decentralization is not linear. Different combinations of electoral formulas and territorial arrangements can be appropriate for countries of different sizes. Specifically, in a large, sparse country in which relatively homogeneous communities are formed in separate places, federalism can be effective for good governance, to the point of being compatible with different electoral systems for the lower chamber. The very large and extremely diverse India or the United States, which use restrictive single-seat electoral districts but are extremely decentralized, are
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158 Josep M. Colomer cases in point. Likewise, medium-sized countries with more diverse or mixed groups of the population within dense communities, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, were pioneers in establishing electoral rules of proportional representation and favouring multiparty coalition governments able to represent different interests and values from each community. Proportional electoral rules have spread widely among new democracies in medium-sized countries across the world in recent decades (Colomer 2014). Despite officially embracing the pluralistic principle of proportional representation, the institutional and political regime of Spain is strongly biased in favour of g iving homo geneous national representation to certain sectors of the country’s population at the expense of the more diverse zones. The exclusionary formation of minority central governments based on the over-representation of the larger parties is broadly accepted by the population of vast areas with low density, relatively backward economy, and homo geneous Castilian cultural patterns. This has indirectly favoured, as compensation, the push for territorial decentralization of institutional power from the denser, more devel oped, and diverse territories, which has eventually generated centrifugal moves. In many respects, Spain is a dual country. In economic terms, it is split between vast regions plagued by unemployment, precariousness, and poverty, and industry, services, and tourism areas in the capital and the periphery. In political terms, it is riven by a dual electoral system formed by small districts with representation of only two parties, and larger districts with mutipartism. As a consequence, there is also a contrast between the central government always formed by a single minority party, and the multiparty major ity governments in a number of peripheral territorial governments. In some regions, the population would prefer to have less autonomy and rely more on the central govern ment, while in others the opposite sentiments prevail. We will review the working of these institutional formulas in more detail.
10.5 A Biased Electoral System The current electoral system for the Spanish lower chamber or Congress of Deputies was initially established by decree-law by a nonelected government in 1977 and con firmed by law by a single-party absolute majority in parliament in 1985. As mentioned, the system is based upon the principle of proportional representation that was negoti ated between the incumbent nondemocratic government and the opposition for the first election and was later enshrined in the Constitution. This principle is in accordance with most democracies in the world and most member-states of the European Union, the major exceptions being the majority-rule system in France, plurality rule in Great Britain, and the mixed systems of Hungary, Italy, and Lithuania (Colomer 2004). While proportional representation is generally associated with multiparty systems, the electoral system for the Spanish Congress of Deputies is biased to give a wide advantage to the two larger parties and fatal disadvantage to Spain-wide medium-size
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Political Institutions 159 and small parties. Also, as was intended in the initial design, a large party well established in rural districts could gain a greater number of deputies than another, more urbanbased party which might have received more popular votes (Alzaga 1989; see also Colomer 2019). As a consequence of these biases, the electoral rules have favoured the strategic vote on behalf of the larger parties, commonly known in Spain as the ‘useful vote’. Many voters have learned to anticipate the consequences of the electoral rules and have adapted their behaviour: according to a number of surveys of the Centre for Sociological Researches (CIS), the sympathizers of the smaller parties tend to vote more in accord ance with their party preferences in twice as big a proportion in the large electoral dis tricts as in the small ones. As a consequence of both mechanical under-representation and strategic vote, a number of small or medium-sized Spain-wide parties have just dis appeared from the system, including Christian-democrats, left-socialists, liberals, and other groups that in alternative institutional settings could have played a pivotal role in forming a majority coalition government like in many other countries in Europe. In practice, a dual electoral system operates. On the one hand, about 50 per cent of all deputies are elected in districts with seven or fewer seats, which function as in a plurality system in which only one or two parties can receive seats. On the other, the remaining 50 per cent of deputies are elected in a few districts with a higher numbers of seats, which permits a degree of multipartism. In the thirteen elections in the 1977–2016 period, the electoral system produced four single-party absolute majorities of seats in parliament, always based upon a minority of popular votes: two for the centre-left Socialist Party, PSOE, and two for the right People’s Party, PP. On average, the largest Spain-wide party has obtained a majority of votes in only four of the seventeen Autonomous Communities. Somehow, however, the electoral system backfired against certain aims of its design ers and supporters. Since it favours the larger parties, some regional parties with signifi cant support in their districts receive overall fair shares of seats according to their votes. This made the larger nationalist parties of Catalonia, the Basque Country, and the Canary Islands frequent pivotal partners in the Spanish parliament to negotiate legisla tive and power exchanges in support of minority governments. Consequently, the issue of decentralization gained prominence in the political agenda. Against some initial expectations, bipolar competition between the two larger Spain-wide parties largely turned around the issue of the territorial structure of the state.
10.6 Single-Party Minority Governments The bias of the electoral system in favour of the larger parties is complemented by the rules for the formation and the overthrow of governments in parliament, which strongly
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160 Josep M. Colomer favour the emergence and survival of powerful minority governments. According to the indices elaborated by the Comparative Constitutions Project, the Spanish Executive lies at the highest rank, as it enjoys all the seven important executive powers considered: initiating legislation, issuing decrees, initiating constitutional amendments, declaring states of emergency, issuing vetoes, challenging the constitutionality of legislation, and dissolving the parliament. The president of the government is appointed by the Crown, after having been invested by the parliament like in most parliamentary democracies. In the old Britishstyle parliamentarism the Crown’s speech measures the new government parliamentary support. But a formal investiture of the government by parliament was first introduced in Belgium, Ireland, and Austria after World War I, and it was widely adopted by other countries in successive waves of democratization. The only European countries currently not requiring such an appointment include Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Norway, although the governments in these countries are also submitted to possible motions of confidence or censure (Cheibub, Martin, and Rasch 2015). The Spanish investiture of a president of government requires an absolute majority of the deputies in a first round, but only a plurality or relative majority in a second round. This implies that an early dissolution of the chambers can be avoided if no candidate gets majority support and a minority government is formed thanks to sufficient abstentions by deputies. The presidential candidate is not obliged to present the members of the government to the parliament. In contrast, the president of the government can be overthrown by parliament only by a ‘constructive’ censure motion requiring an absolute majority of deputies in support of an alternative candidate. The ‘constructive’ censure was originated in Prussia in 1919 and, more notoriously, in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949 in a reaction against the governmental instability of the previous Weimar Republic in the 1920s which opened the door to Nazism. Spain was the second country to adopt such a device, viv idly paralleling the fears of reproducing the political instability of the Second Republic in the 1930s, which was also defeated by Fascism. Further on, the constructive motion of censure was adopted by Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia in the 1990s, also after long dictatorships, as well as by Belgium and Israel in further constitutional reforms. A single-party government invested by a simple plurality in the second round and protected by the constructive motion of censure can survive in spite of having minority support in parliament if the adversaries of the government party are sufficiently divided on both left and right or other issue dimensions. As a result of these rules, Spain is the only country in Europe where only single-party governments have been formed, all of them with minority electoral support, and most of them with minority parliament sup port. The average government has obtained only 39 per cent electoral support. This means that there has always been a neat majority of voters that have not voted for the party in government. Until 2018, the largest party always won the presidency of the government. This is in accordance with what has occurred in about three-fourths of the parliamentary appoint ments in the countries of the European Union, while in about one-fourth the largest
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Political Institutions 161 party has been defeated by a consistent alternative coalition of close ideological parties, especially in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden (Glasgow, Golder, and Golder 2011). After the transition period with two presidents of government from the Union of Democratic Centre (UCD), Adolfo Suarez and Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, the two major parties alternated in power with Felipe Gonzalez (PSOE), Jose Maria Aznar (PP), Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (PSOE), and Mariano Rajoy (PP). But the traditional party system was abraded by the Great Recession, a series of scandals, and continuous con frontational campaigns, and the general election in 2015 produced an unprecedented result: the two larger parties, which on some previous elections had obtained together up to 80 per cent of the votes, barely collected 50 per cent. Two new parties emerged, Podemos on the left and Citizens on the centre-right, while regional parties kept or increased representation. As, for the first time in almost forty years, no single party could reasonably expect to obtain sufficient support in parliament, there was many claims in public opinion in favour of the formation of a grand coalition. Multiparty coalition governments formed by parties from the centre-right and the centre-left existed at the time in fourteen European countries, beginning with Germany and including other countries with both older and more recent democracies and higher and lower living standards than Spain. Also, broad coalitions make the typical consensus politics of the European Union, where the European Popular, Liberal, and Socialist parties usually account for about two-thirds of the votes and seats in the European Parliament and form the European Commission. It was an opportunity for Spanish democracy to begin matching European mores. Yet, as the major parties did not achieve an agreement, a new election was called six months later, in mid-2016. In Europe, after the blast of traditional party systems during the years of the Great Recession, there have emerged novel difficulties to form postelectoral political majorities. There have been durable caretaker or nonpartisan expert governments and early elections, especially in countries such as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Romania, and Sweden. But early elections were usually called to prevent minority governments and to try to create new favourable conditions for the formation of a majority coalition. In contrast, in Spain the two undesirable outcomes happened: an early election and a new single-party minority government—with the smallest minority support so far. A new government of the PP led by Rajoy was again appointed, this time on the basis of one-third of the popular votes, some over-represen tation in seats, and additional abstention from parliament. Two years later, in 2018, a motion of censure replaced the PP in government with the PSOE, which had received less than one-fourth of the votes and seats. For the first time, the largest party in parlia ment was out of the government. The new president of government, Pedro Sanchez, was invested with the parliamentary support of parties represented by nine parliamentary group speakers. But the subsequent government relied upon the smallest electoral minority ever: more than three-fourths of the voters had not voted for the ruling party. It did not last for a year. A new election in 2019 reproduced the party system fragmentation, which provoked a new snap election. In total, four elections in four years,
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10.7 Weak Separation of Powers The separation of powers is eroded in Spain by the ruling party’s far-reaching control of the appointments for the top of the judiciary and other autonomous bodies. The General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ) nominates the presidents of the Supreme Court, its lower courts and the high courts of the Autonomous Communities. All its members are appointed by parliament with the aim of achieving ‘political coherence’ with the govern ing party majority, as was declared when the rule was established. Likewise, the mem bers of the Constitutional Court are appointed by parliament, the government, and the CGPJ, typically producing partisan majorities in favour of the government party and allotment of appointments with the other major party, by turns. There are broadly coincident negative evaluations of the low independence of the top officers of the Spanish judiciary. The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), which is formed by the forty-eight members of the Council of Europe and the United States, has evaluated corruption prevention rules in respect of members of parliament, judges, and prosecutors of Spain every four years since 2001. The Group has repeatedly recommended the introduction of objective criteria and evaluation requirements for the appointments of the higher ranks of the judiciary ‘to ensure that these appointments do not cast any doubt on the independence, impartiality and transparency of this pro cess’. Its compliance report issued in 2018 concluded that ‘none of the recommendations has been implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner by Spain’, which appears as the country that has complied the least with the recommendations regarding prevention and opposition to judicial politicization and corruption out of the twenty-one countries evaluated (GRECO 2018). According to the index of the above-cited Comparative Constitutional Project, Spain only fulfils one of the six measures of judicial independence: a declaration in the Constitution. But this declaration is not reciprocated by independent appointments and life terms of the members of the high courts, by barriers to their dismissal, or by the pro tection of the salaries of the judges. The subsequent index of judicial independence places Spain at the tail of Western Europe, the United States, and Canada. The classification is similar in the EU Justice Report, whose classification is based on the mechanisms of appointment, evaluation, transfer, and dismissal of judges. Spain ranks twenty-sixth out of the twenty-eight countries of the Union in terms of citizens’ perception of judicial independence (only above Bulgaria and Slovakia) (European Commission 2017). Also, a number of European Arrest Warrants issued by the top Spanish courts have been largely dismissed by the courts of other member states of the European Union. Most recently, courts in Belgium, Scotland, and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany dis charged several former members of the Catalan government who had held an illegal referendum on independence and fled abroad from the accusations of rebellion and sedition issued by the Spanish Supreme Court.
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Political Institutions 163 In addition to evaluations by international experts, by Spanish citizens, and by the judiciary of other European countries, there is even stronger evidence: the Spanish judges and prosecutors themselves have been on strike to demand more effective means and ‘an independent and political-free justice system’ twice, in 2013 and in 2018. Likewise, the government or the political party majority in the Spanish Parliament also appoints most members of the boards of many regulatory bodies, including the Bank of Spain and the public Spanish Radio and Television, as well as the National Commission of Markets and Competition, the Council of State, and the Accounting Court, with comparable consequences.
10.8 Competitive, Non-Institutional Federalism The most frequent and harshest institutional conflicts in Spain develop around the terri torial distribution of power. In addition to the institutional incentives referred to above, this is facilitated by the fact that the definition of the form of the state in the 1978 Constitution is extremely ambiguous, and the arrangements that have been attained at different times have been seen by the parties involved as only temporary and short term. The current political regime is a patchwork of territorial formulas that should corre spond to several different models of territorial organization. First, it maintains the fifty provinces that were shaped as the basic instrument of centralized control in the nine teenth century. Second, the Constitution acknowledges special rights to three ‘historical nationalities’: Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia. Special fiscal privileges have also been accepted for the Basque Country, Navarre, and the Canary Islands. In the rest of Spain an optional decentralizing formula generalized the establishment of ‘Autonomous Communities’, although with differences based on languages, civil law, fluvial waters, insularity, or the relative importance of different economic activities. Asymmetries in the regions’ profiles and in their relations with the central government proliferate. The Spanish state is not constitutionally defined as federal, regional, or unitary. Neither the number and list of the current seventeen Autonomous Communities nor even the usual expression ‘state of autonomies’ are included in the constitutional text. Usually, in federal countries built from the bottom-up—like Germany, Switzerland, or the United States—the constitution leaves all competencies in the hands of the territorial governments except those explicitly allocated to the central government. Contrariwise, in top-down regionally decentralized states—such as France or Italy—everything remains under the control of the central government except the list of p owers to be transferred to the territories. Yet, the Spanish Constitution does not follow any of these models but provides two lists of ‘areas’ delimiting the minimum activities of the central and the autonomous institutions, respectively. This opened the gate for broad
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164 Josep M. Colomer competition for further transfers of powers on non-regulated issues among autonomous governments and between some of them and the central government. At the same time, the governments of the Autonomous Communities enjoy a fiscal illusion. Spain is highly decentralized in public expenditure but very centralized in the collection of tax revenue. The central government is in control of just a little more than half of public expenditure, 53 per cent, while the rest is in the hands of the Autonomous Communities and the local governments. This ratio implies still much less decentraliza tion than in Switzerland, Canada, or the United States (and that in Denmark regarding its local governments), but slightly more than in federal Germany or Belgium and more than in all the other European countries. On the other hand, the autonomous governments of Spain collect very few taxes directly and are transferred most funds from the central Ministry of Finances, except in the Basque Country and Navarre. The central government collects about 77 per cent of total tax revenue, which is more than in all federal countries of the world, including those above mentioned (and others that are decentralized into local governments, like Finland or Sweden) (Bird 2010 with data from the World Bank, and Blöchliger and Kim 2016 with data from OECD). This encourages irresponsible waste and profligacy, as the regional rulers may pretend to appear to the voters as providers of public services at no cost, while it hinders the possibility of making them accountable for their management.
10.9 A Non-Territorial Senate Permanent competition among Autonomous Communities for increasing powers is also feasible because there are very few institutional bodies to negotiate nationwide decisions and arbitrate with the central government. In contrast to the typical feature of federal countries, the Spanish Senate is not organized on the basis of the political major ities in the parliaments or the governments of the territorial units and has no significant legislative powers. In some federal countries, inter-territorial cooperation for the formation of nation wide policies is achieved by giving the upper chamber representation of the territorial units. In Germany, for instance, the upper chamber is formed by delegates of the terri torial governments, while in Austria and Belgium it is selected by the state or regional parliaments. In Spain, in contrast, the Senate is mostly elected by the citizens in multiparty competi tion without any particular territorial tenor. In each of forty-seven of the fifty provinces, four senators are directly elected. In the three islander provinces, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas (both in the Canary Islands) and the Balearic Islands, each island or group of small islands elect its senators, up to a total of eleven. The autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa also elect two senators each. This set of popularly elected senators adds up to nearly four-fifths of the members of the chamber (208 of 266).
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Political Institutions 165 The ballot is open to voting for individual candidates from any party or candidacy, but it requires a limited vote for a maximum of three candidates out of the four seats to be filled in the forty-seven provinces (and two or one in the other districts). This elect oral system tends to over-represent the largest party in each district and to give a minor representation to the second party or coalition. It produces a single-party absolute majority in the Senate on the basis of a small plurality across Spain with much more fre quency than in the Chamber of Deputies. For a large part of the rural, vastly depopu lated central and meridional Spain, the actual territorial representation is more or less fair. But in the urban, denser, and more politically plural districts, most voters and most parties are heavily under-represented. A more faithful representation of the pluralism of the latter districts is reduced to the selection of about one-fifth of the seats, which are filled with senators selected by the parliaments of the Autonomous Communities in numbers related to the population (58 since 2011). They are usually selected from multiple parties according to the compos ition of the autonomous parliament. In most federal countries, there are high levels of symmetry between the two parlia mentary chambers regarding their legislative roles. Symmetric legislatures with even powers exist in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, and the United States, while symmetric roles on most legislation and in the appointment and control of the executive are on dis play in Austria or Germany (as well as in some non-federal countries such as Italy). In contrast, the Spanish Senate has no significant legislative or control powers. Almost every bill must be approved first by the Congress of Deputies and sent thereafter to the Senate, which may issue a considered opinion, veto it, or introduce amendments. Yet, the Congress has the last word on accepting or rejecting the changes introduced by the Senate by voting again on the bill by a simple relative majority. Besides the useless upper chamber, other potential ways of promoting inter-territorial cooperation are barely used. In law, the Autonomous Communities have the power to initiate legislation before the Spanish parliament, but in practice, they never exercise it due to the strong partisan control of parliamentary decisions. Bilateral commissions between the central government and some individual autonomies, which were useful platforms for agreed upon transfers of powers during the initial period of decentralization in the 1980s and 1990s, have been sidelined. The Conference of Presidents of the central government and the Autonomous Communities and the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council and other gatherings of cen tral and regional ministers should promote multilateral agreements on policy-making, including on Spain’s government positions in the European Councils. But as they can only achieve ‘recommendations’ or ‘commitments’ by unanimity, have become occa sional stages for a confrontation between the institutions controlled by the central gov ernment’s party and those in the hands of the opposition. Rather than general inter-territorial cooperation, many issues related to the territor ial distribution of decision-making power have been addressed by party competition, opposed nationalist claims, strategic actions and, in the last instance, negotiations between the parties in the autonomous government and in the central government, or
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166 Josep M. Colomer even between territorial factions of the same Spain-wide party regarding some regions. This has hindered inter-institutional cooperation and fed sustained political competi tion. Eventually, the rivalry, competition, and race among autonomous governments provoked an adventurous sprint of the Basque government towards a confederal rela tion with the Spanish state in 2005 and a not less adventurous bid of the Catalan govern ment towards independence in 2017, both ending in frontal conflict (Colomer 2017).
10.10 Partocracy Many of the above-analysed features of the political and institutional regime of Spain can be explained by the overarching role of the political parties. The Spanish parties are small oligarchies of public officers with very few affiliates, are overprotected and subsid ized by the government, and tend to control not only the parliaments and governments but the judiciary, the diplomacy, the independent regulatory bodies, the state-owned enterprises, the media, the culture, some universities, and as many institutions as their reach can expand. The affiliation to political parties has dramatically decreased in most democratic coun tries during the last decades: in the most mature democracies, from two-figure percent ages of voters to 5 or 6 per cent. Party membership in Spain is also paltry, largely due to the lack of democratic tradition, although there are not well-checked data about it. Out of the roughly 25 million voters in recent general elections, the parties’ public declarations would amount to about one and a half million members in total or about 6 per cent. But the more formal party censuses for voting in recent so-called party primaries amounted to much lower proportions. The PSOE had claimed to have near half a million affiliates, but the census for its primary in 2017 was reduced to 188,000 and the actual participants were 150,000, which were 2.8 per cent of the party voters in the previous year’s election. The PP in government had claimed 869,000 affiliates, but in the party primary in 2018 only 58,000 participated, which amounted to 0.7 per cent of the most recent party voters. The Democratic Party of Catalonia (PDECat), which was the largest nationalist party in the parliament of Catalonia, claimed 14,000 affiliates, but only 2,230 voted in its Assembly in 2018, a lower number than the party’s local councillors, which amounted to 0.2 per cent of its votes in the most recent Catalan election. And so on. At the same time, the parties are generously funded with public resources based on taxes, whose spending is barely controlled by any impartial body; they enjoy regulated broadcasting time on public radio and television, reduced postal rates, and public places for their propaganda and public meetings; the electoral system gives them absolute con trol to select candidates for public office, as neither in the local, regional, Congress or European elections can the voters express any preference for individual candidates on the electoral ballot; and about two thousand office-holders, including all senators, national and regional deputies, and many appointed high officers, are legally exempted from ordinary judicial prosecution.
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Political Institutions 167 The partisan and institutional power is highly concentrated: Spain is possibly the only democratic country in the world in which the same person holds the offices of party leader, head of the party parliamentary group, and president of the government. Electoral campaigns strongly focus on the party candidates for president of the govern ment, up to the point that most voters do not even know the top name in the list of can didates to parliament in their electoral district (Colomer 2011; Riera 2011). High concentration of power causes high personalization of politics, rather than alle giance to policy or ideology. Even the appellation of ‘president’ of government is a rarity in parliamentary countries, where the chief executive is most often called prime minister or similar names implying a collegial work. For most party members, being enrolled in the party and passively abiding by the party discipline is only a way to wait to be enlisted for public posts. It does not come as a surprise that the recruiting of professional politicians has become an adverse selection. At the beginning of the current democratic experience, a number of high officers, whether elected representatives or appointed executives, were lawyers, economists, professors, or other educated people who had practised their professions before entering politics. Gradually, they were replaced with younger people whose work experience was in a political party or a low-level public office. More recently, some social activists and a number of media pundits with neither professional skills nor public job experience have also become full-time politicians. The wages of the Spanish parliamentarians are among the lowest in Europe, but, for many of those people, the opportunity cost of not having taken an alternative job is zero. In the light of all this, it may not come as a surprise that political parties enjoy the low est popular reputation in current Spain. According to recurrent surveys by the Centre for Sociological Researches, the most important problems of Spain are, next to the economy and unemployment, the politicians in general, political parties, and politics. Political parties score next-to-last in sympathy in a list of twelve social movements or organizations, only after squatters.
10.11 A Blocked Political System Spain’s current political and institutional regime contains some preventive mechanisms that were conceived to favour political stability but have turned into factors that have eroded electoral and social support for the results of the political process. Several consti tutional rules have proved to be mistaken, have produced unintended exclusionary con sequences, or have become obsolete due to exogenous changes. It should be possible to conceive some institutional reforms that could address such problems. According to the above analysis, two possible focuses should be targeted. One would be the electoral system and the investiture and censure motions, in order to favour more inclusive, multiparty majority governments (and indirectly more inde pendence of the judicial top bodies). The other would be the division of powers between the central government and the Autonomous Communities, as well as the nonterritorial
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168 Josep M. Colomer Senate, in order to favour more inclusion of asymmetric autonomies. It could be expected that a more inclusive central government would indirectly reduce the territor ial tensions and conflicts, while a more inclusive territorial representation might also make minority governments less disturbing. Either a multiparty coalition or a multiterritorial union would be likely to increase citizens’ satisfaction with the way democ racy works. Of course, having both (like, for example, in Germany) might produce even more satisfactory results. But the terms of the trade-off are as stated. Also, the greatest constraint on the actual functioning of Spanish political institutions, which is the trans fer of sovereignty and the growing reliance on the European Union, could be acknow ledged by more formally introducing the topic in the Constitution. Yet, for forty years no major institutional change oriented to enhance the quality of democracy has been implemented. Spain is one of the European countries with the highest barriers to constitutional reforms since they require qualified majorities in the two chambers (and its replication after an election for issues related to civil rights and the Crown), as well as a referendum. It is also, in practice, the European country in which there have been fewer constitutional reforms: since 1978, only two, both derived from the European Union (voting rights for Europeans in municipalities, and the abovementioned, never fulfilled priority to reduce the public deficit and pay the debt). In contrast, all democratic countries tend to revise their constitutions periodically. The country of Europe with the most constitutional changes is Portugal, whose differ ence with its neighbour is that the reform does not require elections or referendum, but only a decision of a large majority in its unicameral parliament. The Portuguese reforms have included major issues, such as the removal of restrictions on economic policy and the transformation of the presidential regime into a parliamentary one. In the United Kingdom, given that the Constitution is not codified in a single text, the changes are also relatively easy: there have been fifty-one since the end of the World War, including major issues such as the Convention on Human Rights, parliamentary pro cedures, hereditary lords, freedom of information, justice, and the election of mayors. In France, there have been seventeen reforms in less than sixty years, which have affected issues such as EU treaties, the duration of the president’s term of office, parliamentary relations and, according to the currently ongoing process, new changes on the size of Parliament, the electoral system, and the legislative procedure. In Germany, there have been fourteen reforms since reunification in 1990, including on the EU, environmental protection, positive discrimination against women, or the right of asylum. In Italy, the barriers are higher because a referendum can be called for, but there have been fifteen reforms, including those that have given legislative autonomy and exclusive powers to the regions (Elkins, Ginsburg, and Melton 2009, Brown 2019). The outlook at the time of establishing the basic political institutions of the Spanish regime in the late 1970s does not conform to the current social distribution of resources and the European and international constraints. The changes that have occurred in more than forty years would require new institutional mechanisms for both representa tion and decision-making. The initial regulations subsist mainly due to the entrench ment of some actors and the high barriers to their reform or replacement. This implies
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Political Institutions 169 an inefficient performance which generates a growing disillusionment and discomfort among citizens. To the Eurobarometer question ‘How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in your country?’, the survey in Spain in 1986, just after entering the European Community, gave 57 per cent of very or fairly satisfied responses, which was about the EC average; in 2018, only 37 per cent gave the same responses, a drop of twenty points, which places Spain as twenty-fifth out of the twenty-eight countries. In a com parative perspective, the Spanish transition to democracy was very successful. But the expectation that it could give light to an exemplary democracy has not been fulfilled.
10.12 Bibliography Alzaga, O. 1989. I rapporti tra capo dello stato, governo e parlamento. In: Anniversario della Constituzione spagnola: Bliancio, problemi, prospettive. Siena: Università di Siena, pp. 127–8. Bird, R. 2010. Subnational Taxation in Decentralized Countries: A Review of the Literature Policy Research Working Paper 5450. The World Bank. Blöchliger, H. and J. Kim. 2016. Fiscal Federalism 2016: Making Decentralisation Work. Paris: OECD Publishing. Brown, A. 2019. ‘Toward a better understanding of constitutional amendment rates’. Unpublished paper. Cheibub, J., S. Martin, and B. Bjom. 2015. ‘Government selection and executive powers: Constitutional design in parliamentary democracies’. West European Politics 38(5): 969–96. Colomer, J. 1995. Game Theory and the Transition to Democracy: The Spanish Model. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Colomer, J. 2001. Political Institutions: Democracy and Social Choice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Colomer, J. 2004. Handbook of Electoral System Choice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Colomer, J. 2011. Personal Representation: The Neglected Dimension of Electoral Systems. Essex: ECPR University Press. Colomer, J. 2014. ‘Equilibrium institutions: The federal-proportional trade-off ’. Public Choice 158(3–4): 559–76. Colomer, J. 2017. ‘The venturous bid for the independence of Catalonia’. Nationalities Papers 45(5): 950–67. Colomer, J. 2019. The Spanish Frustration: How a Ruinous Empire Thwarted the Nation-State. London: Anthem Press. Comparative Constitutions Project. 2016. Comparative Constitutions Project: Informing Constitutional Design. [Online] Available at http://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/ (accessed 31 July 2019). Council of Europe: Group of States Against Corruption. 2018. Corruption Prevention in Respect of Members of Parliament, Judges and Prosecutors: Fourth Evaluation Report, Georgia. Strasbourg: GRECO. Available at www.coe.int/greco/. Elkins, Z., T. Ginsburg, and J. Melton. 2009. The Endurance of National Constitutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. European Commission. 2017. The 2017 EU Justice Scoreboard. Brussels: Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers. European Commission. 2018. Public Opinion. [Online] Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/ commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm (accessed 31 July 2019).
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170 Josep M. Colomer Glasgow, G., M. and S. N. Golder. 2011. ‘Who “wins”? Determining the party of the prime minister’. American Journal of Political Science 55(4): 937–54. Guillén, M. 2018. ‘Symbolic unity, dynastic continuity, and countervailing power: Monarchies, republics, and the economy’. Social Forces 97(2): 607–48. Linz, J. 1990. ‘The virtues of parliamentarism’. Journal of Democracy 1(4): 84–91. Peces-Barba, G. 2003. ‘El patriotismo constitucional. Reflexiones en el vigésimo quinto aniversario de la Constitución española’, Anuario de Filosofía del Derecho, 20. Riera, P. 2011. Closed party list. In: Josep M. Colomer ed., Personal Representation: The Neglected Dimension of Electoral Systems. Colchester: ECPR Press, pp. 53–78. Solé Tura, J. 1985. Nacionalidades y nacionalismos en España: Autonomías, federalismo autodeterminación. Madrid: Alianza. Stepan, A., J. Linz, and J. Minoves. 2014. ‘Democratic parliamentary monarchies’. Journal of Democracy 25(2): 35–51.
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chapter 11
Th e 1978 Spa n ish Constit u tiona l De sign assessing its outcome Josep M. Vallès
11.1 Under Three Main Influences After forty years of Franco’s dictatorship, Spain undertook the task of drafting a new constitution in a context marked by three main influences: the political model provided by Western European democracies, the economic and strategic interests of countries with which Spain had established a close relationship and, finally, the internal sociopolitical conditions under which this rather special constituent process had to develop.
11.1.1 Europe as an Ideal After the breakdown in 1974 of the Portuguese and Greek authoritarian regimes, Spain seemed also heading towards adopting the Western European model of political and social organization. The ‘Welfare Democracies’ had been the result of the social and political pact achieved after the Second World War in order to combine the preservation of a capitalist economic model with the guarantee of citizenship rights, not only civil and political, but also social and economic. However, that model’s weaknesses were already showing. The contradictions between its fiscal policies and its social promises, the so-called ‘governability crisis’ in the liberal democracies and the weakening of their popular legitimation had been unveiled by well-known analysis (O’Connor 1973; Crozier et al. 1975; Habermas 1976). The crisis symptoms were showing a growing mismatch between the claims for greater freedom of action made by the capitalist economic system and the public controls and regulations reluctantly accepted as a guarantee for its preservation. Ignoring these symptoms, this
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172 JOSEP M. VALLÈS model exerted a clear influence on the Spanish constitutional design, marked therefore by a ‘low originality’ (Fossas 2007).
11.1.2 Economic and Geostrategic Constraints Pressures coming from countries with a close relationship to Spain since its economy had been integrated into the OECD and the IMF systems (1960) also influenced the 1978 constitutional process. Due to its lack of democratic credentials, Spain did not belong to the then European Economic Community. However, French and West German firms had made significant investments in Spain. Furthermore, these countries were also the main market for the Spanish tourist sector. In the geostrategic field, while NATO had not accepted Spain’s full membership, US military bases in Spanish territory had been since 1953 an essential component of the Western alliance’s anti-Soviet strategy. Nevertheless, the Spanish public was reluctant to adhere to NATO, while it was almost unanimously in favour of joining the European Community. The US looked with some caution at the Spanish democratic transition because the 1974 revolutionary experience in Portugal had brought about a political regime with a socialist and neutralist drift. France and Germany, however, clearly favoured the Spanish transition to democracy. The main agents of this foreign influence were German and French political parties: Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and Liberals. With their ideological advice and financial contributions, they supported the antiFrancoist opposition in its stand against the dictatorship’s staunchest core. This support was also seeking to balance the pressure of leftist groups to bring about structural reforms that could be detrimental to business interests. It can be said that both objectives were fulfilled as the democratic transformation of Franco’s regime went ahead, without following the Portuguese pattern designed by its 1974 ‘carnation revolution’ (Fishman 2011, 2019).
11.1.3 A Tight Balance of Forces A third factor constrained the 1978 Spanish constitutional design. The tight balance of forces between the dictatorship’s leading elites and the democratic opposition made the continuity of the authoritarian regime as hard to achieve as building from scratch a new political system. The result was the so-called ‘transition by transaction’ (Share-Mainwaring 1986). The army and police forces, the bureaucracy upper echelons, and the judiciary were still controlled by Franco’s regime leaders. However, some of those leaders were aware of the difficulty of maintaining a political system worn down by the growing mobilizations of the industrial working class and by the delegitimizing criticisms coming from broad sectors of the middle classes, the intelligentsia and academia. Although largely supported by a popular majority demanding the full set of freedoms enjoyed by
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 173 Western European societies, the opposition leaders realized that they lacked the power to bring about a full and immediate replacement of Franco’s regime. They did not have the capacity for enacting the popular demands, nor was public opinion—influenced by the memory of the 1936–1939 Civil War—in favour of any change that would entail the risk of violence. When assessing that balance, both sides reluctantly agreed to shape a constitutional design that forced them to abandon some of their basic claims. The old regime reformists had to admit the impossibility of establishing a sort of Turkish ‘tutored democracy’, while the democratic opposition had to accept, among other constraints, the continuance of a monarchy forced upon them by Franco’s design.
11.2 Facing old and new Challenges Under these conditions, a sui generis constituent process had to address some old questions left unsolved in the Spanish constitutional past, together with the new issues relevant to the time in which that constituent process was now developing.
11.2.1 Towards an Unexpected Constituent Process Two constraints had a more direct bearing on the making of a new constitution: a weak constitutional tradition and the normative framework inherited from Franco’s dictatorship. Since 1812, the Spanish conservatives’ violent opposition to the values and practices of liberalism had hindered the setting up of a stable constitutional regime. Between 1812 and 1931, freely elected assemblies approved eight constitutions, all of them after a popular revolution or a military coup d’état had repealed the previous one (see Table 11.1). No gradual amendment procedure ever succeeded in reforming a current constitution. Each constitution had been followed by a new charter, hindering the continuity of a constitutional culture (Solé Tura and Aja 2002). A second constraint on the new constitutional design came from the existence of the so-called ‘Fundamental Laws’ of Franco’s regime, taken by its reformist elites as a forced starting point to overcome the resistance raised by Francoist hardest followers. In this way, a weak constitutional culture and Franco’s legal system drove a two-stage constituent process (Gunther et al. 2004). In the first stage, Franco’s most fervent loyalists opposed the reformers led by King Juan Carlos I and by President Adolfo Suárez. These reformers relied on a skilful interpretation of the Francoist legality to get the approval of a new ‘Law for Political Reform’ (1977), combining continuity and change with respect to the Francoist legal system.1 1 In accordance with Francoist legislation, the Law was submitted to a popular referendum held on 15 December 1976. After a campaign in which political parties could not participate, the Law was approved with a 94,1% yes-vote and a 77,6% turn-out.
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174 JOSEP M. VALLÈS
Table 11.1. Spanish Constitutions Approved by Free-Elected Assemblies. APPROVAL YEAR
YEARS IN FORCE
1812 1837 1845 1854 1869 1873 1876 1931 1978
1812–1814; 1820–1823; 1836–1837 1837–1845 1845–1868 Not enacted 1869–1875 Not enacted 1876–1923; 1930–1931 1931–1939 1978–…
Note: I have omitted other constitutional documents in force during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which were neither discussed nor approved by free elected assemblies: the Estatuto de Bayona (1808), the Estatuto Real (1834), and Franco’s Leyes Fundamentales (1938–1966).
The law endorsed the position of King Juan Carlos I as head of state, endowing him with large executive powers. But it also proclaimed some principles which had always been excluded from Franco’s political ideology: popular sovereignty, rule of law, freedoms of association and expression, and universal suffrage. The law also established a new bicameral parliament. Its lower house or Congress would be composed of 350 deputies, elected by a distorted proportional system. Members of the upper house or Senate would be elected by a plurality system, but a fifth of them were to be appointed by the king. That Law for Political Reform worked as a formal instrument to replace some essential pieces in Franco’s political system, but it also wrote off what the democratic opposition had been demanding: the setting of a provisional government including all political forces, the holding of a referendum on the monarchy—as in Greece after the dictatorship’s fall (1974)—and the call for constituent elections. After the Law’s approval, a second stage began when the regime reformers contended with the democratic parties and trade unions. The new constitutional design could then branch out in two directions. The first could have replaced Franco’s personal dictatorship with a more pluralistic and competitive system, but still be monitored by Franco’s civilian and military heirs. A second option could lead to the building up of a political democracy similar to that of other Western European countries. The first general election’s unexpected results (1977) settled the case. Spanish voters denied an absolute majority to the regime reformists grouped in UCD, while giving a large support to other parties, mainly to the PSOE.2 That unforeseen electoral outcome 2 See the 1977 electoral results in Table 20.1, page 332.
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 175 allowed the opening of a de facto constituent process that permitted a long public debate among political parties, social agents, and media. The new parliament was this constitutional debate’s main forum, although some important agreements were also privately discussed and negotiated between political leaders. The process formally started with the Congress appointing a constitutional commission, which in turn chose a seven-deputies committee, later known as the ‘fathers of the Constitution.’3 It was up to them—and not to the government nor to the parliamentary majority—to draw up the first constitutional draft (January 1978). The committee’s composition and its confidential proceedings made some fundamental agreements to be taken out of full transparency. Nevertheless, nearly a thousand amendments were then submitted and discussed by the constitutional commission. Once an amended text was approved in a full Congress session, it was the Senate’s turn to make some changes. A bicameral commission submitted a final text, approved by Congress and Senate. Overwhelmingly ratified by popular referendum,4 the Constitution entered into force on 29 December 1978. This constituent process was quite unique when considering its origin, its format, and its long gestation over almost a year and a half. Its most remarkable feature was the so-called ‘consensus’ approach, gradually assumed by most political parties when dealing with some key constitutional issues. That attitude had already prevailed in the negotiations leading to the 1977 so-called Moncloa Pacts. By these pacts, government, opposition parties, trade unions, and employers’ associations agreed on some key economic and social policies. Following that consensus approach, all the main actors tried to avoid the negative experiences of the Spanish constitutional history, made of shortlived constitutions which had not taken into account minority opinions. Their aim was now to approve for the first time a magna carta grounded on a broad political agreement that would overcome the deep divisions of a society still marked by the 1936 Civil War and by a long-standing dictatorship. Hence the optimistic statement that the approval of the 1978 Constitution could be seen as a delayed peace treaty to end the Civil War.5
11.2.2 Tackling Old Problems The new design had to answer old questions which had not been solved for nearly two centuries of Spanish constitutional history. To this end, it resorted to formulas developed by European democratic constitutionalism. 3 That committee was composed of four deputies belonging to the right and centre-right parties (AP and UCD), two deputies belonging to left parties (PSOE and PCE-PSUC) and a deputy chosen by CiU as a nationalist representative. All of them were law professors, civil servants, or practising lawyers. 4 The Constitution was approved with a 87,8% yes-vote and a 66,0% turn-out. 5 This overly optimistic statement has been criticized for not taking into account the preservation of institutional and symbolic elements that have kept alive the Francoist story that the Civil War ended with the uncontested triumph of the victors, while concealing the relentless repression imposed on the vanquished.
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176 JOSEP M. VALLÈS The monarchy. The Spanish kings’ interference in the partisan contest had very seriously hindered the popular legitimation of the liberal monarchy. But equally unsuccessful were the two short experiences of republican democracy (1873–1874 and 1931–1936), both terminated by military intervention. Trying to control his succession, Franco decided to restore—albeit deferred—an authoritarian monarchy. However, Juan Carlos I, the monarch appointed by the dictator, unexpectedly became a key player in the transition to democracy. Left-wing parties, for their part, abandoned their commitment to a republican state, making the monarchy issue absent from the constituent debate. The authoritarian monarchy foreseen by Franco became then a constitutional and democratic one, the king himself helping turn the Crown into an organ of a social and democratic state of law. Thus, the anachronistic restoration of a monarchy in latetwentieth-century Europe was ‘normalized’ by its adjustment to the continent’s few surviving parliamentary monarchies where the monarch has no executive power. To avoid governmental instability. In this constitutional design the executive power was assigned to a government grounded on the confidence of a parliamentary majority. In order to make that majority stronger and to avoid the risk of governmental instability, the Constitution imported from the German Fundamental Law the ‘constructive no confidence vote’, preventing the overthrow of a president and its government when there is no alternative candidate supported by a new parliamentary majority (art. 113). That provision was not intended to curtail the political parties’ role. They were acknowledged as main actors in the new political system (art. 6). Endowed with strong legal protection and generous public financing, political parties were thus vindicated against the harsh repression they had suffered under Franco’s dictatorship. Regarding the parliament, the new constitutional design accepted the main criteria (asymmetrical bicameralism, size and composition) set out by the Law for Political Reform, changing only some provisions concerning the upper chamber or Senate. In addition, the disagreement about the design of a new electoral system also led to the preconstitutional regulations imposed by the Francoist reformists being upheld, and aimed at the building up of two large moderate parties.6 The national-territorial dispute. The state’s territorial organization became again the constitutional debate’s most contentious issue. The old political and cultural debate about national identities re-emerged, the Spanish nationalist idea opposing the visions of Catalan, Basque, and Galician peripheral nationalisms. The Spanish nationalism takes for granted the existence of a single Spanish nation on which a unitary state must be grounded. The peripheral nationalisms look at Spain as a multinational society, made of a plurality of nations which want symbolic recognition and a wide self-government domain. Following the most extreme version of Spanish nationalism, Franco’s dictatorship applied itself to suppress not only secessionist movements, but any proposal of territorial decentralization. Conversely, the left democratic opposition—PSOE and 6 The electoral system had been approved by the Suárez government in 1977 (RDL 20/1977). But its essential points were transferred to the Constitution (articles 68–69) and to a new electoral law still in force (LOREG 5/1985).
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 177 PCE—and the regional parties stood for the territorial communities’ right to self-determination and the implementation of a federal or confederal organization. Once more, this became the most controversial issue in the 1978 constituent process. On the symbolic side, the debate abruptly ended with the intervention of non- parliamentary actors. A complex formula that combined an emphatic statement about Spain’s national unity with the acknowledgement of the right to autonomy of some unspecified ‘nationalities and regions’ was included in the Constitution (art. 2).7 Concerning the organizational aspects, several options had been suggested, ranging from a mere administrative decentralization to a confederal system. Inspired by the Spanish Second Republic precedent, an ambiguous compromise was finally achieved, entailing a partial ‘de-constitutionalization’ of the territorial organization. The Constitution opened the way to a voluntary access to self-government by the territorial communities, whose citizens would have asked for it through their local entities. The scope of that self-government would be set in their statutes of autonomy and in other subsequent provisions (Title VIII). The political status of the armed forces, the judiciary, and the Catholic Church. The relation between the state and other influential public institutions had also been a traditionally contested issue. Unlike other countries’ transition experiences, the passing from Francoism to democracy did not bring about the removal of their leading personnel, nor any sort of purge or transitional justice. The constitutional design, however, introduced some gradual changes in their status. The armed forces—historically linked to the monarchy—had long exerted a strong influence over the civil power, making use of the ‘pronunciamiento’ as an original form of coup d’état, such as the one led by Franco in 1936. Franco’s regime, without being a military dictatorship per se (Powell 2001), granted the armed forces a prominent role. Besides their repressive function, they also held a key symbolic position. They often acted as Franco’s spokesmen against the principles of liberal democracy and as the main defenders of the national unity contested by the peripheral nationalisms. During the transition, the military high command closely watched over the new political changes, as we have seen when dealing with the territorial issue. It also claimed the granting of its autonomy with respect to the civil power. As a symbolic reward, the Constitution formally placed the army close to the parties and the trade unions and not as part of the public administration to which it properly belongs (art. 8). During the dictatorship, the judiciary highest rank had been usually appointed relying on their political allegiance. Therefore, the aim of the new constitutional design was to assign that function to a judicial body whose members would be independent, permanent, responsible, and submitted only to the rule of law (art. 117). To this end, the Constitution clearly separated the judiciary from the executive branch and entrusted its 7 The wording of this article was dictated by actors external to the parliamentary commission, as later reported by one of the ‘Constitution Fathers’ (Solé Tura 1985, 98–100). Although there is no documentary evidence, it has been known that this text was accepted under pressure from the senior military command. That fact highlights the sui generis nature of the Spanish constituent process.
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178 JOSEP M. VALLÈS governance to a General Council of the Judiciary, composed mostly of representatives of the judiciary itself. It would be that Council that would be responsible for the appointment, promotion, and supervision of all judges throughout the country. Under Franco’s regime, the state and the Catholic church had preserved and reinforced their historical links, signing a new agreement or Concordat (1953). However, the constitutional debate on that issue was less bitter than expected, thanks to Spanish society’s growing secularization and the view of Catholic groups that also wished to leave behind the anachronism of a confessional State. The constitutional design established a non-confessional state, while declaring its willingness to ‘maintain relations of cooperation with the Catholic church and other confessions’ (article 16.2). Yet the Suarez government had negotiated a new set of agreements with the Holy See which were signed on 3 January 1979.8 These agreements were criticized by the opposition parties because of their extra-constitutional nature. The most controversial issue was the regulation of the freedom of education and the status of a Catholic schools’ large network. After a warm debate, a constitutional regulation was set up that combines the right to public education with the freedom to create private schools (art. 27).
11.2.3 New Issues The constituent process also addressed two central issues in contemporary constitutionalism: the catalogue and scope of fundamental rights and the country’s socioeconomic model. The citizen’s position in the political community was defined by a long declaration of rights (Title I) under the influence of international treaties and Western European constitutions enacted after the Second World War. Declaring Spain to be ‘a social and democratic State of Law’ (art. 1) in a formula imported from the 1948 German Fundamental Law, its citizens have a well-preserved area of action defined by a set of personal freedoms and by the right to take part in collective decisions. As in the Italian Constitution of 1948, all public authorities are also committed to making individual and group freedom and equality ‘real and effective’, to removing obstacles hindering them and to enabling ‘the participation of all citizens in political, economic, cultural and social life’ (art. 9.2). That triple constitutional commitment gave a more precise content to the ‘social and democratic State of law’ formula. In order not to make the declaration of rights a set of ineffective statements, three new institutional safeguards were introduced by constitutional design. Firstly, a Constitutional Court detached from the judiciary system was set up to guarantee the Constitution’s normative supremacy, following the European model of concentrated constitutional justice (Title IX). Secondly, although not with the same protection grade, the Constitution entrusted to the courts of justice the defence of public rights and 8 By these agreements, the state committed itself to finance the organization and activity of the Catholic Church.
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 179 liberties (art. 53). Finally, the ‘Defensor del Pueblo’ as an independent parliamentary commissioner was introduced in the Constitution, following the Ombudsman model (art. 54). Regarding the socioeconomic system, the Constitution outlined the key conditions of the so-called ‘social market economy’. Several provisions—contained in Title I, chapter III and in Title VII—appeared to be trying to set up that model: the right to private property and its social function (art. 33), the right to free enterprise (art. 38), together with the state’s right to intervene in the economy in the public interest (art. 128), the public-sector’s special role in controlling strategic resources or services, and even the possibility of state planning of the economic activity (art. 131). Lastly, it provided the setting of some ‘guiding principles of social and economic policy’ (chapter III in Title I) that—together with the already mentioned social rights (social security, education, health, free unions, collective bargaining, etc.)—gave the full picture of the socio- economic model envisioned by the Constitution.
11.3 Assessing the Constitutional Performance When assessing the constitutional performance, a first indicator is provided by its four decades of long and effective life: no other Spanish constitution had ever lasted so long.9 Its time endurance is far above average—twenty-one years—in democratic systems (Elkins et al. 2009). But, has that survival record meant the fulfilment of the key founding commitments included in the 1978 constitutional design?
11.3.1 Original Commitments and Actual Implementation These essential commitments were the effect of political compromises reached over some central issues—old and new—mentioned previously. Have these compromises been met? What has been their impact on the political system as a whole? The monarchy has experienced peaks and troughs in its public evaluation. Received as a condition and not as the consequence of the constituent process, the monarchy’s democratic legitimacy was rather precarious until the role played by Juan Carlos I as an ally of Franco’s elite reformers increased his popular acceptance, reinforced later when the monarch did not support the 1981 attempted coup d’état. For years afterwards, the monarchy was the political institution most highly valued by public opinion. However, at the end of the 1990s and in the 2000s, the king’s private life and the murky business 9 Only the 1876 Constitution has stood longer in force. However, constitutional rights and guarantees were very often infringed or suspended when the government declared a state of emergency on the grounds of social and political unrest.
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180 JOSEP M. VALLÈS activities of his family entourage eroded that support and led to Juan Carlos I’s abdication in favour of his son Felipe VI (2014). That change has assuaged but not silenced the criticisms of the monarchy put forward by some parties on the left and partly supported by the public. As his father did, Felipe VI faces now the need to renew the legitimacy of the institution he represents. His controversial intervention during the reopened national-territorial conflict in Catalonia and the media’s intrusive scrutiny of his family environment jeopardize the stability of a monarchy whose restoration at the end of the twentieth century had appeared as a very unusual political event. The evolution of the parliamentary regime has empowered a strong and stable executive. As intended by the 1978 constitutional design, the president of the executive has become a dominant political figure. Although his role has fluctuated according to the incumbent’s personal characteristics, the chancellorship model adopted by constitutional design has followed the presidentialization trend in contemporary democracies (van Biezen and Hopkin 2005). His constitutional stand has been strengthened by the leading role that heads of government usually hold in two-party systems. His role has also been reinforced after Spain’s integration into the European Union as the president belongs to its highest decision-making council where the internal policies of its member states are often devised. Although no Spanish government has ever had the support of the voters’ majority, the constitutional design has produced a remarkable executive stability. Its presidents’ replacement has only taken place as the outcome of an electoral change and never as the result of a majority’s breakdown. On a sole and recent occasion, that replacement has occurred because of a successful no confidence vote.10 Yet the negative effect of this executive’s strength has been a significant loss of parliamentary effectiveness. Parliament has had little impact on legislative action, almost exclusively driven by the government itself. Parliament’s internal regulations give influential agenda powers to the government and to its parliamentary majority. Nor has the parliament been able to exert the effective control over the governmental action that would suit an ideal parliamentary regime. That control has been largely transferred to the media, often turning them into aggressively partisan advocates. The strong position gained by the parties has negatively affected their popular reputation. Recognized as essential channels for citizens’ mobilization and for the expression of political pluralism, political parties have become quasi-state organizations, with low membership and scarcely democratic internal functioning. In a few years, they became organizations basically focused on electoral action, led by professional politicians. What in other countries had been a rather long development, took place in Spain in an accelerated way. Dependent upon few external controls, Spanish parties have often been tainted by patronage and clientelism. In some cases, they have engaged in serious
10 Adolfo Suárez, the first government president, resigned in 1981 when he lost his party’s support. Since 1978, four no confidence votes have been held in 1980, 1987, 2017, and 2018. Only that last vote succeeded in replacing the conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy by the socialist Pedro Sánchez (2018).
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 181 corruption practices, leading to their discredit and to a deep public disaffection with respect to the whole political system (Llera et al. 2016). The electoral system has prevented partisan fragmentation but has produced a strong antagonistic dynamic. A pre-constitutional electoral system has fulfilled its original aim of preventing an excessively fragmented party-system. Although constitutionally defined as proportional (art. 68), the electoral system rules have produced a high disproportionality rate between votes and seats, close to that of some majority systems. Minor parties are represented, but a quasi-bipartisan system has developed in which prevail a conservative force (represented in succession by UCD, AP, and PP) and a social democratic force (represented by the PSOE). Following a majoritarian logic, only these two parties have alternated in power, forming one-party governments. It is true that this peaceful alternation in government has been a definite improvement with respect to the old Spanish governmental instability and to a widespread electoral fraud. But that quasi-bipartisan system has also had negative consequences. It has excluded minor parties of any executive responsibility, as there have been no coalition governments. The often-aggressive confrontation between the government and the largest opposition party has produced an antagonistic or ‘adversarial’ political dynamic (Finer 1975; Vallès 2015), fuelled by a media system of militant pluralism (Hallin and Mancini 2004). That continuous clash has hindered the achievement of broad and durable agreements on policies which need a widespread support, such as education or territorial organization.11 Unfortunately, the sole recurrent agreement between the two main dominant forces has been achieved in establishing a quota system of bipartisan influence over some state institutions. That duopoly has tended to jointly contaminate bodies such as the Constitutional Court, the General Council of the Judiciary, the Court of Accounts, and the Board of the Public Radio-Television Corporation. Such a bipartisan apportioning has damaged these bodies’ independence and has brought about their gradual delegitimization. The national-territorial issue remains unsettled. The 1978 Constitution reacted to that old problem with an original but ambiguously defined formula, whose content was set through agreements between parties and through Constitutional Tribunal rulings. The model’s fast implementation achieved a large territorial decentralization by transferring broad political powers to the territorial communities—mainly in social policies (health, education)—and a high spending capacity. Therefore, local energies hitherto stifled by a highly centralized state were released, and infrastructures and public services managed by territorial governments were modernized. Yet the frequent political and legal conflicts between the state and the communities have shown the model’s weaknesses: important shortcomings and ambiguities in its original design, a 11 After the 2015, 2016 and 2019 elections, the left coalition Unidas-Podemos and the centre-right Ciudadanos play a more significant political role. Whether a new four-party system is going to replace the two-party model and transform the former majoritarian drive into a more consensual and perhaps coalition-led political dynamic remains to be seen.
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182 JOSEP M. VALLÈS seriously flawed financing system, the state upper bureaucracy’s aversion to adapt itself to decentralization, and some parties use of the new territorial administrations to fulfil their clientelist ambitions. However, the essential fault of that territorial design has been the attempt to approach in the same way two different problems: the traditional inefficiencies of a strongly centralized state and the old political-cultural divide between those who understand Spain as a single nation and those who conceive it as a plurinational society. Although the 1978 constitutional design allowed for dealing differently with these two problems, the territorial policy implemented by the main Spanish parties tended to equate them. As a result, what in most of the regional communities was an adequate way to undertake a necessary decentralization was not an effective answer to the demand for national recognition and for a different relationship with the state, made in the Basque Country and Catalonia. That lack of response increased the clash between the Spanish nationalism fuelled by the PP governments, on one side, and the Basque and Catalan governments trying unsuccessfully, on the other, to reform the status quo via the Ibarretxe Plan in the Basque Country (2005) and a new Statute in Catalonia (2006). After these attempts failed and no alternative proposal was put forward by the Spanish conservative government, a strong popular mobilization in favour of a unilateral declaration of independence has been growing in Catalonia (Tudela 2011; Marcet and Medina 2017). A short majority approved in the Catalan Parliament a unilateral declaration of independence. Being a constitutional law breach, the state government resorted to the temporary suspension of the regional self-rule and to the criminal prosecution of the Catalan government (2017). As a result, a very serious political crisis has opened that the existing constitutional arrangements seem unable to deal with. Thus, the national-territorial issue has become again the most difficult challenge in the Spanish political and constitutional agenda. The constitutional adaptation of the armed forces, the judiciary, and the Church has proceeded differently. As said before, the transition constraints prevented the purging of personnel in institutions that were closely attached to Franco’s dictatorship. Their adaptation to the constitutional design has followed somewhat different paths. The unusual position and functions assigned by the Constitution to the armed forces (art. 8) did not fully rein in the inclination of some military circles to long for an ‘autonomous power’ status. Furthermore, the decentralization policy and ETA terrorist attacks against members of the armed forces and the police, stirred up some military groups and led to the failed coup of 1981. Yet the coup increased popular support for the democratic system, weakened the prestige of the armed forces’ high command, and made clear the need to subordinate them to government authority. The army reforms undertaken by the first socialist government of Felipe González (1982–1986), became a key factor in submitting the armed forces to the executive and confining them to the role they play in a democratic regime. Their participation in the NATO military structure also aided that adjustment, by the way of funding increases, technical modernization, and better knowledge of other NATO members’ military culture. It can be said with some assurance that the armed forces’ position is no longer a political-constitutional problem, having gone through a deeper transformation than the one experienced by other state institutions.
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 183 Since 1978, the constitutional principle of the judiciary as a separate state power has usually ensured its independence and impartiality in common judicial proceedings. However, entrusting the judiciary governance to a professional General Council has had a less positive outcome. This Council has often become the ground where parties and judges’ associations project their ideological orientations and corporate interests, mainly when it comes to appointing the judiciary highest positions, to which matters of most public importance may be submitted. The result has been a growing criticism against the ‘politicization of justice’, understood as the judiciary interaction with party interests. Along with this negative perception, however, it is worth stressing the increasing judicial action taken against political corruption, prosecuting and punishing public officials belonging to all parties. Yet, the judiciary regular working has improved less than expected when dealing with its personnel selection system, organization, and proceedings. With some exceptions, it has tended to preserve a professional culture with a strong conservative bias, often more attentive to its standing as state power than to its public-service duties. The poor reputation that the administration of justice has among the public—mainly because of the traditional slowness of the Spanish judicial processes—seriously infringes upon public support of the rule of law that the same judiciary is committed to protect. The relations pattern between state and Church set by the Constitution and by the 1979 agreements that have been mentioned has remained unchanged. Meanwhile, Spanish society’s secularization has been growing and the Church has been losing its social influence. That is proven by the successive legalization of divorce (1981), abortion (1985, 2010) and same-sex marriage (2005). The Church’s unsuccessful resistance to these political decisions and the regulation of religious education in the publicschool system have brought about some tension between the Catholic hierarchy and the government. But that tension has had no serious effects on the stability of the political system. The Constitution’s normative force seems undisputed, but new risks emerge. The constitutional design intended that all the constitutional provisions would effectively be taken, not as a programmatic declaration, but as the supreme law of the land, with real force to reckon with. The Constitutional Court has generally ensured an effective judicial protection for the civil and political rights included in the Constitution, binding all political powers. To this end, the European Court of Human Rights has also worked as an important support in becoming an additional and effective instance of a new multilevel judicial system. More recently, however, under the influence of the authoritarian drift that is gaining ground in several European countries, an expansive idea about public security requirements is having a detrimental effect on some civil and political rights protection. Recent reforms in criminal and administrative legislation have somewhat harmed the exercise of freedoms of speech and assembly, curtailing the open display of social and political protest.12 12 A new Public Security Law was approved in 2015 by the Popular Party parliamentary majority (LO 4/2015). The Law includes harsh provisions that—according to constitutional and criminal law experts—weaken the protection of free speech, reunion, and street demonstration rights.
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184 JOSEP M. VALLÈS Although the constitutional project of ‘a social state’ has entailed the development of free and universal health and education systems, other commitments have been seriously impaired by the implementing of neoliberal policies undertaken by both PSOE and PP governments, and more sharply after the Great Recession of 2008. The constitutional provisions (Title VII) aimed at building up a ‘mixed economy’ have been decaying because of the privatization of public companies and services, and the deregulation of private activities. Consequently, the already limited constitutional protection of social and economic rights has suffered a serious setback, still worsened after the approval of the only important constitutional amendment passed in the last forty years. Carried out urgently and pressed by the demands from the ECB president (2011), that reform has given constitutional priority to the payment of public debt interests and capital over other budgetary obligations (art. 135). Therefore, the state capacity to comply with its citizens’ social and economic rights is restrained as the government responsibility towards the international financial markets precedes its democratic responsibility to the citizenship. In this way, the constitutional design of a ‘social and democratic state of law’ seems certainly jeopardized.
11.3.2 Looking Forward: Between Reform and Rupture? Regarding its lifespan and stability, the performance of the 1978 constitutional design has been outstanding when compared to its forerunners. Real progress has been made in reinforcing the Spanish ‘constitutional culture’. Citizens have generally accepted the constitutional rules because they reasonably responded to important social, cultural, and economic changes. Yet the efficiency and acceptance of those rules have more recently been impaired by the acceleration and depth of changes brought forward by the economic, social, and cultural impact of the globalization process. Three main factors seem to press now for a constitutional reform: socio-economic discontent, institutional mistrust, and dissent over the current national-territorial arrangement. Since the Great Recession of 2008, Spanish society has become more unequal, with a higher poverty index, more unemployed, and more low-paid and temporary workers. That long-lasting crisis has highlighted the contradictions and imbalances between the equality and justice promised by the welfare democracy model designed in the Constitution, on one side, and the results of an economic system tending towards monopoly and inequality, on the other. Secondly, the established rules and actors in a representative democracy—parliament, parties, political personnel—seem unable to cope with the efficiency and public integrity demands of a citizenship living now in a less deferential society and linked by social networks that ask for immediate responses and dissolve traditional hierarchies. Lastly, the state sovereignty erosion as a globalization effect has once again unsettled the complex and frail relationship between Spanish state unity and its national-territorial diversity. Therefore, some of the rules set up by the 1978 constitutional design look now unable to deal with these political and social challenges. According to the CIS opinion polls,
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 185 citizenship’s satisfaction with the 1978 Constitution has continuously decreased over the last twenty years (Figure 11.1). In parallel, popular support for a constitutional reform has been growing (Figure 11.2).13 An agenda for constitutional reform has been set up by the academia, the media, and new political parties such as Podemos and its regional allies. That agenda contains HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH THE CONSTITUTION?
80.0 68.1
54.1
60.0 40.0
53.4
33.9
34.8
12.1
11.8
2003 (Sep)
2008 (Nov)
45.8 39.1
51.5 37.4
23.3 20.0 0.0
8.6 1998 (Nov)
Very + Fairly satisfied
15.1 2010 (Nov)
Not very + Not at all
11.0 2012 (Nov) DK + DA
Figure 11.1 How satisfied are you with the Constitution? Source: Barómetro CIS
SHOULD THE CONSTITUTION BE REFORMED?
80 60 40 20 0
52.7 38.7 33.6
58.6
45 35.4
27.5
27.8
2000 (Dec)
54.1
24.7
21.8
19.6
19.9
21.3
19.6
2005 (Dec)
2008 (Nov)
2010 (Nov)
2012 (Jan)
Yes
No
DK + DA
Figure 11.2 Should the Constitution be reformed? Source: Barómetro CIS
13 Unfortunately, there are no available data after 2012, because questions about constitutional satisfaction and reform have been removed from the CIS Barometers, just when the public discussion about this issue was growing. It is an open question whether this removal has to do with the two main parties reluctance to undertake a constitutional reform.
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186 JOSEP M. VALLÈS several contentious proposals to reform constitutional provisions regarding the electoral system, the role of the Senate as an effective territorial chamber, a better safeguard for social and economic rights and, last but not least, a thorough revision of its national-territorial organization. So far, the two main political forces—PP and PSOE—have been opposed or very reluctant to start or support an amendment procedure. The only two constitutional changes over forty years were approved as demanded by the EU: in 1985 to grant voting rights in local elections to nationals of all EU countries, and in 2011 to constitutionalize the EU demands over budget stability and external debt payments.14 Because of that resistance to being amended, the 1978 Spanish Constitution can comparatively be placed among the world’s most rigid (Lutz 1994; Lorenz 2005; Rasch, Congleton, and Swedenborg 2006). In the amendment procedure established by the Constitution itself (arts.166–168), several actors are endowed with a veto capacity as this procedure requires concurrent supermajorities in both parliamentary houses and—in some matters—an intermediate election and a popular referendum. Therefore, amending the Constitution becomes a very onerous process, which works as a strong political deterrent. However, it may be asked whether it is only this institutional regulation that has given its rigidity to the 1978 Constitution. Barriers to constitutional amendment do not always come from legal or institutional regulations (Ginsburg and Merton 2015). Cultural and political factors have also been reckoned with to explain the amendment difficulties shown in some constitutional systems. Regarding the Spanish case, these barriers may have their roots in the 1978 founding consensus that gave the Constitution a wide legitimacy. Unlike its precedents, it was not presented as a partisan document but as the result of a broad agreement achieved by almost all parties and social actors. To safeguard what was regarded as a historical success and was immediately transformed into a ‘foundational myth’, a rigid reform procedure was then included in the Constitution. If so, resisting the constitutional reform would not come from the existence of formal barriers: it would rather be determined by a prior political cultural standpoint that led to the inclusion of those barriers in the constitutional text. Therefore, it may be hard to overcome the institutional barriers without a cultural change. The unforeseen effect of that reform-averse culture could bring about a counterproductive result: instead of preserving the current constitutional framework, it would lead 14 In 2006, the Socialist government of President Rodríguez Zapatero commissioned a report on constitutional reform to the Council of State, the government’s highest advisory body (http://www. consejo-estado.es/pdf/modificaciones%20constitucion%20esp.pdf/ (accessed 31 Jult 2019)). This report recommended reforming some constitutional provisions in order to eliminate gender discrimination in the Crown’s succession, assert the legal effects of Spain’s EU membership, transform the upper chamber into a federal Senate and classify the present territorial communities in two nominal categories: ‘nacionalidades’ and regions. However, no formal initiative was then taken to this end. In 2015, some parties included in their electoral platforms reform proposals that were not submitted to the parliament. In December 2017, a parliamentary commission ‘to evaluate and modernize’ the territorial model was formed at the request of the Socialist party. It remains to be seen if the new Socialist government (June 2018) will now energize that commission’s activity.
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 187 to its breakdown when the inefficiency of some of its provisions ended up eroding its legitimacy and causing, not its adaptation by gradual amendment, but its entire replacement. To conclude, it is a well-established fact that the 1978 constitutional design has achieved the merit of remaining almost unchanged for forty years. But this has been at the expense of delegitimizing some of its key elements, whose adjustment to new social and political conditions is being now urged by social movements, some parties, and academia. Therefore, if Spain is heading towards some sort of constitutional moment (Ackerman 1993, 1998), the question is whether this moment can drive to a significant adjustment in the constitutional framework or will lead to this framework’s failure (Choudry 2008). When this adjustment is now made dependent on the existence of a new foundational consensus, it is worth remembering that the successful consensus on the 1978 constitutional design resulted from a broadly shared awareness that Spanish society was facing a critical political challenge at the end of Franco’s dictatorship. Forty years later, it remains to be seen if that common awareness will be reached in time to undertake a reform that could prevent the breakdown of the 1978 Constitution’s basic tenets.15
11.4 Bibliography Ackerman, B. 1993. We the People I: Foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ackerman, B. 1998. We the People II: Transformations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aja, E. 2014. Estado autonómico y reforma federal. Madrid: Alianza. Balfour, S. 2005. The Politics of Contemporary Spain. New York: Routledge. Balfour, S. and A. Quiroga. 2007. The Reinvention of Spain: Nation and Identity since Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Behnke, B. and A. Benz. 2009. ‘The politics of constitutional change between reform and evolution’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 39(2): 213–40. Brouard, S. and C. Hönnige. 2017. ‘Constitutional courts as veto players: Lessons from the United States, France and Germany’. European Journal of Political Research 56: 529–52. Choudhry, S. 2008. ‘Ackerman’s higher lawmaking in comparative constitutional perspective: Constitutional moments as constitutional failures?’ ICON 6(2): 193–230. Colino, C. 2009. ‘Constitutional change without constitutional reform: Spanish federalism and the revision of Catalonia’s statute of autonomy’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 39(2): 213–40. Crozier, M., S. Huntington, and J. Watanuki. 1975. The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: NYU Press. Elkins, Z., Ginsburg, T. and Melton, J. 2009. The Endurance of National Constitutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferreras Comella, V. 2013. The Constitution of Spain: A Contextual Analysis. Oregon: Hart Publishing.
15 I wish to thank Enric Fossas, Professor of Constitutional Law (UAB), for his comments on a first draft of this chapter.
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188 JOSEP M. VALLÈS Field, B. 2005. ‘De-thawing democracy: The decline of political party collaborations in Spain (1977–2004)’. Comparative Political Studies 38(9): 1079–103. Field, B. and A. Botti. 2013. Politics and Society in Contemporary Spain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Field, B. and K. Haman. 2008. Democracy and Institutional Development: Spain in Comparative Theoretical Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Finer, S. 1975. Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform. London: Anthony Wigram. Fishman, R. 2011. ‘Democratic practice after the revolution: The case of Portugal and Spain and beyond’. Politics and Society 39(2): 233–67. Fishman, R. 2019. Democratic Practice. Origins of the Iberian Divide in Political Inclusion. New York: Oxford University Press. Fossas, E. 2007. Constitución. In: Manual de conceptos políticos en el contexto de España. Madrid: Síntesis, pp. 61–92. Gallego-Díaz, S. and B. de la Cuadra. 1989. Crónica secreta de la Constitución. Madrid: Tecnos. García Roca, J. 2014. Pautas para una reforma constitucional. Navarra: Aranzadi-Thomson Reuters. Ginsburg, T. and J. Melton. 2015. ‘Does the constitutional amendment rule matter at all? Amendment cultures and the challenges of measuring amendment difficulty’. International Journal of Constitutional Law 13(3): 686–713. Gunther, R., J. Montero, and J. Botella. 2004. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Habermas, J. 1976. Legitimation Crisis. London: Heinemann. Hallin, D. and P. Mancini, P. 2004. Comparing Media Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkin, J. 2005. From consensus to competition: The changing nature of democracy in the Spanish transition. In: The Politics of Contemporary Spain. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 6–26. Llera, F. 2016. Desafección política y regeneración democrática en la España actual. Madrid: CEPC. Lorenz, A. 2005. ‘How to measure constitutional rigidity: Four concepts and two alternatives’. Journal of Theoretical Politics 17(3): 339–61. Lutz, D. 1994. ‘Toward a theory of constitutional amendment’. American Political Science Review 88(2): 355–70. Marcet, J. and L. Medina. 2017. ‘La política del proceso (2010–2016): El sistema político catalán en tiempos de crisis y cambio.’ Barcelona: ICPS Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials (UAB). O’Connor, J. 1973. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Pérez Royo, J. 2015. La reforma constitucional inviable. Madrid: Catarata. Powell, C. 2001. España en democracia, 1975–2000. Barcelona: Plaza-Janés. Rasch, B., R. Congleton, and B. Swedenborg. 2006. Amendment procedures and constitutional stability. In: Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 319–42. Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 2014. La impotencia democrática. Sobre la crisis política de España. Madrid: Catarata. Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 2018. La confusión nacional: La democracia española ante la crisis catalana. Madrid: Catarata. Share, D. and S. Mainwaring. 1986. ‘Transiciones vía transacción: la democratización en Brasil y en España’. Revista de Estudios Políticos 49: 87–115.
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The 1978 Spanish Constitutional Design 189 Solé Tura, J. 1985. Nacionalidades y nacionalismos en España: autonomías, federalismo, autodeterminación. Madrid: Alianza. Solé Tura, J. and E. Aja. 2002. Constituciones y periodos constituyentes en España (1808–1936). Madrid: Siglo XXI. Subirats, J. and R. Gallego. 2002. Veinte años de autonomías en España: Leyes, políticas p úblicas, instituciones, y opinión pública. Madrid: CIS. Taibo, C. 2007. Nacionalismo español. Esencia, memoria e instituciones. Madrid: Catarata. Torcal, M. 2014. ‘The decline of political trust in Spain and Portugal: Economic performance or political responsiveness?’ American Behavioural Scientist 58(12): 1542–67. Torcal, M. 2016. Desafección política en España en una perspectiva comparada. In: Desafección política y regeneración democrátice en la España actual. Madrid: CEPC, pp. 79–113. Tudela Aranda, J. 2011. ‘¿Reforma constitucional en clave federal? Sistematización de problemas generados por las reformas y posibles soluciones’. Revista de Estudios Políticos 15: 231–79. Vallès, J. 2015. ¿Una doble crisis? El sistema político español en la UE. In: España 2015: Situación social. Madrid: CIS, pp. 1698–1717. Vallès, J. 2017. El Estado de las autonomías: una apuesta fallida. In: Ciencia política: una aventura vital. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 391–420. van Biezen, I. and J. Hopkin. 2005. The presidentialization of Spanish democracy: Sources of prime ministerial power in post-Franco Spain. In: The Presidentialization of Politics: A Contemporary Study of Modern Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–27.
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chapter 12
Ex ecu ti v e Politics i n Spa i n Juan Rodríguez-Teruel
12.1 Introduction Since the end of the twentieth century, democracies around the world have been experiencing two different, yet somewhat contradictory, processes: the strengthening of the executives (to the detriment of other political institutions) and, simultaneously, the decentring and hollowing of their power to the benefit of external actors, agencies, and subnational entities (Rosanvaillon 2015; Weller, Bakvis and Rhodes 1997). The combination of these two vectors of change has altered the balance of power within global political systems, particularly within their executive branches; this has fostered the centralization of powers around the head of government (Dahlström et al. 2011; Poguntke and Webb 2005). As with other third-wave democracies, like Portugal or Greece, Spain’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy placed the nation in the role of an earlier precedent of these changes. Since the approval of its 1978 Constitution, Spain has been characterized by a system of majoritarian government—with single-party majority (or even minority) cabinets having a dominant relationship with a low-fragmented parliament—which has been limited by counter-majoritarian institutions, such as the Constitutional Court and the highly decentralized political system (Lijphart 2012, 37–9). As seen in Table 12.1, Spanish governments have been very resilient to instability and have usually completed their legislative tenures,1 becoming one of the Western European countries with highest cabinet duration (Huber and Martínez-Gallardo 2004, 38). Periods of majority governments contributed to this stability, although they have also eroded the extent of executive accountability (Royo 2000). Minority governments did 1 Except the pre-constitutional (1977–79), the Vth (1993–96), and the XIth (2015–16) terms, PMs have tended to complete the four-years’ tenure or to call for early elections during the fourth year.
Table 12.1. National Core Executive in Spain. Time in office
Suarez I Suarez II Calvo Sotelo González I González II González III González IV Aznar I Aznar II Zapatero I Zapatero II Rajoy I Rajoy (caretaker) Rajoy II Sánchez
7/1977–4/1979 4/1979–1/1981 2/1981–10/1982 12/1982–6/1986 7/1986–10/1989 12/1989–6/1993 7/1993–3/1996 5/1996–1/2000 4/2000–3/2004 4/2004–3/2008 4/2008–11/2011 12/2011–11/2015 12/2015–10/2016 10/2016–06/2018 06/2018–04/2019
Duration (months) 22 22 21 43 40 43 33 45 46 48 43 48 11 20 11
Type of majority
Parties
Minority Minority Minority Majority Majority Majority Minority Minority Majority Minority Minority Majority Minority Minority Minority
UCD UCD UCD PSOE-PSC PSOE-PSC PSOE-PSC PSOE-PSC PP PP PSOE-PSC PSOE-PSC PP PP PP PSOE-PSC
Parliamentary seats %
Note: ‘% seats’ shows the proportion of parliamentary seats for parties represented in the cabinet. Source: Author’s own.
47 48 48 58 53 50 45 45 52 43 44 45 33 24
External parliamentary support No No No No No No Yes (regionalist) Yes (regionalist) Yes (regionalist) Yes (United Left, regionalist) No No No Yes (Ciudadanos, regionalist) Yes (Podemos, regionalist)
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Government
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192 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL not harm the pattern of stability either, as they were sustained by parliamentary agreements with regionalist parties, which made cabinet coalitions at the national level unnecessary. In this setting, the Spanish prime minister (PM), formally named president of the government, has overwhelmingly benefited from power concentration and cabinet stability to develop institutional predominance, combining elements from the Westminster model and the German chancellorship model (Heywood and Molina 2000). Scholars have predominantly adopted an institutional approach to explaining this configuration of a PM-centred executive, stressing the role of the constitutional arrangements set at the beginning of the democratic period (Bar 1983; Gunther et al. 2004; Álvarez Conde et al. 2004; Magone 2013; Montabes et al. 2019). As such, the current Spanish political system has been considered a clear example of a regimen characterized by ‘strongly presidential tendencies’ (van Biezen and Hopkin 2005) or simply a ‘presidentialist parliamentarism’ (Aragón 2002). Certainly, this ‘presidentialized trend’ rooted in the constitutional framework generally preceded the transformations identified by the literature as drivers of the centralization of executive power in Western Europe; such drivers include globalization, European integration, decentralization, the expansion of mass communication, and the increasing electoral personalization (Poguntke and Webb 2005). However, this institutional approach has relevant limitations to explain the dynamics and results of executive politics in Spain. Hence, the focus on the aforementioned formal rules has often led studies on Spanish executive politics to disregard the effects of agency and the contingent drivers on the dynamics of executive politics and the balance of power within the cabinet. Alternatively, a ‘core executive approach’—based in a resources-dependency perspective—could be useful to display a more complex view of the Spanish government decision-making, where the role of the actors and the networks is more important than are the formal rules (Rhodes 2006, 327). Instead of privileging the distribution of formal power among office-holders, the notion of core executive refers to ‘all those organizations and structures which primarily serve to pull together and integrate central government policies, or act as final arbiters within the executive of conflicts between different elements of the government machine’ (Dunleavy and Rhodes 1990, 4). This approach focuses on how the prime minister and the other members of the core executive network make decisions, usually to the detriment of the cabinet, the ruling parties, and other external actors (Rhodes 2006). Such account of the interactions among the cabinet actors exchanging resources and competing for policy influence enlarges our understanding of how central government works in Spain. In this respect, the predominance of the Spanish PM has not necessarily impeded a relevant bulk of autonomy for cabinet ministers, although this has been limited to the borders of their portfolio, where they have a large amount of initiative and influence in the policies under their responsibility. Outside their departments, cabinet ministers are confronted with a strong ministerial hierarchy within the cabinet that has mainly been organized around the key influence of the ministers of economy and the presidency. As I will show in the chapter, this approach also allows to better integrate the leader’s personality and the party situation as relevant drivers to explain the PM’s
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Executive Politics 193 decisions. Thus, as the structural factors I have mentioned remained constant, Spanish ‘presidentialization’ has lain predominantly ‘in intra- and inter-party dynamics, and the characteristics of the leaders themselves’ (van Biezen and Hopkin 2005, 124). Finally, a core executive approach permits the identification of the continuity of patterns of decision-making across different periods of party government (Heywood 1998, 105), while it sheds light on the effects of disruptive events such the 2008 financial crisis on the balance of power within the cabinet (Parrado 2012). The following pages will examine the main characteristics of the core executive during the democratic period (1977–2019), with particular attention being placed on the changes that have occurred since the 2000s. My analysis will show that, despite the strong formal position of the PM regarding other political actors and the control the parties have over parliament, there are significant constraints on the PM’s power and on the influence of the parties on the government’s ability to develop its policy agenda.
12.2 The Centrality of the Core Executive Traditional accounts of the Spanish central government identify the president, the cabinet, and the ministers (this usually includes the deputy prime minister) as the main political agents in the executive’s structure, which enables different principles of executive organization to be distinguished: the chancellorship principle, collective decisionmaking, and departmentalism (Bar 1997). Alternatively, a portrait of the Spanish core executive displays a more complex network of overlapping and interconnected actors that exchange resources to make decisions (see Figure 12.1). There are three main dimensions that structure this core executive: prime ministerial power, cabinet coordination, and economic rule. The first dimension deals with the centralization of power around the PM, which is rooted in institutional and personal resources—the latter deriving from his or her style and authority (Smith 1999, 74). The fixed mechanisms that contribute to the accumulation of power in the premier’s hands are usually employed as evidence of the ‘presidentialization’ tendency of Spanish politics, even though there is strong contingency at the roots of this personal power. I will analyse this aspect more carefully in the next section. The second dimension refers to the function of coordinating the policy-making and cabinet decisions, which are shared by three main actors: the deputy PM, the PM’s private office, and the inter-ministerial cabinet committees or ‘delegate commissions’ (Comisiones Delegadas) that are formed by those ministers that share specific common issues. The main resource for the deputy PM to hold cabinet coordination comes from her role as the head of the General Commission of State Secretaries and Sub-secretaries (GCSSS). This commission prepares the agenda of the Council of Ministers and it becomes a powerful tool to organize the flow of cabinet work. This deputy PM’s role
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194 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL
Deputy Prime Minister Department of Presidency
Prime Minister
Department
Department
Department of Economy
PM Office
General Commission of State Secretaries and Sub-secretaries
Delegate Commission
Department of Finance
Council of Ministers
Delegate Commission
Department
Department
Delegate Commission for Economic Affairs
Delegate Commission
Department
Department
Figure 12.1 National core executive in Spain.
overlaps partially with the task of underpinning the interdepartmental coordination assigned to the head of the PM’s office (Heywood and Molina 2000, 115), even though this office is not formally involved in decision-making. Certainly, this task is strongly conditioned by the office-holder’s personality and profile, although there has been a tendency to empower the deputy PM along with the department of presidency in an effort to strengthen coordination. Besides, the delegate commissions are also channels of coordination of the departments’ decisions and policies on the issues considered to be of a transversal nature. Also important is the Delegate Commission for Economic Affairs (DCEA), which is led by the minister of economy. All the portfolios with direct impact on the economy, such as labour, public works, education, and agriculture among others, participate in (and are coordinated by) this committee. This links to the third dimension that organizes the core executive: the economic rule by the ministries of economy and finance. Following the French and Italian pattern, the PSOE governments have usually merged both departments under the same minister— except Pedro Sánchez after 2018—while right-wing cabinets chose to separate them in two different portfolios (like Germany or Portugal). In this situation, economy tends to focus on defining and promoting the economic policy in the European and the international arena. This important responsibility is reinforced by owning the DCEA’s directorship. Instead, finance is more devoted to intra-cabinet politics, as it aims to manage the budget and to deal with other ministers’ demands for more resources, performing
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Executive Politics 195 the role of the budget office existing in other countries (like the treasury in the UK). During the Aznar, Zapatero, and Rajoy governments, the economic ruling also involved the economic office within the PM’s office, which sporadically interfered with the department of economy. According to these three dimensions, the ‘core executive’ perspective suggests that cabinet power is less concentred than it has been argued by the ‘presidentialization’ thesis, because the premier’s leadership relies upon the efficient management of cabinet coordination and economic ruling. Recent examples of failures in these areas have eroded the premier’s image. For instance, the overload of responsibilities on the department of presidency under Rajoy’s cabinets put him in a fragile position when the coordination of the government started to fail. This led to increasing confrontations between the deputy PM and the other ministers of the cabinet. Similarly, when Zapatero’s minister of economy started to be questioned by other ministers and opinion leaders at the outset of the economic crisis (2009), the prime minister replaced him with a less powerful—but more reliable—politician, seeking tighter control of the economic policy discourse (Parrado 2012, 203). As a result, the PM became more exposed to public criticism. Although there have been modifications in the organization of the central government, the main components of the core executive have remained substantially stable since the 1980s. Only during the first years of the democratic period, with the centreright Union of the Democratic Centre (Unión de Centro Democrático, UCD) governments, did some of the elements show a changing configuration in the three dimensions mentioned above. Since then, the core executive has evolved towards its institutionalization. This has fostered stability in the policy-making process to the detriment of the role of parliament, the interest groups, and the supporting parties that are not represented in the cabinet (Chari and Heywood 2009, 49). However, the predominance of the core executive has been counterbalanced by some institutional constraints. In particular, the decentralization of the state and the emergence of powerful regional governments have reduced the policy influence of departments like health, education, or culture, after they transferred personnel, budget and responsibilities to regional executives. Interestingly, despite the devolution of powers to the regions, none of these ministries has disappeared. Moreover, new multilevel areas of joint decision-making have been created, where national and regional ministers meet to bargain about shared policies (see last section). Another source of increasing constraint comes from the European Union, which has altered the balance of power within the cabinet; this has reinforced the PM along with portfolios like economy, finance or foreign affairs. In this respect, the Eurozone crisis in 2010–2012 has strengthened the position of the economic departments, although it has also generated room for disagreement and confrontation between the minister of economy (who is more focused on the relationships with the EU institutions) and the ministry of finance (who is more involved in the relationships with subnational and national actors). Overall, the strengthening of the core executive has undermined other power institutions like the parliament, the judiciary, and the monarchy. The executive predominance over the Spanish Cortes Generales is rooted in parliamentary rules that weaken parliament’s
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196 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL power in terms of the core executive. While the control of the parliamentary party over the process of prime ministerial investiture is very strong because of the lower chamber’s formal rules, it becomes weaker when controlling the executive and supervising its decisions. This occurs because the core executive benefits from formal rules that pave the way for a strong executive dominance over the parliamentary agenda and the policymaking process (Ajenjo and Molina 2011). Likewise, the limits to representatives’ professionalization in Spain have also affected the expertise among the members of parliament. Turnover in committee memberships in the lower chamber has been quite high, and it has increased over time. This has prevented MPs from developing strong technical skills during their parliamentary experience. In turn, it has also eroded their capacity to control the executive as well as their potential as a pool for ministerial recruitment. As a result, Spain’s executive dominance over parliament is one of the highest in the democratic world, achieving 8.26 in Lijphart’s index, greater than high-scoring countries like France (8.00) or the UK (8.12), and far from the USA (4.00), Germany (3.80), Portugal (3.26), Italy (1.49), or Switzerland (1.00), the lowest (2012, 120). Another source of the core executive’s predominant position within the political system comes from the cabinet’s power to appoint constitutional magistrates (in contrast to other parliamentary democracies) and relevant offices of the judiciary (through parliamentary selection), which grants the government vast influence on the selection of the head of the Supreme Court and the formation of majorities in the Constitutional Court, certainly greater than in other European democracies where executives lack such influence. Similarly, the strongly constrained role of the Spanish monarchy provided the government, and particularly the PM, with a great degree of power for political action. Devoid of any executive power, all the king’s acts must be formally signed by the cabinet ministers and his speeches must be reviewed by the PM’s office.
12.3 The Predominance of the Prime Minister A common claim of the studies on the Spanish executive refers to the presidentialization of the political system, which has occurred as a result of the chancellorship model adopted by the 1978 constitution (Aragón 2002; van Biezen and Hopkin 2005; Colino and Olmeda 2012). However, premiership predominance cannot be considered simply as a fixed feature of Spanish governments; rather, it is a function of the fluctuating exchange of resources among unequal actors of the core executive network. These resources at the premiers’ disposition are both formal (the institutional and legal position, the powers to manage the cabinet) and informal (his or her political authority within the cabinet, built upon his position as leader of the ruling party and the personalization trend in the electoral competition over the years). Interestingly, such a centralization of power around a primus above unequals has also been reproduced in the regional
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Executive Politics 197 governments, where the regional prime ministers—also named ‘presidents’—have become key political figures in their respective regions (Botella et al. 2010). The PM’s formal resources come from the pre-eminent functions and powers given by the Constitution (Articles 98–100 from the Constitution) and the government’s laws (Bar 1997). Hence, the process of cabinet formation after a general election—or after a change of prime ministers between elections—reflects a privileged situation: the lower chamber gives its confidence to the PM and then he or she chooses the rest of the cabinet. Thus, from the very beginning, this establishes a relationship of subordination between the PM and the other cabinet members. Similarly, the constructive vote of no confidence weakens the chances of the opposition reshuffling the premiership, as this vote also requires a simultaneous majority for a prospective successor. In this process, the Spanish prime minister does not become significantly constrained by the powers of the head of state, the king of Spain, who has been devoid of any actual power in cabinet formation. Other formal resources relate to the almost absolute control of the cabinet decisions in terms of ministerial appointments, cabinet organization, agenda-setting, and government termination. Moreover, the institutionalization of a powerful structure of support for the PM at La Moncloa palace (site of the PM’s office) has progressively shaped the core executive, as explained in the previous section; moreover, it has built up a ‘presidential centre’ (Paniagua 2018) that has become the symbolic image of the personal power the PM has in Spanish politics. The core of this centre is the PM’s Chief of Staff, who has accumulated an increasing amount of soft power beyond the borders of the PM’s Office (Garrido and Martínez 2018). The PM’s informal powers include having a general overview of the government, having the ability to intervene in any policy area, having the authority given by his or her political position and his or her decisions, and other personal resources such as reputation, skills and abilities, public popularity, or party support (Smith 1999, 76). Not only are these abilities rooted in the leadership functions assigned by the laws (Heywood and Molina 2000, 112–3), but they are also conditioned by the political context. The importance of having an overview of the government’s direction is fed by factors such as the increasing complexity of the policy agenda, the low extent of collegiality within the cabinet (as the Council of Ministers is hardly a substantive arena for decision-making), and the relatively high ministerial turnover. Besides, the stress on ministerial specialization encourages a strong particularistic approach among ministers as heads of department (see next section). It is very unusual for Spanish ministers to share their view publicly about issues or policies not belonging to their ministerial domain. In turn, this favours the centrality of the premier and his environment. The other important informal power is authority, which comes mainly from the PM’s tenure of party leadership and the absence of multi-party cabinets, which has occurred in spite of only five of the thirteen parliaments between 1977 and 2019 having had a party majority. Only during the transition period of the UCD cabinets was the authority of the PM openly challenged by their cabinet and party fellows. In the context of the tortuous party-building process of UCD between 1977 and 1981, party factional leaders opposed
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198 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL the attempts by Adolfo Suárez to form cabinets without relevant factional representatives, seeking loyalty and discipline. As the party factions—controlling many of the parliamentary party group—threatened the parliamentary majority, the PM eventually allowed their opponents to enter the cabinet. Suárez finally resigned and his successor— Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo—was forced to share his executive power with the other party leaders. However, the collapse of the UCD in 1982 taught political elites that eroding the executive premiership was risky for the parties (see Mendez, chapter 20 in this volume). Since then, the combination of formal and informal resources has fostered the accumulation of power around the PM. However, the political evolution of the premier leadership has fluctuated depending on how these resources have been managed in a changing political context. In periods with high parliamentary fragmentation, the PM’s authority has been exposed to vulnerability, as occurred to Suárez and Calvo Sotelo. All the other PMs have also faced internal party criticism when they lacked a majority. For instance, González’s economic policies were openly confronted by the left-wing party faction at the end of the 1980s, as also happened to Zapatero’s support for the reform strengthening self-government in Catalonia. Such intra-party conflicts eroded the stability of the cabinet and damaged the PM’s executive leadership. Similarly, the new actors that entered the parliament after the 2015 elections produced deep polarization and hindered the traditional pattern of government stability. To a lesser extent, internal cabinet division and ministerial scandals have also reflected the premier’s vulnerability and his or her dependency on ministerial performance, even in the case of a stable majority. Hence, Aznar’s decision to support war against Iraq in 2002 produced deep disagreement in the cabinet and the party. Some years later, party corruption quickly eroded Rajoy’s authority, and he never recovered it despite the large majority achieved in the 2011 general election. In all these examples, the evolution of the executive leadership is reflected in the PM’s ratings of approval. As seen in Figure 12.2, public trust in the PM has fluctuated along the different premierships and periods. Between 1986 and 2018, there are some moments where trust in the PM was relatively strong, even higher than the public distrust of the office. In 2004, public trust started to decline constantly, even before the Eurozone crisis had erupted and caused painful consequences for the premiers’ leadership (Olmeda and Colino 2017, 222). The chart shows that elections and PM changes are critical boosts for the premiers’ ratings, as a consequence of the honeymoon effect that has been found in other countries. It also suggests how powerful resources alone are not necessarily sources of greater public trust. Indeed, adverse situations that include major constraints may encourage premiers to employ their leadership abilities in order to turn political difficulties into ‘negative resources’ in an effort to enhance their position. The Aznar government illustrates this idea: in his first government, the lack of majority induced Aznar to employ a consensual approach, with positive results in terms of public support; in contrast, the greater strength of his second government led to the opposite result (Helms 2017, 8). At the end of their tenures, strong resources could not save Spanish premiers from dramatic exits from power, which reflects much more vulnerability of the office than is
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Executive Politics 199 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 fe b ju -86 l fe -88 boc 92 t ju -92 n no -93 m v-93 a se r-9 pt 4 en -94 e ju -95 nno 95 v ju -95 nju 96 l ab -97 r-9 ab 8 r ab -99 r ab -00 r-0 ab 1 r ab -02 r ab -03 r ab -04 r-0 ab 5 r ab -06 r ab -07 r ab -08 r-0 ab 9 r ab -10 r ab -11 r ab -12 r ab -13 r ab -14 r ab -15 r ab -16 r-1 ab 7 r-1 8
0 González
Aznar Trust
Zapatero
Rajoy
Sánchez
Distrust
Figure 12.2 Prime minister approval in Spain. Source: CIS
suggested by the idea of a presidentialized cabinet. González was defeated in the 1996 general election. Calvo Sotelo and Zapatero decided not to run again under pressure, although it did not prevent their substitutes from losing the election afterwards. Two premiers were replaced during their term while facing difficult conditions, which forced them to resign (Suárez) or to lose a vote of no confidence (Rajoy). Even Aznar, who stepped down without political pressures, did not see his successor win the election in 2004. Only González and Aznar were able to complete at least two parliamentary terms in the government.
12.4 Ministerial Autonomy and Elite Recruitment A prominent feature of the functioning of the Spanish executive is the peculiar combination of prime ministerial government and ministerial government, which is in contrast to the usual pattern of zero-sum game between both principles that we see in Britain, Germany, and Italy, among others (Laver and Shepsle 1994). According to the resource-dependency perspective, the Spanish PM predominance over the years has not necessarily excluded the cabinet ministers from having an important degree of action within the borders of their portfolio. The availability of extensive political appointments
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200 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL and resources in the department has allowed a double chain of delegation within the executive: ministers act as subordinates of the PM; simultaneously, they become the bosses of important teams of policymakers within their respective departments. The cornerstone of this relationship of dependence between the PM and his or her ministers lies in the practice of ministerial appointments and ministerial reshuffles. The decision on when to make a ministerial reshuffle and how many ministers and portfolios will be affected by this effort has essentially depended on the criteria set by, and the political needs of, the PM (Real-Dato and Jerez 2009). Spanish premiers have employed four major criteria for choosing ministers: personal competence, party strategy (rewards, new leaders’ promotion, factional representation), direct messages to the electorate (promoting descriptive representation), and maintaining the parliamentary majority by appointing ministers representing broader political positions, particularly when there is a minority government (Rodríguez Teruel 2011a). The ministerial selection process has been conducted in different ways, illustrating the various PM’s different personalities and approaches to power. González usually consulted different people (including the executive, the party, and other sources) to find potential candidates for the cabinet. Zapatero and Sánchez gradually leaked new cabinet ministers before the reshuffle, while Aznar and Rajoy conducted the selection process secretly and with discretion until the announcement, a symbol of their personal power and control over the political process. Similarly, the ministers also perform the role of superiors regarding their political subordinates. This relationship is facilitated by the high politicization of the senior echelons of Spain’s governmental bureaucracies, which are staffed with political appointees chosen by individual ministers and based on political loyalty and party proximity (Parrado 1996). Even though the PM has a decisive voice in the selection of ministerial appointees and he or she may veto any candidate, ministers have more freedom in selecting the less political profiles. Some of them may be real mandarins—non-political bureaucrats strictly selected on the basis of their technocratic background—and even if they are not so, they may not have had significant political careers prior to their appointments. Many others have previously held important political positions in local, regional, or national governments. This number of political subordinates provides any minister with an important degree of political influence, because it is in his or her power to recruit and to dismiss the available personnel to develop the department agenda. Below the minister, the most important political office is the secretary of state, an office that was created in 1977 with the aim of reinforcing the control and management of specific policy areas in the department. Since then, these appointees have reinforced their political profile and they have provided many candidates for the cabinet (RealDato and Rodríguez-Teruel 2016). Although they are not regular members of the cabinet, these junior ministers are particularly relevant in the core executive because of their participation in the GCSSS. Ministerial autonomy is also built in the design of the core executive, which grants ministers a substantive amount of resources for policy-making despite the overwhelming predominance of the PM. Their tenures as the heads of their departments provide authority and power resources to contribute to the cabinet agenda. In addition, ministers
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Executive Politics 201 also have personal and informal resources that they exchange with the PM and with their subordinates (political appointees and bureaucrats from their departments). Political experience and knowledge is the most important aspect exchanged. Spanish cabinet ministers have had a combination of political and technical profiles that varies substantially along portfolios and presidential periods. Indeed, ministerial recruitment has brought different types of minister into the cabinet as a result of different PMs’ strategies in an ever-changing political context. There are three main patterns of elite recruitment in the Spanish cabinets (see Figure 12.3). The first refers to the weakness of the parliament as a pool of candidates for the cabinet, related to the abovementioned reasons of parliamentary subordination to the executive. Only about half of all cabinet members have served in parliament since 1977. A few other cabinet members were MPs who left parliament before they were chosen for a cabinet position. In reality, this parliamentarian channel has mostly been employed to bring party leaders and factional representatives into the cabinet. This modest parliamentary background reflects the subordination of parliament to the core executive, and it indicates the relevance of other pools for ministerial selection such as the bureaucratic and the subnational pools (Rodríguez-Teruel 2011b). Hence, the second pattern of the governing elite is bureaucratic recruitment: almost half of the cabinet ministers had previously been appointed as junior ministers or other posts in the ministerial departments. Yet, the presence of many former bureaucrats in the cabinet does not necessarily signal bureaucratic dominance. Of all the ministers who have held political 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Pre UCD
I
II
III
IV
V
González Executive political appointees
VI
VII
Aznar MP
VIII
IX
Zapatero
X
XI XII (caretaker) Rajoy
XII Sánchez
Subnational or European offices
Figure 12.3 Political experience of cabinet ministers. Source: Author’s own data (1977–2018)
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202 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL appointments under ministers, almost 60 per cent of them had been civil servants without any experience outside their public administration, while the rest were party politicians who had gravitated towards bureaucratic positions (Rodríguez-Teruel 2011b). In short, political appointments within a department have more frequently become a rung on the ladder of politics. Finally, the third pattern refers to the proliferation of cabinet members with regional and local political backgrounds. One out of every four ministers has held a local political office, a seat in a regional parliament, or a regional cabinet post; in fact, nine cabinet ministers had been regional prime ministers. It is interesting to note that the European Parliament has not served as much of a pathway to the national cabinet. Nevertheless, the patterns of cabinet circulation have imposed serious limitations on ministerial autonomy, and they have reduced the margins for an effective ministerial government. These constraints are reflected in the main features of the ministerial career, namely the short duration of the average tenure, the limited mobility of ministers among different departments, and the stress on the policy specializations that are usually made in ministerial appointments. Indeed, ministerial tenures in Spain do not last very long, as ministers stay in cabinet an average of 3.3 years, which is lower than the average cabinet duration, and shorter than in other Western European parliamentary democracies, like Italy (3.8 years), Britain (4.8 years), or Germany (5.6 years) (Bakema 1991, 75). One out of every three ministers do not even stay two years in cabinet, which is a huge limitation for developing a policy and for achieving political fame beyond the borders of the ministry. Moreover, those who spend more time in the office have few chances to move from one portfolio to other. ‘Musical chairs’ (i.e. ministerial circulation among different ministries) does not occur very frequently in the Spanish ministerial reshuffles. This is related to the stress that is placed upon a candidate’s specialization as a condition for recruitment, which entails narrower chances for generalist views in the cabinet. Although Zapatero and Rajoy increased the number of ministers without expertise, specialization has remained as a frequent political justification of ministerial appointments (see Figure 12.4). However, this stress on expertise does not indicate a technocratic trend, as the economic backgrounds in the Spanish ministerial elite have been very limited, and their managerial and bureaucratic skills have fluctuated greatly over time. Finally, the constraints to ministerial autonomy are also reflected in the few ministerial resignations that have occurred in Spain. Actually, ministerial exits due to political disagreements or challenging the premier are very unusual. Even resignations that are forced by scandals or policy failures are exceptional.2 In the end, these kinds of decisions exceed the extent of autonomy of the minister. Due to the consequences on the whole cabinet, even when ministers must put an end to their ministerial tenure, they must leave their fate in the hands of the PM’s strategy (Figure 12.5). 2 The first ministerial resignation forced by a political scandal came in 1991, when the deputy PM, Alfonso Guerra, left the cabinet after his brother had used official PSOE premises for private business purposes. Other resignations related to accusations of corruption came in the last years of the González government and under the Rajoy premiership. Only six days after Pedro Sánchez’s first cabinet formation, the minister of culture, Maxim Huerta, resigned after accusations of tax non-compliance.
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Executive Politics 203 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
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III
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VII
VIII
Aznar
IX
Zapatero
Managerial expertise
X
XI XII XII (caretaker) Sánchez Rajoy
Economics background
Figure 12.4 Technical background of cabinet ministers. Source: Author’s own data (1977–2018)
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
End of government
Cabinet reshuffles
Scandals or political failures
Disagreements
Promotion
Individual reshuffles
Figure 12.5 Type of ministerial exits. Source: Author’s own data (1977–2018)
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204 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL
12.5 The Limits of Party Government As the extent of ministerial autonomy is restrained within the borders of the ministries, political challenges to the prime minister’s authority come mainly from intra-party and multilevel politics. Regarding the party influence, sooner or later, Spanish prime ministers have had to deal with a factional crisis within the party. In some cases, these party conflicts have affected the cabinet or have even originated from cabinet/party disagreements, as we saw in previous sections with UCD and the González governments. Nonetheless, the party influence over Spanish cabinets is weaker than the party government model is usually assumed to be in Western European democracies (Bergman et al. 2013). Among other factors, this is mostly due to the lack of cabinet coalitions and the particularities of Spanish political parties since the return of democracy. Three dimensions offer a point of observation for this relationship: appointments, policies, and patronage. In terms of appointments, ministerial selection is one of the main power resources in the PMs’ hands; thus, PMs have been reluctant to share it with the party. Although the party had some voice in the ministerial selection with Suárez, Calvo Sotelo, and even the first government of González, the tendency has been that the parties are strictly subordinated to the PM’s decisions thereafter. The most visible evidence of this has been the important number of non-party ministers in the cabinet (Figure 12.6). This pattern of recruitment has aimed to isolate the cabinet from intra-party factionalism by going beyond party lines to introduce a non-partisan tone. Likewise, appointments in the parliamentary group have usually been included as a part of general cabinet reshuffles decided by the PM. An extreme case was Rajoy’s decision in June 2015, only some months before the general election, when he was facing increasing criticism from the party regarding the low government performance:3 although he was expected to reshuffle the cabinet seeking a political boost for the campaign, he finally preferred to make changes in the party board and the parliamentary group instead of changing the balance among ministerial factions in order not to damage the internal executive stability. As for policies, I must note the disproportionate disparity of resources between parties and executives in terms of policy expertise as well as the weakness of partisan think tanks to provide policy specialists in Spain or to initiate public policies from the party or parliament. Consequently, governments have often resorted to non-partisan experts in designing their technical portfolios, and parties have typically remained subordinate to the executive agenda. In addition, external constraints (particularly in times of crisis) have reduced the span of party differences in the implementation of the executive policy agenda. As a consequence, Spanish governments have been increasingly governing by
3 ‘Rajoy asume sus errores y tomas las riendas del PP,’ El Mundo, 18-6-2015.
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Executive Politics 205 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20
CONST Suárez
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IV González
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7-VI-18 14-VI-18 12-IX-18
21-XII-11 28-IV-14 28-IX-14 2-XII-14 26-VI-15 14/4/16 19-VII-16 3-XI-16
18-IV-04 10-IV-06 7-IX-06 12-II-07 7-VII-07 14-IV-08 23-II-09 07-IV-09 20-X-10 11-VII-11
5-V-96 18-I-99* 29-IV-99 20-II-00 27-IV-00 27-II-01 10-VII-02 4-III-03 4-IX-03
1-XII-82 4-VII-85 25-VII-86 11-VII-88 6-XII-89 27-IV-90 12-I-91 12-III-91 14-I-92 23-VI-92 13-VII-93 24-XI-93 5-V-94 2-VII-95 18-XII-95
0
4-VII-77 29-IX-77 10-II-78 24-II-78 5-IV-79 17-I-80 2-V-80 8-IX-80 26-II-81 31-VIII-81 1-XII-81 29-VII-82 12-IX-82
10
XI XII Rajoy
Sánchez
PARTY LIDER
Figure 12.6 Party background of cabinet ministers. Source: Author’s own data (1977–2018)
decree,4 downgrading the role of parliaments and parties in the policy-making process (Chaqués et al. 2015, 50). Finally, governments provide political parties with an important scope for party patronage when they come to power in Spain. However, on the basis of the existing evidence, it is difficult to estimate how many favours and decisions are actually made strictly considering a partisan perspective. Certainly, the high politicization of the top levels of the public administration means that there are a large number of political appointments in the departments and staffs. In most of them, the prime minister (and party leader) and the party’s central board are the key actors in the decision, whereas the party on the ground OR the parliamentary party HAVE no stake at all (Gómez and Verge 2012, 326). However, executives also have a large influence, formally and informally, in appointments to other institutions like the judiciary, the economic public sector, and the social and cultural environment. A controversial issue deals with the influence exerted by the executive on the boards of private companies and in the banking system. This was particularly transcendental with Aznar’s policy of privatizing powerful public 4 As in other parliamentary governments, Spanish cabinets can pass royal decree-laws, a rule with the force of a law in some specific subjects, in contexts of urgent and extraordinary needs. This special decree must be debated and validated by the parliament within thirty days. This rule allows governments to pass bills on relevant topics in a shorter time than the ordinary legislative process, although they do not eventually avoid the need of a majority in the chamber.
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206 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL enterprises at the end of the 1990s (such as Telefonica, Endesa, and Repsol) and with the privatization of the Spanish public banks during the Eurozone crisis under Zapatero’s government after 2009 (such as Caja Madrid, Bancaja, or La Caixa).
12.6 The Multilevel Executive Politics Even though the constitutional rules that organize the central government have remained stable, the multilevel structure of the political system produced by political decentralization and Europeanization5 has profoundly transformed the executive dynamics in Spain. There are several aspects where these effects are visible. On the one hand, the cabinet formation is increasingly affected by regional dynamics. The role of regionalist parties has contributed to the inclusion of regional politics in the formula of forming parliamentary majorities. The result has fostered ‘executive congruence’ in regional cabinets, whereby the party composition of the cabinets (and parliamentary majorities) tend to be congruent across different layers. This also affects the outcomes and the functioning of national governments in Spain, particularly in the case of minority cabinets, when multilevel exchanges shape the executive’s policy agenda (Field 2016, 3). Besides, multilevel politics also influences ministerial selection as prime ministers employ cabinet appointments as a tool to enhance the position of the party’s territorial leaders against the opposition or to help them to resolve territorial conflicts; this has been reflected by the recruitment of nonparliamentary ministers (Rodríguez-Teruel 2011b). Overall, decentralization (as well as Europeanization) has changed the very nature of the executive in Spain, evolving from the centralized model that was devised in 1978 towards a multilevel notion of governance, where executive decisions are spread across different institutional levels. Accordingly, in contemporary Spain, we cannot truly understand executive politics without including the other levels of decision-making. In this respect, regional executives have become veto-players or counter-national governments, especially in cases of executive incongruence. These powerful actors have achieved a larger domain for policy-making, having more resources, more personnel, and a greater amount of visible influence than even the central government has in key issues like health, education, and internal security. In turn, this has also allowed for greater personalization and party patronage at subnational politics, which has been facilitated by the proximity between institutions and voters. Consequently, decisionmaking has become more complex, with the necessity of greater multilevel coordination among executives through inter-ministerial committees, both bilateral and multilateral. In sum, executive politics has become inherently multilevel. 5 For this, see Colino’s chapter, chapter 5 in this volume.
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Executive Politics 207
12.7 Changing Patterns in Spanish Executive Politics Since the return of democracy, executive politics in Spain have been characterized by some specific features: • Centrality of the core executive in the political system; • Prime minister predominance in terms of the cabinet and the ministers; • Ministerial autonomy within the portfolio’s boundaries; • Limited party government; • Multilevel governance. However, some political transformations in recent years have produced ongoing alterations of this portrait. Thus, the Eurozone crisis was followed by tighter constraints from the EU for national budgets and policy agendas in the state members. Additionally, the devolution model is under contestation by regionalist forces, particularly after the political crisis in Catalonia (2012–2017). The party system is also evolving towards a more fragmented and polarizing multi-party scenario, as illustrated by the great difficulties in forming a government after the general election in 2015. Besides, political parties are experiencing an evolution towards deeper intra-party democracy. The main symbol of this evolution is probably the new mode of party leadership selection. In June 2018, Sánchez became the first PM selected (twice, 2014 and 2017) in a primary party election. Finally, there is a greater public concern regarding the political elites’ attitudes and practices. Hence, public exemplarity seems to be reaching different levels of exigency compared to the demands of previous decades. How may these streams of change affect the patterns of executive politics? The possibility of forming coalition cabinets seems to be the most visible transformation that could stem from this political reconfiguration. However, other mutations may follow, such as new attempts to centralize executive power in the PM’s hands, new arrangements to accommodate subnational minorities with greater territorial powers, or new constraints from the European institutions to strengthen cohesion and legitimacy. All of these possibilities seem to converge in an upcoming scenario: a transformation of the Spanish core executive and the patterns of functioning that have existed over recent decades.
12.8 Bibliography Ajenjo, N. and Molina, I. 2011. Spain: Majoritatian choices, disciplined party government and compliant legislature. In: The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting. London: Routledge. Álvarez Conde, E. et al. 2004. ‘Encuesta sobre el Gobierno’. Teoría y realidad constitucional 14: 9–63.
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208 JUAN RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL Aragón Reyes, M. 2002. ‘¿Un parlamentarismo presidencialista?’ Claves de Razón Práctica 123: 42–9. Bakema, W. 1991. The ministerial career. In: The Profession of Government Minister in Western Europe. Basingstoke(Palgrave Macmillan): s.n., pp. 70–98. Bar, A. 1983. El Presidente del Gobierno en España. Madrid: Civitas. Bar, A. 1997. Spain: A prime ministerial government. In: Cabinets in Western Europe. Chippenham: St. Martin’s Press. Bergman, T., A. Ecker, and W. Müller. 2013. How parties govern: Political parties and the internal organization of government. In: Party Governance and Party Democracy. New York: Springer, pp. 33–50. Blondel, J. and F. Müller-Rommel. 1997. Cabinets of Western Europe. Chippenham: St. Martin’s Press. Botella, J., J. Rodríguez-Teruel, O. Barberà and A.Barrio. 2010. ‘A new political elite in Western Europe the political careers of regional prime ministers in newly decentralised countries’. French Politics 8(1): 42–61. Chaqués Bonafont, L., A. Palau, and F. Beumgartner. 2015. Agenda Dynamics in Spain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chari, R. and P. Heywood. 2009. ‘Analysing the policy process in democratic Spain’. West European Politics 32(1): 26–54. Colino, C. and J. Olmeda. 2012. El estilo de gobierno y de liderazgo. In: España en crisis: Balance de la segunda legislatura de Rodríguez Zapatero. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 75–108. Dahlström, C., B. Peters and J. Pierre. 2011. Steering from the Centre: Strengthening Political Control in Western Democracies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Dunleavy, P. and R. Rhodes. 1990. ‘Core executive studies in Britain’. Public Administration 68(1): 3–28. Field, B. 2016. Why Minority Governments Work: Multilevel Territorial Politics in Spain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Garrido, A. and M. A. Martínez. 2018. El poder en Moncloa: el jefe de Gabinete del presidente del Gobierno. Revista Española de Ciencia Política. 48: 73–102. Gómez, R. and T. Verge. 2012. Party patronage in Spain: Appointments for party government. In: Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, s.n. Gunther, R., J. Montero, and J. Botella. 2004. Democracy in Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Helms, L. 2017. ‘When less is more: ‘Negative resources’ and the performance of presidents and prime ministers’. Politics, online first, 1–15. Heywood, P. 1998. ‘Power diffusion or concentration? In search of the Spanish policy process’. West European Politics 21(4): 103–123. Heywood, P. and I. Molina. 2000. A quasi-presidential premiership: Administering the executive summit in Spain. In: Administering the Summit: Administration of the Core Executive in Developed Countries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 110–133. Huber, J. and C. Martínez-Gallardo. 2004. ‘Cabinet instability and the accumulation of experience: The French Fourth and Fifth Republics in comparative perspective’. British Journal of Political Science 34(1): 27–48. Jerez-Mir, M. and J. Real-Dato. 2009. Cabinet dynamics in democratic Spain (1977–2008). In: The Selection of Ministers in Europe: Hiring and Firing. London: Routledge, pp. 119–42.
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Executive Politics 209 Laver, M. and K. Shepsle. 1994. Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lijphart, A. 2012. Patterns of Democracy: Government Formation and Performance in ThirtySix Countries. New Yale: Yale University Press. Magone, J. 2013. Contemporary Spanish Politics. London: Routledge. Montabes, J., A. Martínez, and A. Garrido. 2019. El Ejecutivo. In: Política y Gobierno en Espala. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 179–222. Olmeda, J. and C. Colino. 2017. Leadership capital in a protracted crisis: Spanish prime ministers compared. In: The Leadership Capital Index: A New Perspective on Political Leadership. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 207–225. Paniagua, J. 2018. La Moncloa: una estructura presidencial para el gobierno de España (1978–2015). In: Centro Presidencia. Presidencias y centros de gobierno en América Latina, Estados Unidos y Europa. Madrid: Tecnos, pp. 371–91. Parrado, S. 1996. Las élites de la administración estatal (1982–1991): Estudio general y pautas de reclutamiento. Sevilla: Instituto Andaluz de Administración Pública. Parrado, S. 2012. The executive at work during times of crisis. In: Executive Politics in Times of Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 197–216. Poguntke, T. and Webb, P. 2005. The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Real-Dato, J. and M. Jerez. 2012. Cabinet dynamics in democratic Spain (1977–2008). In: The Selection of Ministers in Europe. Hiring and Firing. London: Routledge, pp. 119–42. Real-Dato, J. and J. Rodríguez-Teruel. 2016. ‘Politicians, experts, or both? Democratic delegation and junior ministers in Spain’. Acta Politica 51(4): 492–516. Rhodes, R. 2006. Executives in parliamentary government. In: The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 323–43. Rodríguez-Teruel, J. 2011a. Los Ministros de la España democrática: reclutamiento político y carrera ministerial de Suárez a Zapatero (1976–2010). Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales. Rodríguez-Teruel, J. 2011b. ‘Ministerial and parliamentary elites in multilevel Spain, 1977–2009’. Comparative Sociology 10(6): 887–907. Rosanvallon, P. 2015. Le Bon Gouvernement. Paris: Le Seuil. Royo, S. 2000. From Social Democracy to Neoliberalism: The Consequences of Party Hegemony in Spain, 1982–1996. New York: St Martin’s Press. Smith, M. 1999. The Core Executive in Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. van Biezen, I. and J. Hopkin. 2005. The presidentialization of Spanish democracy: Sources of prime ministerial power in post-Franco Spain. In: The Presidentialization of Politics: A Contemporary Study of Modern Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–27. Weller, P., H. Bakvis, and R. Rhodes. 1997. The Hollow Crown: Countervailing Trends in Core Executives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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chapter 13
Legisl ati v e Politics i n Spa i n Bonnie N. Field
13.1 Introduction Spain’s parliament, las Cortes Generales, is commonly characterized as party dominated and weak compared to the executive (e.g. Capo Giol 2003; Paniagua Soto 1997, van Biezen and Hopkin 2009). While this is still true today, there are some indications that parliament is taking on new life in the aftermath of party system change. This is despite very limited formal change in parliamentary institutions over the more than forty years since the re-establishment of democracy. In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, which affected Spain significantly from 2010 onwards, the parliamentary elections in 2015 brought party system change into the national parliament. Transforming the prior two-party dominated system, the new party system is more fragmented, first with the rise of newcomers Ciudadanos (Citizens/ C’s) and Podemos (We can), who aspired to surpass or replace the previous governing parties, the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP) (see chapter 19 on Parties and Party Systems). The, in 2019, the far-right Vox party also entered parliament for the first time in April and became the third largest party in November. The new party system has engendered difficulties of government formation and minority governments with weaker bargaining power, strikingly different from the past. After the 2015 elections, parliament was unable to elect a government. Elections had to be held again in 2016, and ultimately produced a minority government. In 2019, failure to form a government also led to new elections. Spain is no stranger to minority governments. In fact, it is among the European countries that most frequently has minority governments, along with Denmark, Sweden, Romania, and Norway. Thus far, they have been single-party governments. While parliament tends to be more important during periods of minority government, since 2016 the governments’ weaker bargaining position has further strengthened parliament’s political influence.
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Legislative Politics 211 Between 2016 and 2019, the governing party controlled fewer seats in parliament, and the governments had to negotiate with multiple political parties in parliament, some of which sought to replace it in power. At the outset of the Sánchez government (2018–19), the opposition controlled the governing board of the Congress of Deputies and had a majority in the Senate. This is very different from previous minority governments that held a large plurality of seats in parliament and mainly relied on regionally based parties for support, and who had little interest in governing Spain (Field 2016). New life has also been injected into existing parliamentary institutions. Spain’s Senate—normally considered politically weak, even irrelevant, and ineffective in terms of its ability to articulate Spain’s complex territorial politics—became a central institutional actor in the Catalan independence crisis in 2017. The Popular Party government of Mariano Rajoy asked the Senate to implement article 155 of Spain’s constitution that allows the central state to suspend a region’s autonomy, but only with the Senate’s approval. Used for the first time, the Senate approved the measure in October 2017 and Catalonia spent seven months governed from Madrid. Subsequently, the Congress of Deputies—Spain’s lower and more important chamber of parliament—brought the Popular Party government of Mariano Rajoy down and replaced it with a Socialist government under the leadership of Pedro Sánchez in 2018. The use of votes of no confidence is rare in parliamentary systems, and their success even rarer (Williams 2011). Successfully removing a Spanish government is particularly noteworthy because the constructive vote of no confidence presents a very high hurdle. While motions of no confidence had been tabled in the past, this was the only one that had a chance of succeeding, and it did. The implications of the political changes in Spain for parliamentary politics, and viceversa, (and indeed their durability) are largely unexplored, creating the opportunity to advance the study of Spanish and legislative politics. The remainder of the chapter is divided into six sections: (1) parliament’s place within the constitutional system; (2) political representation, including political parties, traits of parliamentarians and citizens’ trust in parliament; (3) parliament’s internal organization, particularly related to parliamentary party groups and committees; (4) characteristics of law-making; (5) executive–legislative relations; and (6) a brief conclusion.
13.2 Las Cortes Generales in Spain’s Constitutional System Parliament is at the centre of Spain’s constitutional system.1 It is the political institution that represents the Spanish people, being the only national-level institution that is 1 Spain’s Constitution has only been amended on two occasions since its approval in 1978. In 1992, it was amended to allow non-citizens the right to vote in local elections, bringing it in line with the Maastricht
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212 Bonnie N. Field popularly elected.2 Spain has a parliamentary system of government in which the government is responsible to parliament, and there is no elected head of state. Instead, there is a hereditary, constitutional monarch, as in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and elsewhere, with very limited formal powers. Spain’s constitutional system is also based on positive parliamentarism, meaning that a potential government must win an affirmative vote in parliament to form (Bergman 1993). This is a common type of parliamentarism in Europe, though in countries like Norway and Denmark an affirmative vote is not required. Because a single political party only infrequently wins a majority of seats in Spain, government formation processes in parliament are consequential. Parliament also exercises oversight of the government’s activities and can bring it down with a constructive vote of no confidence. Nonetheless, the rules are designed to strengthen the head of government and limit parliament’s ability to censure the government. The Congress of Deputies elects a prime minister (PM)3 (and only the prime minister) in a first-round vote with an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies or in a second-round vote with a simple majority. The prime minister, in turn, selects the government ministers; parliament does not intervene. Also, modelled on the German Constitution, parliament can only remove the government with an absolute majority vote that simultaneously elects a new prime minister. The constructive vote of no confidence is rare in Europe. In Spain, ministers also do not need to be drawn from parliament, and parliament cannot remove individual ministers. Therefore, individual ministers owe their positions to the PM and not parliament. PMs and governments have also been quite autonomous from their party organizations, further enhancing the power of the PM. Parliament is asymmetrically bicameral, as in France and the United Kingdom. The power of the lower chamber Congress of Deputies far surpasses that of the Senate. While this manifests in multiple ways, perhaps most importantly, it is the Congress of Deputies that selects the prime minister and can censure the government, and the Congress of Deputies is privileged in law-making, being able to reject amendments and vetoes that may come from the Senate.4 The Senate is frequently criticized as irrelevant and unable to serve as a chamber of territorial representation, as does occur in federal states like Germany and the United States. Only a small portion of senators (about 20 per cent) represent Spain’s seventeen Autonomous Communities. They are indirectly elected by the regional parliaments, in contrast to the overwhelming majority that are elected from the same provincial districts as the Congress of Deputies. Despite fairly broad consensus about the weaknesses of the Senate, there is no consensus on what to do about it. Treaty of the European Union. More controversially and relevant to parliamentary politics, in 2011, the two main parties—the PSOE and PP—agreed to a reform that limited public budget deficits at all state levels. 2 Though, the parliaments of the Autonomous Communities indirectly elect a small portion of the Senate. 3 The prime minister is referred to as the presidente del gobierno (president of the government). 4 English translations of the Constitution and parliamentary procedures for the Congress of Deputies are available at: http://www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/Congreso/Hist_Normas/Norm (accessed 1 August, 2019).
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Legislative Politics 213 This does not mean, however, that Spain’s complex territorial politics are absent from parliament. Particularly important, regionally based parties, ranging from regionalist to secessionist, are represented in parliament and have been key allies of minority governments (Field 2016; Heller 2002; Reniu i Vilamala 2002). Regionally based parties’ negotiating capacity grows during periods of minority government, but their influence is also dependent on the political situations in their regions, particularly whether they are governing or not, or if they need the support of the national parties to govern in their respective regions (Capo Giol 2003; Field 2016; Reniu i Vilamala 2002). It also means that the influence and accommodation of regionally based parties and their voters in the central state institutions tend to diminish during periods of majority governments. Spain’s central parliament has also experienced a dispersal of political authority downward toward its seventeen regions, called Autonomous Communities, and upward toward the European Union (EU). While the division of authority between central and regional institutions is not clear cut in the Constitution, creating an important role for Spain’s Constitutional Court, the Autonomous Communities have a great deal of policymaking authority, approving, for example, 4,600 laws between 1980 and 2005 (Colino 2008, 574). Nonetheless, the central parliament plays an important role in shaping devolution. Regional statutes of autonomy, akin to regional constitutions, are enacted in a multilevel process that involves approval in the regional parliament, the Spanish parliament, and, in some regions, in a binding referendum. The EU also increasingly sets the legislative agenda. Thirty-five per cent of the laws the Spanish parliament passed between 1986 and 2007 were directly related to the EU. The share increased over time, reaching 49 per cent between 2001 and 2007 (Palau and Chaqués 2012). Parliament’s role in EU policy has formally increased over time; yet, in practice parliament has not been a critical actor shaping Spain’s European position. This is in part due to wide public and political party support for the EU, institutional rules that strengthen the government vis-à-vis parliament, and parliament’s limited resources (Closa and Heywood 2004; Kölling and Molina 2015; Palau and Chaqués 2012). While Spain has been among the most pro-EU countries in Europe, together with countries such as Ireland and Germany, it remains to be seen whether modestly greater political division on the EU in the aftermath of the Great Recession triggers changes in parliament’s behaviour. Spain’s parliament also plays an important role in shaping the Constitutional Court, and, in turn, is constrained by it (see chapter 16, this volume, on judicial politics).
13.3 Representation Representation primarily occurs through highly disciplined political parties. The Congress of Deputies is elected through a closed-list system of proportional representation; yet, with majoritarian biases that in practice limit proportionality (see chapter 21 on elections). The electoral system favours larger national parties, punishes national
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214 Bonnie N. Field parties whose support is thinly spread across the country, and generally does not punish regional parties whose support is territorially concentrated and high. In contrast, most of the Senate is elected through a limited vote plurality system in which voters have three votes that they can cast for any candidates (within or across parties) on the ballot to fill four seats per district. Yet, most voters vote for the same party as they do for the Congress of Deputies and for candidates in the order they are presented (Gunther and Montero 2009, 111). The parliaments of the Autonomous Communities indirectly elect the remainder, approximately 20 per cent. In terms of party representation, the centre-left PSOE and the conservative Popular Party dominated parliamentary politics between 1993 and 2015, jointly winning an average of 79 per cent of the vote and 87 per cent of the seats in the Congress of Deputies, and they alternated in government.5 Smaller national parties, such as the United Left (IU), and regionally based parties—such as the Catalan Convergence and Union (CiU), the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), the Canary Islands Coalition (CC), and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), among others—regularly gained representation and at times supported minority governments. The parliamentary landscape changed with the 2015 elections, with the PP and PSOE winning less than 51 per cent of the vote. In the 2016 parliamentary election, four national parties gained significant representation: PP (39 per cent of seats), PSOE (24 per cent), Podemos (20 per cent) and Citizens (9 per cent), in addition to the regionally based parties. In 2019, parliament fragmented more with the entry of Vox first with about 7 per cent of the seats and then with 15 per cent. Members of parliament (MPs) in general have few incentives to behave in a personalistic manner, or to strongly speak for a territory from within one of the national parties (Montero 2008). Instead they have strong incentives to speak for their party. This is in part due to the electoral systems, more so in the Congress of Deputies with its closed party lists. However, notably, most senators are not elected to represent the Autonomous Communities, but rather the same provincial electoral districts as deputies. In this way, the Senate only weakly represents Spain’s regions. Parties are also critical in candidate selection, in election campaigns, including financing, and in parliamentary procedures. In terms of candidate selection, the parties that (re)emerged in the transition to democracy, such as PSOE, Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) and Popular Alliance (AP, later PP), gave party leadership bodies a privileged role in the selection of candidates for public office in their party statutes (Field 2013b). While today there is some variation in the importance of regional party branches and Spain’s parties have experimented with primaries to select a party’s lead candidate (presumably their candidate for prime minister), the longer-standing parties have largely maintained control of the selection of legislative candidates. Surveys show that MPs recognize that party members are not decisive in their selection, and that the national party leadership is more important than regional leadership in the selection of candidates for the central parliament (Cordero et al. 2016). 5 Between 1982 and 1993, the PSOE and Popular Alliance (later re-founded as the Popular Party) were also the two largest parties, but the PSOE was predominant and other centre-right parties were relevant. Between 1977 and 1982, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) and the PSOE were the main parties. Election data from Spain’s Ministry of the Interior: www.infoelectoral.mir.es/ (accessed 1 August, 2019).
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Legislative Politics 215 However, some of Spain’s new parties have used inclusive candidate selection rocedures. For the 2015 parliamentary election, Podemos used a very inclusive primary p to select its candidates. Party members were able to vote electronically or in local assemblies. Nonetheless, the specifics of the primary election, such as the controversial use of a single national constituency (when candidates compete in provincial districts) favoured the candidates the national party leadership preferred (Pérez-Nievas et al. 2018). The consequences, if any, for legislative behaviour remain to be studied, and indeed whether the use of more inclusive procedures continues and/or spreads. Like parliamentarians elsewhere, the profiles of Spain’s MPs, such as age, sex, profession, and education, do not mirror those of the society they are elected to represent (Coller et al. 2018). Yet, Spain has made significant advances in women’s presence in parliament. From holding a scant 6 per cent of seats in the Congress of Deputies and 2 per cent in the Senate in 1977, women held 39 per cent and 40 per cent of the seats respectively after the 2016 parliamentary elections. In 2018, the Inter-Parliamentary Union placed Spain sixteenth in its worldwide (fifth in Europe) ranking of the share of women in parliament, just behind European countries like France, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.6 The increase in women’s representation is attributed to the work of feminists within the Socialist Party who pushed for improving women’s representation and the adoption of party-level quotas for women candidates on party lists (Threlfall 2007). This, in turn, had spill-over effects on other parties, including the conservative Popular Party, which did not adopt party-level quotas but increased women’s representation nonetheless. This occurred prior to the adoption of legally mandated sex-based quotas of between 40 per cent and 60 per cent in 2007 (Verge 2012). In 2006, women’s representation in Congress had reached 36 per cent, though there were disparities across parties. The PSOE’ had 46 per cent women compared to 28 per cent in the Popular Party. Spain has not made the same advances in the representation of other groups. Spain’s immigrant population increased dramatically from the 1990s onwards. Yet, persons of immigrant origin hold less than 1 per cent of the seats in parliament, even though the foreign population reached 12 per cent in 2010. The representation of immigrants in Spain’s parliament is comparable to Italy, despite Spain’s higher levels of immigration, more favourable attitudes toward immigration, and the (prior) absence of a strong antiimmigrant party (Vintila and Morales 2018). Compared to the accumulated knowledge on women’s representation in Spain, comparatively little is known about the barriers to and incentives for the descriptive representation of other groups and how various statuses, such as ethnicity and gender, intersect to hinder or facilitate representation. In the aftermath of the Great Recession and the Euro crisis, Spain faced a marked crisis of representation and political disaffection increased, as it did in other countries hit hard by the crisis, such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal. In Spain, turnout in elections averaged 73 per cent between 1977 and 2016, and ranged between a low of 68 per cent (1979) and a high of 80 per cent (1982). Yet, it averaged 68 per cent in the 2011, 2015, and 2016 elections (Government of Spain 2017). Periodic public opinion surveys by the 6 Data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union: www.ipu.org/ (accessed 1 August, 2019).
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216 Bonnie N. Field 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
-9 5 N ov -9 6 D ec -9 6 Fe b98 D ec -9 8 M ar -0 0 Fe b03 N ov -1 0 Fe b11 O ct -1 1 N ov -1 1 Ap r-1 3 Ap r-1 4 Ap r-1 5 Ja n16 Ju l-1 6
ec D
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Figure 13.1 Trust in Parliament, average, 1994–2016. Source: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS)
respected Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) also show that public trust in parliament suffered.7 On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 indicating complete trust, the average level of trust was higher during the 1994 to 2003 period (average of 5.3) than it was between 2010 and 2016 (average of 3.5) (see Figure 13.1). The latter period coincides with Spain’s severe economic crisis and the Socialist government’s implementation of austerity measures, which many on the left viewed as a betrayal. This manifested most vividly in the 15M movement, also referred to as the indignados (indignant) movement, in 2011, that claimed Spain’s political establishment did not represent them; the movement was highly critical of Spain’s political class and the political institutions in place since the transition. Trust in parliament increased in November 2011, a month when early parliamentary elections were held; yet dropped even further in 2013 and afterwards, which corresponded with a large number of corruption scandals, many of which implicated the governing Popular Party. Political and economic disenchantment contributed to the transformation of Spain’s party system. Nonetheless, support for democracy in Spain, also measured by CIS, remains high.
13.4 Internal Organization Parliament is bicameral, but with a weak Senate. While both chambers can scrutinize government action through appearances, requests for information, questions, 7 Data are available at www.cis.es/ (accessed 1 August, 2019).
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Legislative Politics 217 interpellations, and so forth, the Senate does not have a formal role in government formation or censure—only the Congress of Deputies does. Both chambers can propose legislation (as can the parliaments of the Autonomous Communities and citizens). Yet, the Senate plays a secondary role in the law-making process. Most importantly, the Congress of Deputies can lift a Senate veto with an absolute majority vote within a twomonth period or with a simple majority thereafter. Senate amendments must be approved by the Congress of Deputies. Also, Spain’s disciplined political parties are expected to behave coherently across the chambers. Because of this, there is little empirical work from a political science perspective on the Senate to document its (lack of) influence. Nonetheless, the Senate has not fully taken advantage of the powers that it does have to obstruct and delay. This is in part because the Senate electoral system tends to produce a more favourable outcome for the governing party in the Senate than in the Congress of Deputies. However, at times, the main opposition party in the Congress has had the most seats in the Senate. The relative lack of obstructionism is perhaps also due to the fact that even minority governments had solid backing in the Congress of Deputies, sufficient to deter rampant obstructionism. However, times have changed, and, for example, the weaker position of the Sánchez (2018–19) Socialist minority government with a PP-controlled Senate made the Senate a more relevant political actor. It remains to be seen whether these partisan circumstances reoccur in the future. In each chamber, the primary units of organization are political parties and committees. It is no exaggeration to say that political parties dominate parliamentary activity in Spain. In addition to their influence during parliamentary elections, creating incentives for elected MPs to remain loyal party representatives, political parties (parliamentary groups in the chamber) are central in parliamentary processes and procedures. And there is a significant overlap between members of the party leadership and members of the parliamentary group leadership (Sánchez Medero and Aldeguer Cerdá 2018). Focusing on the Congress of Deputies, the parliamentary rules require deputies to join a parliamentary group. If party MPs do not have a sufficient number to form a group according to the rules, they join the mixed group. Deputies elected for the same party cannot form separate parliamentary groups. While party switching was common in the early days of democracy in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Field 2013b), it no longer is. Party representation in the chamber determines the composition of the chamber’s governing board (mesa). This body plans, organizes and regulates parliamentary activity, and has tended to operate somewhere between a fully impartial and a fully partisan body (Oñate 2000b, 80). While the rules and norms facilitate the representation of smaller parties, the governing party or it jointly with its closest allies historically held the majority (Field 2016, 131). This was not the case during the early days of the Sánchez PSOE government in 2018; the opposition PP and Citizens held five of the nine positions on the board, which led to political clashes between the board and the plenary. The Board of Party Speakers ( junta de portavoces) is much more significant than would be indicated in a read of the formal parliamentary rules. In practice, it is a forum in which party leaders, along with members of the governing board and the government, coordinate and negotiate. Party speakers’ votes on the board have the weight of their parties’ seats in the chamber (Oñate 2000b).
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218 Bonnie N. Field Parties are privileged in the legislative process (Oñate 2000a). For example, arliamentary groups and MPs can present a bill, but in the case of the latter it needs to p be signed by fourteen other MPs, and also her/his respective parliamentary group. Similarly, party groups and MPs are allowed to present amendments, but the respective parliamentary group must sign individual amendments. Only party groups can present amendments that send an entire government bill back to the executive or replace it in its entirety with another bill (enmiendas de totalidad). And only parliamentary groups can defend amendments that are not incorporated at the committee stage in the plenary debate. Parliamentary groups also control access to speaking on the chamber floor and nominations to the Constitutional Court and General Council of Judicial Power. While the formal rules permit MPs to act more autonomously in their scrutiny of the government, they do not appear to do so. The parliamentary groups’ own internal regulations further strengthen the parties vis-à-vis the individual MP. It is the party group that determines the party’s position in parliamentary activity; the rules establish a requirement of party discipline, as well as sanctions for indiscipline. Party leaders monitor votes and absences through the electronic voting system. Taken together, this leads one recent study to conclude that the only time parliamentarians can speak freely is during a point of personal privilege (turno por alusiones) (Sánchez Medero and Aldeguer Cerdá 2018, 93).8 In practice, MPs vote with their parties at very high rates; party voting unity was typically above 0.98 using the Rice index of agreement9 in the 1990s and early 2000s (Field 2013b, 2016, 168). Nonetheless, party discipline is the norm in the Western European context. In surveys of MPs that ask about voting in parliament, 91 per cent of PSOE MPs and 95 per cent of PP MPs indicated that they either vote with their party or make their opinion known but accept party discipline (Sánchez Medero and Aldeguer Cerdá 2018, 90). While there have been a select few cases of MPs breaking with the party line, such as when a small group of PSOE deputies refused to abstain in the investiture of PM candidate Mariano Rajoy in 2016, this type of behaviour is highly unusual. It remains to be studied whether the newer parties in parliament behave similarly. Another main unit of parliamentary organization is committees. There is little political science research on parliamentary committees in Spain. Focusing on the Congress of Deputies, there are multiple standing committees, largely mirroring government ministries, as well as non-permanent committees. Committee assignment is based on a proportionality rule, with the parties receiving roughly the representation they have in the chamber. And parties control committee assignments and can remove members from a committee. Yet, despite progressive institutionalization and important formal powers (Oñate 2000b), Maurer (2008) concludes that they do not operate independently of the broader 8 When a MP is referred to during a debate, and that reference is not central to the debate, the MP can request to speak. 9 The index is calculated separately for each party’s MPs, using three vote types (yes, no, abstention). IA = (number of the highest vote type—sum of the other two vote types)/total number of votes.
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Legislative Politics 219 partisan dynamics. While they are important sites for interparty negotiation, p articularly during minority governments, the limited expertise of committee members, few resources, and party discipline curtail their influence. However, much work remains to be done on committees to better understand their relevance. Notably, 47.9 per cent of ordinary government bills10 between 1982 and 2011 passed in committee with full legislative authority, which means the bill bypasses floor debate and goes directly to the Senate when it comes out of committee (Field 2016, 132–3). And, while the party composition of committees is roughly in proportion to the chamber, there are examples of consequential differences in the votes needed in committee compared to the floor during the first minority government of PM Rodríguez Zapatero (Field 2016, 137–9).
13.5 Law-Making In comparative European perspective, Spanish governments have strong, institutional legislative agenda setting powers (Ajenjo and Molina 2011; Field 2016, 124–8). In practice, government bills are the most important bills and are very likely to pass. For example, during the PP majority government of Mariano Rajoy (2011–15), the government presented 163 bills, 160 (98 per cent) of which passed. Parliamentary groups in the Congress presented 217 bills, six of which passed. There were also bills from the Autonomous Communities (20) and MPs (1), none of which passed.11 Notably, minority and majority governments between 1982 and 2011 were similarly successful. The governments passed 89 per cent of their bills (only 0.4 per cent were formally rejected). The success rate of minority government bills (87.8 per cent) and the number of government bills they passed (136) did not differ greatly from periods of majority government (89.3 per cent, 144, respectively) (Field 2016, 79). However, during that time, even the minority governments had strong formal and partisan bargaining positions. This is not equally true of the governments formed in 2016 and 2018. The Rajoy minority government (2016–18) presented few bills, only fourteen in one thirteenmonth period, several of which transposed European directives, lost votes, and struggled to pass the general budgets.12 Parliament’s role in law-making is regularly compromised through the use and abuse of executive decree laws (reales decretos-leyes). Executive decrees can be issued in cases of ‘extraordinary and urgent need’ and the Congress of Deputies must approve or reject 10 Full legislative authority cannot be delegated to committees for organic laws. 11 Data are from the Congress of Deputies Initiatives database, available at www.congreso.es/ (accessed 1 August, 2019). 12 Fernando Garea, ‘Rajoy intenta impulsar una agenda política que dé imagen de actividad’, El Confidencial, 31 December 2017, available at https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2017-12-31/rajoyagenda-politica-imagen-actividad-cataluna-ciudadanos_1499782/ (accessed 1 August, 2019). ‘Spain’s hyperactive parliament stalls reform,’ Politico, 21 March 2018, available at: https://www.politico.eu/ article/spain-hyperactive-parliament-mariano-rajoy-pp-legislation-congress/ (accessed 1 August, 2019).
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220 Bonnie N. Field them within thirty days. Nonetheless, they are law when the government approves them. Between 1980 and 2017, 19 per cent of laws were executive decrees (Chaqués Bonafont 2017). They tend to be used more when the governing party does not have a majority in parliament. Between 1982 and 2015, majority governments issued an average of 11.4 decrees per year compared to 16.6 for minority governments (Field 2016). Though there are outliers: The majority government of PM Mariano Rajoy issued an average of nineteen decree laws per year, in the context of economic crisis. Legislative cooperation between the governing party and the opposition has changed over time. In the early period of democracy (1977–1982), there was broad interparty cooperation on legislation. In my work, based on all votes on ordinary laws and final votes on organic laws,13 consensus between the two main parties generally declined between 1977 and 2011 (Field 2005, 2013a). In the most consensual period, 86 per cent (1977–79) of laws passed with the collaboration of the two main parties; in the period of most conflict, 50 per cent (2004–8). Organic laws, generally, attained more bipartisan agreement than ordinary laws (Field 2005; Mújica and Cuenca 2006). Nonetheless, analysts that use an alternative methodology, originally developed by Jordi Capo, and in some cases using only organic laws, conclude that interparty relations are more consensual (Capo Giol 1994; Mújica and Cuenca 2006; Palau et al. 2014). In part, as a result of the world financial crisis in 2008, conflict on legislation increased (Palau et al. 2014).
13.6 Executive–Legislative Relations No political party has ever won a majority of the vote in elections for the Congress of Deputies. Nonetheless, in four of the thirteen elections between 1977 and 2016, a single party won a majority of seats and formed single-party majority governments. Aside from those instances, minority governments formed.14 Focusing on the post-democratic consolidation period after 1982 until 2015, executive– legislative relations were manageable for the (potential) government (see chapter 12 on executive politics). If a governing party did not have a majority, it negotiated external support primarily from regionally based parties. Majority or minority status clearly affected whose interests were represented, the incentives for cooperation, and indeed the centrality of parliament in the political process. Yet, the table did not flip; parliament did not dominate the executive. Governments formed smoothly, passed their legislation, generally accomplished their political agendas, and lasted (Field 2016). There are several reasons. First, Spain’s 13 A final floor vote is required for organic laws. The vote is on the entire bill as modified during the debate. There is no final vote on ordinary bills. The bill can be broken up into a number of votes and approved in pieces. Organic laws typically regulate political institutions and fundamental rights. 14 The 1989–93 government of Felipe González (PSOE) is often treated as a majority government. It held 50% of the seats, and because deputies from a small, radical Basque party did not participate in parliamentary activity, it in effect had a majority.
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Legislative Politics 221 political institutions strengthened the government vis-à-vis parliament. Second, the governments generally had strong partisan bargaining positions in parliament, with some variation. The governing party held a large plurality of seats, had a variety of possible legislative coalition partners and potential allies who also needed the governing parties’ support at the regional level. Finally, the governments’ allies were primarily regionally based parties with no interest in governing Spain, but a strong interest in sustaining a government that would grant concessions to them, including support to govern in their regions. With the change of the party system in 2015, much changed. Two minority governments formed, those of Mariano Rajoy (PP, 2016–18) and Pedro Sánchez (PSOE, 2018–19). The government still had strong institutional powers. Yet, the governments had weaker partisan bargaining positions. The governing parties’ share of seats is far lower than in the past, 38 per cent during the Rajoy government and 24 per cent during the Sánchez government. Regional parties are not sufficient to sustain them (though they are still relevant), and a radicalization of party positions among the Catalan nationalist parties complicates agreement. The governing parties have also found themselves in the position of having to seek support from parties that hoped to surpass or replace them in power, including Citizens and Podemos. When Spain had a more fragmented party system in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was either a period of strong interparty consensus related to the democratization process (1977–82) or of PSOE dominance (1982–89). Neither applies in the current context of high polarization and fierce electoral competition between five national parties.
13.7 Conclusion Parliament is a critically important actor in Spain’s parliamentary system, particularly because parliament is the key representative institution at the national level and decides who will govern. The institutions and rules that structure parliamentary activity and its place within the constitutional system have generally led to a parliament in which the Congress of Deputies is the dominant chamber, the fundamental actors are disciplined political parties, and the executive is strong in its relationship with parliament. Governments, minority and majority, have normally demonstrated strong governing capacity, meaning that they pass their legislation in parliament, advance their political agendas, and last. However, partisan circumstances also matter. Since the transition to democracy, Spain’s party system has changed, sometimes dramatically, altering the political dynamics in parliament. At times, such as in the early years of democracy, party relations in parliament were highly consensual (1977–82). Between 1982 and 1989/93, single-party majority governments with strong institutional advantages moved parliament off the centre stage. Subsequently, governments alternated between single-party majority and minority ones (1993–2015). While the governments still had strong bargaining positions,
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222 Bonnie N. Field non-government parties in parliament gained influence, particularly the regionally based parties, during periods of minority government. With the party system change in 2015, Spain has returned to a more fragmented party system; yet, without the consensual behaviour that characterized the transition years and with minority governments in a weaker bargaining position. Compared to several other areas and arenas of Spanish politics, there is comparatively less research on parliament from a political science perspective, and a limited, though growing, number of empirical studies of its operation and significance. In addition to the topics covered here, we need research on parliament’s important role in controlling and scrutinizing the executive through activities such as parliamentary questions, motions, investigations, and government appearances (but, see Chaqués Bonafont and Palau 2011; Sánchez de Dios and Wiberg 2011). This means that there is ample room for future research on parliament to greatly advance our understanding of Spain’s politics.
13.8 Bibliography Ajenjo, N. and I. Molina. 2011. Spain: Majoritatian choices, disciplined party government and compliant legislature. In: The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting. London: Routledge, pp. 164–83. Bergman, T. 1993. ‘Formation rules and minority governments’. European Journal of Political Research 23(1): 55–66. Capo Giol, J. 1994. ‘Oposición y minorías en las legislaturas Socialistas’. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 66: 91–113. Capo Giol, J. 2003. ‘The Spanish parliament in a triangular relationship, 1982–2000’. The Journal of Legislative Studies 9(2): 107–29. Chaqués Bonafont, L. 2017. ‘Gobernar por decreto’. Agenda Pública. [Online] Available at http://agendapublicaelpais.com/gobernar-por-decreto/ (accessed 27 September 2019). Chaqués Bonafont, L. and A. Palau. 2011. ‘Assessing the responsiveness of Spanish policymakers to the priorities of their citizens’. West European Politics 34(4): 706–30. Closa, C. and P. Heywood. 2004. Spain and the European Union. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Colino, C. 2008. ‘The Spanish model of devolution and regional governance: Evolution, motivations and effects on policy making’. Policy and Politics 36(4): 573–86. Coller, X., A. Jaime-Castillo, and F. Mota. 2018. Political Power in Spain: The Multiple Divides between MPs and Citizens. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cordero, G., A. Jaime-Castillo, and X. Coller. 2016. ‘Candidate selection in a multilevel state: The case of Spain’. American Behavioral Scientist 60(7): 853–68. Field, B. N. 2005. ‘De-thawing democracy: The decline of political party collaboration in Spain (1977–2004)’. Comparative Political Studies 38(9): 1079–103. Field, B. N. 2013a. Governing Spain in tough times and in minority: The limits of shifting alliances. In: Politics and Society in Contemporary Spain: From Zapatero to Rajoy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 61–80. Field, B. N. 2013b. ‘Resolute leaders and ‘cardboard deputies’: Parliamentary party unity in the new Spanish democracy’. South European Society and Politics 18(3): 355–74. Field, B. N. 2016. Why Minority Governments Work: Multilevel Territorial Politics in Spain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Legislative Politics 223 Government of Spain. 2017. Las Elecciones Generales en España. Madrid: Ministry of the Interior. Gunther, R. and J. Montero. 2009. The Politics of Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heller, W. 2002. ‘Regional parties and national politics in Europe: Spain’s Estado de las Autonomías, 1993 to 2000’. Comparative Political Studies 35(6): 657–85. Kölling, M. and I. Molina. 2015. The Spanish national parliament and the European Union: Slow adaptation to new responsibilities in times of crisis. In: The Palgrave Handbook of National Parliaments and the European Union. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 348–65. Maurer, L. 2008. The power of committees in the Spanish Congress of Deputies. In: Democracy and Institutional Development: Spain in Comparative Theoretical Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 90–109. Montero, A. 2008. Speaking for place or for party? Territorial representation and the legislative behavior of deputies in the Spanish Congress. In: Democracy and Institutional Development: Spain in Comparative Theoretical Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 68–89. Mújica, A. and S. Cuenca. 2006. ‘Consensus and parliamentary opposition: The case of Spain’. Government and Opposition 41(1): 86–108. Oñate, P. 2000a. Congreso, grupos parlamentarios y partidos. In: El Congreso de los Diputados en España: Funciones y Rendimiento. Madrid: Tecnos, pp. 95–139. Oñate, P. 2000b. La organización del Congreso de los Diputados. In: El Congreso de los Diputados en España: Funciones y Rendimiento. Madrid: Tecnos, pp. 69–94. Palau, A. and L. Chaqués. 2012. The Europeanization of law-making activities in Spain. In: The Europeanization of Domestic Legislatures. New York: Springer, pp. 173–96. Palau, A., L. Muñoz Márquez, and L. Chaqués-Bonafont. 2014. ‘Government–opposition dynamics in Spain under the pressure of economic collapse and the debt crisis’. The Journal of Legislative Studies 21(1): 75–95. Paniagua Soto, J. 1997. ‘Spain: A fledgling parliament 1977–1997’. Parliamentary Affairs 50(3): 410–22. Pérez-Nievas, S., J. Rama-Caamaño, and C. Fernández-Esquet. 2018. New wine in old bottles? The selection of electoral candidates in general elections in Podemos. In: Democratizing Candidate Selection: New Methods, Old Receipts? New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 123–46. Reniu i Vilamala, J. 2002. La formación de gobiernos minoritarios en España, 1977–1996. Madrid: CIS. Sánchez Medero, G. and B. Aldeguer Cercá. 2018. Un estudio de la disciplina partidista de los Diputados Españoles en el Congreso’. Revista de Ciencia Política 38(1): 83–104. Threlfall, M. 2007. ‘Explaining gender parity representation in Spain: The internal dynamics of parties’. West European Politics 30(5): 1068–95. van Biezen, I. and J. Hopkin. 2009. The presidentialization of Spanish democracy: Sources of prime ministerial power in post-Franco Spain. In: The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–27. Verge, T. 2012. ‘Institutionalizing gender equality in Spain: From party quotas to electoral gender quotas’. West European Politics 35(2): 395–414. Vintila, D. and L. Morales. 2018. La representación política de las personas de origen inmigrante en España e Italia. Papers. Revista de Sociología 103(4), 521–50. Williams, L. 2011. ‘Unsuccessful success? Failed no-confidence motions, competence signals, and electoral support’. Comparative Political Studies 44(11): 1474–99.
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chapter 14
M u ltil ev el G ov er na nce i n Spa i n Sandra León and Ignacio Jurado
14.1 Introduction The dispersion of power upwards, downwards, and sideways from the central state during the 1970s and 1980s brought about a system of multilevel governance in which new authorities interacted and cooperated in the context of a globalized world.1 Power moved sideways from central governments through the paradigmatic shift in public administration from government to governance. On the one hand, power has migrated upwards towards supranational organizations that emerged in the context of European integration and the increasing internationalization of national economies. On the other hand, power has been transferred downwards through a process of decentralization that encompasses a broad range of countries (Hooghe and Marks 2003). Multilevel governance signals the end of a world in which nation states with exclusive or sovereign powers are the dominant entity, and signals the beginning of a new era where the acts of governing are carried out by a plurality of governmental and non-governmental actors (Hueglin 2001). In this chapter we will provide a theoretical and empirical view on how Spanish citizens navigate their multilevel system—the State of Autonomies—as well as analysing the implications of multilevel governance for accountability. We conceptualize multilevel systems as those that emerge from the creation of federal institutions, and we will study accountability from an electoral angle: elections as the mechanism for holding governments to account for their past actions. A crucial condition to make this mechanism work is clarity of responsibility, that is, citizens being able to understand who does what and assign responsibilities accordingly. Yet multilevel governance complicates the 1 Ignacio Jurado would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for its generous support through grant ES/N01734X/1.
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Multilevel Governance 225 assignment of responsibility. The dispersion of authority between national, local, regional, and supranational institutions that characterizes multilevel systems in Europe complicates the assignment of responsibility for policy outcomes. Distorted responsibility judgements undermine the classic reward–punish model of accountability. According to this model, elections are the mechanism by which citizens hold governments to account for their performance in office, either by rewarding parties that have achieved good outcomes in government with re-election or by punishing those that do not perform well. If there is no clear idea of who does what, the reward–punish model cannot work properly and, ultimately, it will also weaken responsiveness, as a great motivation for governments to respond to citizens’ interests and preferences is that they are afraid of losing elections. We explore the relationship between multilevel governance and the attribution of responsibility in Spain. The shift of authority from the Spanish central government to regional governments (Autonomous Communities or the so-called Comunidades Autónomas) was followed by the migration of power from the state to the European Union and to integration in supranational organizations. In addition, the distribution of competences between the centre and the regions has been asymmetric and ongoing, which has created a particularly difficult scenario for the assignment of responsibilities, and turned Spain into an interesting case study to explore the attribution of responsibility in multilevel systems. The chapter is organized as follows: in the next section we provide a review of the main characteristics that define the Spanish multilevel system with regard to the assignment of responsibilities. In the third section, we use new data to specifically address how well citizens attribute responsibility for policies and observe variations over time and across regions. In section 14.4 we explore the role of partisan biases in responsibility judgements. Section 14.5 accounts for the preferences of Spanish citizens for multilevel governance and how these preferences are aligned with partisan options. Finally, we conclude with a summary of the most important contributions of the chapter.
14.2 Multilevel Governance, Democratic Accountability and the Case of Spain Multilevel governance is a challenge for democratic accountability. A pillar of democratic accountability is that citizens punish or reward governments depending on how well they perform in government. This model makes several assumptions. First, citizens can observe policy outcomes. Second, they assign those outcomes to the actions of the government that has produced them. Finally, they use their vote to discipline the incumbent, either re–electing them when the policy outcomes are good, or throwing the government out of office when its performance has not produced positive results.
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226 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado This model has been mainly evaluated with regard to economic results—so called economic voting2—but can also be applied to specific issues or policy areas. This accountability process becomes more demanding in multilevel systems. In multilevel systems, policy responsibilities are distributed across different levels of government (national, regional, local, or supranational). This renders the assignment of responsibility into a difficult task for voters. The electoral accountability model relies on citizens knowing who does what. However, when the assignment of responsibility becomes difficult, individuals’ vote choices may end up being less connected to their evaluations of policy outcomes, which undermines electoral accountability (the relationship between policy evaluations and electoral punishment or rewards). The seminal work in this area is the analysis of Powell and Whitten (1993). They created a ‘clarity of responsibility’ index that measured the degree of cohesiveness and visibility of governing institutions in different countries (including federalism as one of the institutional characteristics that undermine clarity of responsibility). They showed that low clarity of responsibility was associated with a weaker impact of the economy on electoral support for incumbent parties, an empirical result that has been corroborated in subsequent studies.3 Focusing on the specific role of federal institutions, Anderson (2006) provided evidence of the existence of weaker economic voting in federal states than in unitary ones, the causal explanation being that the diffusion of powers in federal contexts undermines individuals’ ability to administer political sanctions on the basis of economic or policy evaluations (451). The case of Spain and the peculiarities of its multilevel system have been subject to increasing attention from the scholarly literature on democratic accountability, attribution of responsibility, and economic voting.4 The decentralized territorial organization of the state enshrined in the 1978 Spanish Constitution (the ‘State of Autonomies’) has been characterized by its asymmetric and ongoing nature, two characteristics that set up a particularly complex scenario for the assignment of responsibility and accountability, but which also provide an interesting variation when studying accountability over time and between regions. At present, all Autonomous Communities have virtually the same powers of expenditure, so the only significant difference that remains in the system is the one relative to regional financing. However, as Colino (2020) explains in this volume (chapter 5), the process of decentralization in Spain has had an asymmetric and evolving nature. In this process we can identify three types of regions. The first group of regions is formed by the Basque Country and Navarra, which was granted autonomy with the most extensive transfer of powers. We will define them as the ‘fast-track’ group (León 2012, 2011). These regions were given broad executive and legislative powers over many policy areas such as healthcare, education, and social policy.
2 See Fiorina (1978) and Lewis-Beck (1986), among others. 3 See Anderson (2000), Duch and Stevenson (2008), Whitten and Palmer (1999), De Vries et al (2011), among many others. 4 See, for instance, Bosch (2016), Lago-Peñas and Lago-Peñas (2011) or Queralt (2012).
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Multilevel Governance 227 In addition, they were granted a regional system of financing that provided full regional autonomy over major taxes, called the Foral system. A second group of regions that we define as ‘mixed-track’ were granted autonomy with a more intertwined distribution of powers than the rest. Regional governments were endowed with greater powers over expenditure (policy areas such as healthcare or education), but revenue authority was regulated through the Common Regime and stayed in the hands of the central government. Finally, the third group of regions are the ‘slow-track’ group, which were given autonomy with very limited powers over expenditure and revenues. Policy areas such as healthcare, education, and social policies remained in the hands of the central government, and regional financing mostly depended on transfers from the central government through the Common regime. Slow-track regions were gradually endowed with new competences on expenditure powers and at present, there is no significant variation in expenditure powers across the seventeen regions. As a result of this ongoing process, the Foral regime today guarantees more tax autonomy in the territories of the Basque Country and Navarre, while the Common Regime regions (mixed-track and slow-track) have traditionally had more limited revenue autonomy, although the latest reform of the system (in 2009) conferred significant autonomy in taxation to regional governments. Power in Spain has not only been transferred downwards but also upwards. In 1986 Spain acceded to the European Common Market, adding a fourth authority structure on top of the national, regional, and local ones. The fact that the design of decentralization has varied across regions and over time has conferred multilevel governance in Spain a particularly complex structure for the control of governments. This prompts the question on how individuals have coped with that complexity when assigning responsibility. The literature on the case of Spain is relatively recent, but the empirical evidence in the area so far points to the following conclusions: a) There is a limited understanding on the distribution of responsibilities between different levels of government (see Herrero et al. 2016). When asked about the attribution of responsibility in seven policy areas, public opinion data show that individuals are on average able to assign responsibilities correctly for less than half of them (León 2015). b) There is also evidence showing that individuals are better able to assign responsibilities for policy areas that belong to the sphere of competences of the central government (Lago-Peñas and Lago-Peñas 2013; León 2011, 2015) than for competences that are in the hands of the regional authorities. c) Patterns of attribution of responsibility tend to vary across regions: in the Basque Country and Navarre, citizens are more capable of correctly identifying regional competences, whereas clarity of regional responsibilities tends to be lower in slow-track regions, where the national government has had a prominent role for a longer period. And these patterns of responsibility attribution seem to correlate with cross-regional variation in regional economic voting (León 2011, 2015, León and Orriols 2017).
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228 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado d) There is evidence of a learning process in attribution of responsibility among citizens as decentralization reforms bed in (León 2012) or as a result of the economic crisis (Cordero and Lago 2016). e) Finally, there is evidence showing that both partisanship and regional identity moderate the assignment of responsibility (León and Orriols 2016; Rico and Liñeira 2018). In the next sections we explore whether some of the empirical findings in the literature still hold when tested against more recent public opinion data.
14.3 Information and Attribution of Responsibility 14.3.1 Do Spanish Citizens Know Who Does What? As we argued in the previous section, a key element for democratic accountability is that citizens must know who does what. This is what we can call functional attribution of responsibility (Rudolph 2003a). Multilevel settings complicate responsibility attribution: people may get it wrong when they assign responsibility for policy outcomes because they lack sufficient information to make correct judgements as to where the responsibility lies. In other words, individuals may struggle to cope with the ‘informational challenge’ posed by multilevel governance. This argument speaks to a large literature in political science that explores how citizens make political judgements under conditions of limited information—see, for instance, Bartels (2000). To account specifically for how well citizens attribute responsibility in Spain, we use data from a survey conducted in May 2018.5 We take the two most important policies at the regional level: health and education. Figure 14.1 displays the percentage of people that attribute responsibility for these two policy areas to different levels of government.6 It can be observed that a majority of citizens get it wrong: 58.8 per cent of respondents attribute the main responsibility for outcomes in health services to the central government and 63.4 per cent do so with regard to education, for which the responsibility is mainly in the hands of regional governments. This shows that Spanish public opinion still has a limited understanding of regional competences, a finding that confirms previous empirical evidence (Lago-Peñas and Lago-Peñas 2013, León 2011, 2015). If part of the problem with attribution of responsibility has to do with lack of awareness of which levels of government have responsibility for which policies (and not just 5 The survey was fielded by Netquest on 28 and 29 May 2018. The sample has 1,002 respondents and the data were gathered using quotas for gender, age, and region. 6 The figure excludes 6.5% of DK/DA respondents about health and 6.3% about education.
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Multilevel Governance 229 Health
75
Education
75
Central Government
45
60
Regional Governments
30
15
0
Percentage
Percentage
60
Central Government
45 Regional Governments
30
15
Local Governments
Local Governments
0
Figure 14.1 Attribution of responsibility for main regional policies. Source: León and Jurado. Netquest survey May 2018
the result of strategic allocations as we will analyse further on), then the assignment of attribution should be at least partially determined by the degree of information that citizens have about the State of Autonomies. Those who are more informed about politics or have a higher level of political sophistication should be more likely to know which level of government is responsible for policy outcomes. To account for the impact of political sophistication on the correct attribution of policy responsibilities, Figure 14.2 displays the predicted probability of attributing responsibility to the regional government for health and education7 outcomes contingent on the level of education of the respondent.8 Results show that education is a very relevant variable when it comes to explaining the capacity of individuals to attribute responsibility. A citizen with no formal education will only attribute responsibility for health and education to the regional government with a probability of 0.2, while highly educated individuals attribute correctly with a probability of around 0.6, ceteris paribus. 7 The predicted probabilities are calculated from two logit regression models where the attribution of responsibility to the regional government for healthcare and education are the dependent variables (1: attribution to the regional government; 0: attribution to the national or local government), and education level is the main independent variable. All models include covariates and robust standard errors. As covariates, we include age, gender, and identification with PP (which holds the national government), and a variable that measures whether the respondent thinks that Autonomous Communities should have more or less competences in a scale from 0 to 10. In the upcoming models, in which we introduce political bias, we keep education and information as covariates to test the added value of biases. 8 This is an eight category variable: 1: No formal studies; 2: Primary; 3: Secondary; 4: Vocational training; 5: Tertiary (1st cycle); 6: BA level; 7: MA level; 8: Phd level.
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230 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado Education .8
.7
.7 P(Attribution to regional gov.)
P(Attribution to regional gov.)
Health .8
.6 .5 .4 .3
.6 .5 .4 .3
.2
.2
.1
.1 1
2
3
6 4 5 Education level
7
8
1
2
3
6 4 5 Education level
7
8
Figure 14.2 Attribution of responsibility by level of education. Note: The graphs show the predicted attribution of responsibility for health and education policies to the regional government for different education levels. 95% confidence intervals Source: León and Jurado. Netquest survey May 2018
In summary, the empirical evidence shows that the higher an individual’s level of sophistication (measured by formal education or political information), the greater the probability of a correct assignment of responsibility for education or healthcare. The analysis is replicated using political information as an independent variable to capture political sophistication, showing similar findings (results not shown).9,10
14.3.2 The Economic Crisis and the Centralized Drift in Responsibility Attribution When new forms of multilevel governance are implemented (the creation of the Autonomous Communities or the entry of Spain into the European Union), it may take 9 In a separate analysis we tested the role of political information. We operationalized information using four statements on multilevel governance that citizens had to answer as true or false. Information is a variable that ranges from 0 to 4 and measures how many of the questions were answered correctly. While the difference between a highly educated and less educated individual in attributing responsibility correctly is 0.4, the differences between highly and less informed individual is half of this (around 0.2) The might also be a result of some citizens with low levels of information answering the true/false questions correctly (which by definition have a 50% chance of getting them randomly right). 10 In the survey the mean of the variable is 2.04. 16.27% of the respondents did not get any questions right. 15.07% answered the four questions correctly.
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Multilevel Governance 231 time for citizens to understand who is responsible for what and map correctly the sphere of competences of each level of government. Yet we may expect citizens to gradually ‘learn’ about the new distribution of competences (León 2012) or to update their beliefs on responsibility attribution if there is a change in the distribution of powers between levels of government. To explore citizens’ responsibility assignments over time we compare public opinion data on attribution of responsibility for different policy areas in 2012 and in 2018.11 Figure 14.3 shows this comparison. Contrary to the expectations of a learning process, we observe that there has been a ‘centralizing’ drift in the public’s attribution of responsibility. The figure shows that in 2018 citizens’ perceptions of the responsibilities of national government have become more prominent across all policy areas. However, this does not necessarily mean that citizens have become more ignorant. Although between 2012 and 2018 there has not been a formal change in the distribution of powers between levels of government, the responsibility judgements of the public might be capturing the increasing role of the central government as a consequence of the economic crisis.12 The financial turbulence as well as the implementation of austerity policies have probably increased the perception that the national government has a bigger role in policy-making. The central government has also gained powers to control regional governments’ spending, which might also be reflected in citizens giving a pre-eminent position to national governments in the responsibility for policy outcomes in different areas.
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
2012 2018 2012 2018 2012 2018 2012 2018 2012 2018 2012 2018 2012 2018 2012 2018 Housing
Security
Education Unemployment benefits
Central Government
Health
Regional Government
Environment protection
Economy
Local Government
Immigration
DK/DA
Figure 14.3 Attribution of responsibility for policy areas: 2012–2018. Note: The graphs show the attribution of responsibility to different levels of government in 2012 and 2018 Source: CIS study 2956 and León and Jurado (Netquest survey May 2018)
11 We compare here the last Barómetro Autonómico published by the Sociological Research Centre (CIS) and our survey undertaken in 2018. 12 Cordero and Lago (2016) show similar findings focusing on unemployment policy.
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232 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado
14.3.3 Variation across Groups of Regions As we have explained, there has been variation in the powers of Autonomous Communities both across regions and over time. If we look at two of possibly the most important decentralized competences, slow- and mixed-track regions have held the powers for education for nineteen years (since 1997) and for healthcare for healthcare since 2002 Conversely, fast-track regions have held these powers since the eighties, with the creation of the State of Autonomies and the first decentralization reforms. Thus, in fast-track regions there has been a span of time long enough for citizens to make them progressively aware of the distribution of expenditure responsibilities across levels of government. León (2012) showed that individuals in Spain continue to exhibit a bias in their knowledge of ‘who does what’ towards the traditional predominant level of government in their territory. This means that in regions where the central government has traditionally held more powers, citizens remain more knowledgeable in policy areas that fall under the control of central government and perform relatively worse in regional policy areas. And likewise the other way around also holds true: in regions where the regional government has long had control over a wide range of competences, citizens may perform better in responsibility attribution for those policy areas that fall under the control of regional government as opposed to the central government (León 2011, 2012, 2015).13 In Figure 14.4 we show the number of citizens who in May 2018 answered correctly who is responsible for the two main policy areas that fall into the regional governments’ domain that we have studied so far: health and education. It can be seen that, in particular for health, the percentage of people in fast-track regions that attribute correctly the responsibility to the regional government is significantly larger than in the rest of the regions, whereas we do not observe relevant differences between slow- and mixed-track regions. With regard to education, we still see that there are more citizens in fast-track regions attributing responsibility to the regional level of government, although the differences are less salient.14 These results point to a persistence of differences between regions in the capacity of citizens to attribute responsibilities for regional competences, confirming previous findings (León 2012, 2015).
13 Previous empirical evidence using data from 1998 (León 2011) showed that in slow-track regions, where the central government has had a strong role in competences for a long period of time, individuals performed very well in areas that fell under central government competences, but tended to exaggerate its role in policy areas that had already been transferred to the regional government. On the contrary, individuals in fast-track regions performed very well in assigning responsibility to regional policy areas but tended to overstate the responsibility of regional governments in competences that had always remained in the hands of central government. 14 The magnitude of the differences should be viewed with caution given that the regional samples are not very large.
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Multilevel Governance 233 Education 60%
45%
45%
Percentage of correct attributions
Percentage of correct attributions
Health 60%
30%
15%
0%
Slow track
Mixed track
Fast track
30%
15%
0%
Slow track
Mixed track
Fast track
Figure 14.4 Percentage of correct attribution of responsibility for regional governments’ policies by type of region. Source: León and Jurado. Netquest survey May 2018
14.4 The Role of Political Sophistication and Partisan Bias In the previous section, we analysed the informational challenge that multilevel governance poses for the assignment of responsibility in Spain, and how this challenge can become weaker over time, with political sophistication and where certain powers are more salient. However, people may also get wrong (or right) who does what due to the existence of political (cognitive) bias. Ever since the earliest studies in political psychology, such as Campbell et al (1960), we have known that people are not neutral when they think and talk about politics. They see the world through their own political lens, and that results in biased estimations of government action. Individuals tend to exhibit what political psychologists have named an in-group bias, that is, a tendency to assign blame to the ‘out-group’ (that can be defined by race, identity, or partisanship) and give credit to the ‘in-group’ (those who belong to the group of reference).15 From this perspective 15 Race or ethnicity can represent strong group traits for identification (see Taylor and Jaggi 1974), but there are also loose identification traits, such as being a member of a sport-team (Taylor and Doria 1981).
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234 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado attributions of responsibility may not be accurate because responsibility judgements are biased by political attitudes. Research shows that when different actors are involved to varying degrees in the legislation, financing, and provision of public policies, shortcuts might be more intensely employed by them (Lau and Redlawsk 2001). The more difficult it is for voters to ascertain who is responsible for what, the more they may resort to simple cues—such as partisanship—to attribute credit and blame for policy outcomes. The use of these cues and shortcuts by individuals does not necessarily exempt their judgements from bias, so the informational challenge associated with multilevel governance may result in the wrong attribution of responsibility. In other words, the vertical fragmentation of powers creates an opportunity for individuals to engage in ‘group-serving’ selective attributions (León et al. 2018). As in multilevel contexts there are more actors involved in the act of governing, which opens up opportunities for in-group bias to operate more intensely, as ‘favouring one’s group’ may become easier when there are several ‘out-groups’ (authority structures) to which failure can be attributed. Studies on federalism based on individual-level data have certainly provided extensive evidence that in federal contexts patterns of responsibility attribution between levels of government are subject to party rationalizations (Cutler 2008, Rudolph 2003a, b), showing that patterns of responsibility assignments also have an impact on how individuals vote. However, what is not so clear in the literature is whether partisanship acts as a cognitive bias in responsibility assignments more intensely in federal countries than in non-federal ones. This question is relevant because if partisanship operates as a cognitive bias more prominently in federal systems, then the conditions for holding governments to account under federal institutions are weaker than in non-federal contexts. León et al. (2018) explore this question using data from the European Election Survey. They find evidence of blame–avoidance having a more prominent role in federal than in nonfederal European states. More specifically, they show that partisans of the national incumbent in federal states are more likely to assign responsibility to regional governments for poor economic outcomes, while this blame–attribution pattern is absent in non-federal states.16 To test for the role of party bias in responsibility attribution in Spain we turn to our dataset and study the attribution of responsibility for the two main regional policies. At the time when the survey was conducted both policies were poorly evaluated by citizens. Almost 60 per cent considered that provision of health services had become ‘much worse’ or ‘worse’ during the last year and 61 per cent thought likewise with regards to education. Therefore, the allocation of responsibilities for these policies become the assignment of blame. On the contrary, only 6.4 per cent of those who evaluated health 16 Partisanship is not the only form of in-group bias. As recent studies show (see Leon and Orriols 2016; Rico and Liñeira 2018), national identity can also operate as an in-group bias in a similar way as partisanship does: individuals with strong regional identities are more likely to blame the central government for negative policy outcomes, ceteris paribus. However, empirical evidence shows that the effect of partisanship upon responsibility assignments is greater than the effect of identity.
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Multilevel Governance 235 policies and 3.8 per cent of those who evaluated education believe that these policies have become ‘much better’ or ‘somewhat better’ during the last year. In our analysis, our main independent variable is respondents’ satisfaction with how the regional government works on a scale from 0 to 10 (‘0’ means extremely unsatisfied, and ‘10’ means ‘extremely satisfied’) We assume that individuals who feel close to the ruling parties at the regional level will tend to have more favourable assessments of its performance (Tilley and Hobolt 2011). Figure 14.5 shows the predicted values of the attribution of responsibility to the regional government as a function of how well citizens evaluate the functioning of the regional government.17 Our expectation is that the better the evaluation of the autonomous government, the less likely it is that individuals assign responsibility (blame) for healthcare and education to the regional government. As can be observed, perceptions about regional governments’ performance have a significant impact upon attributions of responsibility. The probability that a citizen with a very bad evaluation of the regional government blames it for healthcare outcomes is 0.6. This decreases massively by a factor of three to around 0.2 for citizens with a very positive opinion of the regional government. In the case of education policies, the predicted probabilities are of a very similar size. The reverse result emerges when we replicate the model using the evaluation of the national government (not shown here).18 These results show the relevance of bias in shifting blame for policy outcomes. When citizens feel they identify with a particular level of government, the multilevel structure of the state gives opportunities to Spanish citizens to engage in blame–shifting: blaming levels of government other than the preferred one for poor policy outcomes.
14.5 The Politicization of Multilevel Governance Multilevel governance not only complicates the attribution of responsibility. It can also itself become an object of political contestation and political competition. In this last section, we analyse how preferences for the distribution of powers between different levels of government are moderated and shaped by partisanship. In the survey we conducted, we asked respondents how they thought power should be distributed between the different authorities (local, regional, national, and European). When asking the question we state the zero–sum nature of the decision: that to increase powers at one 17 We again ran logistic models (as the dependent variable is 1 for responsibility attribution to the regional government and 0 to the national or local governments) with robust standard errors and the aforementioned covariates. 18 These figures would provide a very similar picture (in the opposite direction). The probability of attributing responsibility to the regional government for voters with an excellent evaluation of the national government is 0.65 for health and 0.69 for education.
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236 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado Education .7
.6
.6 P(Attribution to regional gov.)
P(Attribution to regional gov.)
Health .7
.5 .4 .3 .2
.5 .4 .3 .2
.1
.1
0
0 1
2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Evaluation regional government
10
1
2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Evaluation regional government
10
Figure 14.5 Attribution of responsibility by evaluation of the regional government. Note: The graphs show the predicted attribution for health and education policies to the regional government for different evaluations of the regional government. 95% confidence intervals Source: León and Jurado. Netquest survey May 2018
level, powers have to be stripped away from other levels of government. Respondents had to answer on a scale from 0 to 10 for each level of government. On each scale, 0 meant ‘Powers should be reduced very much,’ 5 meant ‘Powers should stay as they are now,’ and 10 meant ‘Powers should be increased very much’ for each of the four levels of government. Table 14.1 shows the descriptive statistics of the responses to this question. They indicate that on average Spanish citizens are slightly in favour of centralizing more powers to the national government and of devolving more powers to local government, but the deviations from the status quo are very small, and almost negligible.
Table 14.1. Preferences for Multilevel Governance (0–10). Mean Standard deviation Central Government European Union Regional Government Local Government
5.27 4.86 4.79 5.29
3.2 3.34 2.57 2.57
Source: León and Jurado. Netquest survey May 2018.
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Multilevel Governance 237 Central Gov.
2.5 0 –2.5 –5
2.5 0 –2.5 –5
PP
Cs
PSOE
Podemos Nationalists
PP
Regional Govs. 5
5
2.5
2.5
Marginal effect
Marginal effect
European Union
5 Marginal effect
Marginal effect
5
0 –2.5 –5
Cs
PSOE
Podemos Nationalists
Local Govs.
0 –2.5 –5
PP
Cs
PSOE
Podemos Nationalists
PP
Cs
PSOE
Podemos Nationalists
Figure 14.6 Preferences for powers at different levels of government by party support. Note: The graphs show the marginal effects for different vote intentions compared to the rest of the population. 95% confidence intervals Source: León and Jurado. Netquest survey May 2018
These data, however, conceal significant heterogeneity among different groups of v oters. Preferences for multilevel governance in Spain follow ideological and partisan lines: while left-wing citizens and Catalan and Basque nationalists support further devolution towards the local and regional level, right-wing citizens have a preference for centralizing powers. Figure 14.6 displays the marginal effect of party support (operationalized as vote intention in national elections) upon each dependent variable (more powers to that level of government).19 Those that do not vote or vote for other parties are the reference category. Four results are worth highlighting. First, there is a very clear partisan and ideological pattern underlying the preferences for multilevel governance. In all figures, the distribution of preferences follow a linear pattern from more right-wing to left-wing parties,20 with the preferences of peripheral nationalists always being more similar to the leftist voters of Podemos. Second, and partly connected to the previous point, voters of PSOE, the main social democratic party in Spain, have the most central preferences among the main Spanish political parties. Across all levels of government, the PSOE voters seem to 19 The marginal effects come from OLS regression models, where preferences towards more powers for each level of government represent four separate dependent variables. All models include similar covariates that we have used in previous models. 20 We classify them as more right or left based on the ideological self-placement of their voters.
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238 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado be those with less appetite for change of the territorial architecture of the state and with a stronger leaning towards the status quo. Their preferences tend to be midway between those of Podemos (radical left party) and those of PP (centre-right) and Ciudadanos (liberal). Thirdly, preferences for increasing regional powers have the same direction as preferences for devolving more powers to local governments. They are, perhaps surprisingly, highly correlated. Supporters of both Podemos and Catalan or Basque nationalist parties (ERC, PDeCAT, and PNV) are in favour of further decentralization, not only at the regional level, but also towards local governments. Conversely, voters of PP and Ciudadanos prefer further centralization of political power. Finally, the preferences for European governance are the least divisive among Spanish voters. In general, there is little demand for change and voters of different parties show similar views. We only find a significant effect among voters of Ciudadanos, who exhibit a preference for transferring more powers to the European Union. For PP the effect is significant only at the 90 per cent confidence level. However, in all cases the magnitude of the effects are very small, so there seems to be more consensus about it.
14.6 Conclusion This chapter provides a review of the theory as well as new empirical evidence on the role of information and partisan bias in the assignment of responsibility in multilevel systems. Using data from a new survey undertaken in 2018, the analysis shows that Spanish citizens do not have a strong knowledge of who does what in the State of Autonomies. In addition, an individual’s level of sophistication (education and political information) can help us understand their responsibility assignments: more sophisticated individuals tend to have a better sense of the main administration responsible for policy areas. Likewise, there are differences across regions, implying that those regions that have held powers over policy areas for a longer period have more citizens who are able to attribute those policies correctly to them. Another significant contribution of this chapter is to show that citizens’ perceptions of responsibility might be sensitive to changes in the visibility of the central versus regional governments, even when there are no significant formal (constitutional) changes in the distribution of competences between them. Using new data based on the case of Spain, the analysis shows that there has been a ‘centralizing’ drift in public perceptions of central government’s responsibilities. We argue that this might be the result of the prominent role played by the Spanish central administration in managing the responses to the economic crisis. This finding raises important questions regarding the role of economic crisis in changing the perceived distribution of powers between different levels of government and its implications upon the electoral control of regional governments, as more ‘centralized’ perceptions of responsibilities for policy outcomes may undermine the role of regional elections in holding regional governments to account.
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Multilevel Governance 239 Finally, the analysis also shows that in Spain, partisan bias has a strong effect in shaping attribution. Partisan identity exhibits an important role in affecting responsibility attribution between different authorities. This finding corroborates similar empirical analyses conducted previously (see León el al. 2018), which suggest that federal or decentralized structures may intensify the role of partisanship in the blame–attribution game. The results stress the need for further research that explores whether in multilevel systems of governance (federal or decentralized states) partisan bias has a stronger moderating role in the assignment of responsibility than in systems with a more centralized distribution of powers; or whether, on the contrary, in non-federal countries partisan bias operates just as intensely as in federal contexts, but through different mechanisms.
14.7 Bibliography Anderson, C. 2000. ‘Economic voting and political context: A comparative perspective’. Electoral Studies 19(2): 151–70. Anderson, C. 2006. ‘Economic voting and multilevel governance: A comparative individual-level analysis’. American Journal of Political Science, 50(2): 449–63. Bartels, L. 2000. ‘Partisanship and voting behaviour, 1952–1996’. American Journal of Political Science 44(1): 35–50. Bosch, A. 2016. ‘Types of economic voting in regional elections: The 2012 Catalan election as a motivating case’. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 26(1): 115–34. Campbell, A., P. Conerse, W. Miller, and D. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley. Colino, C., Decentralization in Spain. In: The Oxford Handbook of Spanish Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 62–81. Cordero, G. and I. Lago. 2016. ‘The bright side of the economic crisis: The attribution of political responsibilities in hard times’. Canadian Journal of Political Science 49(1): 151–70. Cutler, F. 2008. ‘Whodunnit? Voters and responsibility in Canadian federalism’. Canadian Journal of Political Science 41(3): 627–54. Duch, R. and R. Stevenson. 2008. The Economic Vote: How Political and Economic Institutions Condition Election Results. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fiorina, M. 1978. ‘Economic retrospective voting in American national elections: A microanalysis’. American Journal of Political Science 22(2): 426–42. Herrero Alcalde, A., M. Ruiz de Zuazu, and J. Tránchez Martín. 2016. Visibilidad y atribución de responsabilidades en el estado de autonomías español (Working Paper). Instituto de Estudios Fiscales (Serie Economía 1), pp. 7–18. Hooghe, L. and G. Marks. 2003. ‘Unravelling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance’. American Political Science Review 97(2): 233–43. Hueglin, T. O. (2001). Federalism and globalization. In: VI Seminario Internacional sobre Federalismo Fiscal. Buenos Aires. Lago-Peñas, S. and I. Lago-Peñas. 2011. Descentralización y control electoral de los gobiernos en España. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya (Departament de Governació i Relacions Institucionals).
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240 Sandra LEÓN and Ignacio Jurado Lago-Peñas, S. and I. Lago-Peñas. 2013. La atribución de responsabilidades políticas en Estados decentralizados. MPRA paper 45,045. Lau, R. and D. Redlawsk. 2001. ‘Advantages and disadvantages of cognitive heuristics in political decision making’. American Journal of Political Science 45: 951–71. León, S. 2011. ‘Who is responsible for what? Clarity of responsibilities in multilevel states: The case of Spain’. European Journal of Political Research 50(1): 80–109. León, S. 2012. ‘How do citizens attribute responsibility in multilevel states? Learning biases and asymmetric federalism: Evidence from Spain’. Electoral Studies 31(1): 120–30. León, S. 2015. La financiación autonómica: claves para comprender in (interminable) debate. Madrid: Alianza. León, S., I. Jurado, I., and A. Garmendia-Madariaga. 2018. ‘Passing the buck? Responsibility attribution and cognitive bias in multilevel democracies’. West European Politics 41(3): 660–82. León, S. and L. Orriols. 2016. Making Accountability Work under Asymmetric Devolution: The British Case. s.l., American Political Science Association. León, S. and L. Orriols. 2017. ‘Asymmetric federalism and economic voting’. European Journal of Political Research 55(4): 847–65. Lewis-Beck, M. 1986. ‘Comparative economic voting: Britain, France, Germany, Italy’. American Journal of Political Science 30(2): 315–46. Marsh, M. and J. Tilley. 2010. ‘The attribution of credit and blame to governments and its impact on vote choice’. British Journal of Political Science 40(1): 115–34. Powell, J., G. Bingham, and G. Whitten. 1993. ‘A cross-national analysis of economic voting: Taking account of the political context’. American Journal of Political Science 37(2): 391–414. Queralt, D. 2012. ‘Economic voting in multi–tiered polities’. Electoral Studies 31(1): 107–19. Rico, G. and R. Liñeira. 2018. ‘Pass the buck if you can: How partisan competition triggers attribution bias in multilevel democracies’. Political Behaviour 40(1): 175–96. Rudolph, T. 1974. ‘Who’s responsible for the economy? The formation and consequences of responsibility attributions’. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 5(2): 162–71. Rudolph, T. 2003a. ‘Institutional context and the assignment of political responsibility’. The Journal of Politics 65(1): 190–215. Rudolph, T. 2003b. ‘Who's responsible for the economy? The formation and consequences of responsibility attributions’. American Journal of Political Science 47(4): 698–713. Taylor, D. M. and Vaishna Jaggi. 1974. ‘Ethnocentrism and causal attribution in the South Indian context’. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 5(2): 162–71. Taylor, D. M. and Doria, J. R. 1981. ‘Self-serving and group-serving bias in attribution’. Journal of Social Psychology 113(2): 201–11. Taylor, J. and S. B. Hobolt. 2011. ‘Is the government to blame? An experiment test of how partisanship shapes perceptions of performance and responsibility’. The Journal of Politics 73(2): 316–30. Tilley, J., and S. B. Hobolt. ‘Is the government to blame? An experimental test of how partisanship shapes perceptions of performance and responsibility.’ The Journal of Politics 73.2 (2011): 316–330. de Vries, C., E. Edwards and E. Tillman. 2011. ‘Clarity of responsibility beyond the pocket book: How political institutions condition EU issue voting’. Comparative Political Studies 44(3): 339–63. Whitten, G. and H. Palmer. 1999. ‘Cross-national analyses of economic voting’. Electoral Studies 18(1): 49–67.
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chapter 15
Pu blic A dm i n istr ation a n d Its Probl emSolv i ng Ca pacitie s Salvador Parrado
15.1 Introduction: The Context and the State Capacities The modern state is endowed with regulatory, coordination, delivery, and analytical capacities to face continuous societal challenges (Lodge and Wegrich 2014). These capacities are to be found in different proportion at different territorial levels of government. Given restrictions of space, this chapter assesses only the capacities of Spanish central government to meet these challenges in a context characterized by a procedural public administration, a shrinking central government in relative and absolute terms, a decreasing allocation of public expenditure within GDP, and a regime dominated by the executive but facing parliamentary fragmentation and instability since 2015. While the use of private-sector techniques in the public sector is in the ascendancy, the Spanish bureaucracy is highly procedural, as expected from the Rechsstaat tradition in countries such as Germany, Austria, or partially the Netherlands, and in contrast with the countries belonging to the Anglo Saxon or the Scandinavian administrative trad ition (Painter and Peters 2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2017). The state is the driving force of society, most senior civil servants have a legal background, and administrative law is the basis for decision-making, policy implementation, and oversight. In the Spanish bureaucracy, more managerial approaches such as target-setting, the introduction of quasi-markets in the public sector, or the use of rankings to enhance performance are rather limited (Kickert 2007; Gualmini 2008; Ongaro 2012), confined to some specific delivery agencies (Parrado 2018), or just surfacing in some policy areas in the regions,
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242 Salvador Parrado for example health in Catalonia (Gallego, Barbieri, and González 2017) or in Madrid (Alonso, Clifton and Díaz-Fuentes 2015). The intensive decentralization process that begun in the 1980s transformed the role of central government and converted Spain into one of the most decentralized countries in the world, creating a quasi-federal status (Colino 2009). The central government share of total public expenditure, if Social Security funds are excluded, was 34.1 per cent in 2016, while state and local authorities were responsible respectively for 32.7 per cent and 11.3 per cent (OECD 2017).1 Furthermore, the share of regional government staff is 51 per cent compared to around 22 per cent for each of central and local government (MPTFP 2017). When compared to other OECD federal countries, the share of central government employment in Spain is (20.4 per cent), close to the United States (19.4 per cent) but higher than Canada (11.8 per cent) or Germany (10.6 per cent) (OECD 2017). Regional governments have considerable powers to design and deliver their own policies with low financial conditionality from the centre. This transfer of powers left central administration mainly with planning, regulatory, and evaluation roles, although it still delivers some services to citizens and companies. The reduction in public expenditure forced public bureaucracies to search for efficient ways of delivering policies and services. The Spanish public-sector size is middle ranked in the EU28 with its share of government expenditure more than 40 per cent of GDP. This share peaked in 2012 at 48.1 per cent and declined to 41 per cent in 20172 in a context of a struggle with the direct consequences of the global financial and economic crisis between 2008 and 2014. Finally, the parliamentary regime with its strong executive began to face challenges when traditional majoritarian governments were replaced by minority governments that faced an increasingly fragmented parliament. Democratic governments were fairly stable between 1977 and 2005, since the average mandate for the prime minister and the governing political party was 6.7 and 9 years respectively (Rodríguez-Teruel 2006), and the two major political parties secured more than 80 per cent of the vote. This stability waned, in particular after four elections between 2015 and 2019. Traditionally, the political party in government had been able to impose its own policies’ criteria on the central administration, but from 2016 onwards it became increasingly difficult to get decisions through a parliament where 85 per cent of the seats were distributed among four political parties. This chapter is divided into four sections that assess the capacities of the state. The first two are devoted to the civil service and central bureaucracies and the challenges they pose to the capacity of the state. Subsequent sections deal with the coordination, analytical, and delivery capacity of the central administration.
1 See https://doi.org/10.1787/gov_glance-2017-graph33-en 2 See https://goo.gl/r3SDCr (accessed 2 August. 2019).
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Public Administration 243
15.2 A Civil Service under Challenges to Deliver This section argues that the civil service is closed to the lateral entrance of seasoned managers from the private sector, lacks an adequate competency framework, and suffers from politicization and extensive exercise of discretion in promotions. Spain has one of the most closed civil service systems in the EU-28 in a scale of 1 (most open) to 7 (most closed system). Closedness refers to the extent to which the public-sector labour market is distinct from the general labour market in a particular country and how much it is open to lateral entrance from managers with private-sector experience. In this context, in 2012 Spain was ranked first, with 6.29 out of 7, and seventh in 2015 (5.68) (Dahlström et al. 2015). The closedness of the system may partially explain the numerous challenges that civil servants face in delivering services and policies. The closedness is reflected in the impossibility of directly hiring private managers to perform top and mid-rank public functions. Civil servants and employees on contract run central administration, but at different levels within the hierarchy. Civil service tenured positions, regulated by administrative law, are reserved for posts involving the safeguarding of public powers and the state’s general interest. Employees, whose contract is regulated by private labour law, do not have tenure, although, as a consequence of a 2002 Constitutional Court Sentence, they enjoy it in practice and are subject to similar legislation as civil servants (merit criteria for recruitment, ethical codes, collective bargaining decisions, some individual duties and rights, and disciplinary regime). However, the contractual arrangement does not facilitate the access of experienced senior managers from the private sector to specific top positions. Furthermore, the 1978 Constitution and a 1987 Constitutional Court Sentence favour the recruitment of civil servants over contracted employees. In the last decades, more than 80 per cent of staff at the central level were civil servants (MPTFP 1991–2017). In this system, contracted posts are exclusively assigned to the lower echelons of the hierarchy. Another aspect of this closedness is connected to the concept of corps. The corps, shaped after the French career model, is the entry gateway to public administration, and public positions are not open to lateral entry, even by other corps members. A corps member can apply in a competitive process to a preselected number of positions which make up their career path. This career system shares some features with the position system in the aspects related to remuneration and promotion. In this context, the search for the best-qualified candidates for a particular (top) position is limited and restricted to the pool of existing civil servants already members of a particular corps. Other features of the civil service provide mixed evidence of its capacity to design and deliver policies and services to the citizens. First, central government experiences issues related to the application of merit in staff policies. There is a high degree of formal politicization at the top but merit criteria are applied to civil service entrants, though these criteria are more limited when it comes to promotion. The apex of the ministries is
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Echelon 2
Echelon 3
Prime Minister’s appointment
Minister
Secretary of State
Cabinet Minister
General Director
General Secretary
Under-secretary
General Director
General Technical Secretary
Deputy general director
Deputy general director
Levels
Staff
Political advisors
30
Deputy general director
28
Area
Area
Area
26
Service
Service
Service
24
Section
Section
Section
Political executive appointments
Cabinet
Discretionary appointments of civil servants
Government’s appointment
Echelon 1
Civil servants
Figure 15.1 Typical organigram of a ministry. Source: Government Act 50/1997
controlled by political appointees occupying executive positions (state secretaries, under-secretaries, secretary generals and directors general), as are advisory posts in ministerial cabinets (see Figure 15.1). The first group of incumbents (in echelons 2 and 3 of the graphic) is appointed by the government. Underneath, deputy director generals are civil servants appointed without competition on the recommendation of the director general. At the same time, most of these appointments, including policy advisers, are filled by civil servants, who normally return to their previous position once they are dismissed (Parrado 2018). This ‘revolving door’ process involving politics and administration and the considerable number of political appointees, typically between 400 and 500, taints the neutrality of civil servants. In terms of politicization, the Spanish system ranks comparatively highly (Pierre and Peters 2014), and political appointees replace the functions of non-existent senior civil service cadre. Furthermore, promotions within the civil service have some loopholes in the application of merit-based criteria, although this is not necessarily exploited by party patronage (Parrado 2017). Internal competition for promotions produces at least two types of pervasive anomalies (Fuentetaja 2013). On one hand, the profile of the vacancy can be ‘adapted’ to achieve the desired result, with the post specification geared to a preselected and preferred candidate. In addition, that vacancy may be initially filled by someone in an ‘acting’ capacity who will later have a better chance of securing the position permanently. On the other hand, particularly when interviews are the selection mechanism, there is a higher level of ‘undue’ discretion in the assessment of the generic and specific traits of candidates. Moreover, civil-service positions from level 30 are open to discretionary appointment by the superior. Unsurprisingly, the civil service displayed a medium level
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Public Administration 245 of impartiality in an evaluation of national experts with regard to decision-making (3.16 in a scale from 1–7, where 7 is highly impartial), close to the EU average (Dahlström et al. 2015). A second issue is with competencies, understood as the abilities, skills, and know ledge of civil servants, as these are neither assessed on the job nor in new recruits. The major source for assessing staff is knowledge, while other countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, or the United Kingdom, for instance, use full competency frameworks to assess applicants and to promote civil servants. Public competition exams, comprising up to four rounds of different exercises for candidates of corps for which a university degree is required, stress the relevance of legal or technical knowledge. Role-playing, problem-solving case studies, and targeted interviews are very rare in these exercises. Exams that involve memory and the study of an average of 130 topics, requiring eighteen to thirty months of preparation, are the norm. (Ruano et al. 2014; Olmeda, Parrado, and Colino 2017). However, in other countries such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Canada, recruitment to the civil service is based on a variety of instruments with limited involvement of memory work (Mapelli 2018). In a 2006 survey (CIS 2006), almost half of civil servants considered that the selection system was bad or very bad, and more than half of them suggested that the system did not evaluate the real capacity of candidates. The 2014 OECD review of the reform process highlighted the need for the civil service to develop a competency framework more in line with the workforce of the twenty-first century. Some authors also add that the lack of a formal professionalized senior civil service is an obstacle to enhancing civilservice performance (Jiménez-Asensio et al. 2009). In spite of this, citizens were highly satisfied (83 per cent) with the degree of professionalism of civil servants working in Spanish central administration and they scored the professionalism of their last interaction with the administration as 8.77 and 8.63 out of 10 in 2014 and 2015 respectively (AEVAL 2016). Finally, due to its decreasing purchasing value and its internal composition, salary offers limited incentive to civil servants. Nevertheless, public employment still attracts applicants due to higher job stability in the public sector compared with the private sector. The ministry in charge of the civil service and the most representative public-sector unions negotiate the salary, although the annual inflation forecast is the real predictor of an overall wage increase. From 2010 to 2017, the payroll was frozen and, in periods of high economic growth, wage increases remained at a distance from the consumer price index (an average of 1.14 per cent). Overall, from 1990 to 2015, the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index was higher than the overall salary increase allowed for public officials except for five occasions (Olmeda, Parrado and Colino 2017). The salary structure includes basic and fixed components with complementary allowances based on seniority, grade, position, and performance. The higher the hierarchical level, the less relevance is assigned to the basic components and more to complementary rewards. For instance, the basic components of the remuneration represent 35–37 per cent (for higherlevel civil servants) to 66 per cent (for lower-level civil servants). This difference is due to the successful pressure exerted by senior officials to bilaterally negotiate post and
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246 Salvador Parrado performance allowances with the finance ministry, in order to escape the rigidities of the salary system. Nevertheless, given the high unemployment rates within the economy, when compared with the private sector, working in the public sector is very attractive despite the low salary for higher positions (Parrado 2018). The public sector might not be the employer of first choice, but most respondents in different interviews (CIS 1980; CIS 2006; Ruano et al. 2014) highlight that employment security makes public-sector jobs attractive.
15.3 An Organizational Machinery in Search of Rationalization Diminishing a variegated legal typology of public entities has been the target of different administrative reforms and fostering a more managerial style of public servants has been somewhat neglected by the reformers. As well as the ministries (typically between 13 and 17), a myriad of public entities with some degree of autonomy constitutes the central bureaucracy. The state institutional administration has similar features to the entities of the Southern Mediterranean Rechtsstaat tradition (Ongaro et al. 2012). Most autonomous public bodies have some functional autonomy, but they do not act fully independently of the minister, who appoints the head. These entities have a distinct public legal personality, their own assets and treasury, as well as limited management autonomy. They have administrative powers, but they cannot expropriate land. In general, their limited managerial autonomy and the proliferation of different organizational types pose challenges to a delivery state. Each organizational category has some distinctive features and diverse accountability mechanisms in relation to the ministry, most of which are based on the principle of legality and not on a managerial philosophy of achieving output and outcome results. The whole of the Spanish public sector experienced a considerable growth in public entities, from 3,228 in 2005 to 4,036 in 2011. This was an increase of 808 entities in the second half of the 2000s (CORA 2013). In the last sixty years, numerous reforms have addressed these bodies following two different patterns. In order to deliver services more flexibly, ministries tried to increase the number of autonomous bodies, offering different degrees of autonomy and a variety of legal forms. At the same time, the finance ministry attempted to improve the accountability of these bodies by reducing their numbers and simplifying their legal nature. During the financial and economic crisis, several measures were implemented that reduced the number of organizations,3 but there was no clear attempt to implement reforms that would boost their productivity.
3 Agreements of the Council of Ministers 30/4/2010; 3/6/2011; 16/3/2012, 20/9/2013 and Royal Decree 701/2013.
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Public Administration 247 The CORA report of 2014 encouraged the restructuring of the state business and foundational sector and also urged the government to further reduce this instrumental administration in order to increase efficiencies and reduce public spending. By 2016, 2,348 entities had been abolished across the whole system, including regional author ities (CORA 2016). Within central government, the number of entities was modestly reduced from 447 in 2003 to 409 in 2018 (INVEPE 2018). The 40/2015 Law introduced mechanisms which its promoters hoped would finally control instrumental administration. First, the legality and financial control to be carried out by the ministry of finance and the performance control by the parent ministry would help to test the effectiveness and efficiency of public entities. Second, a more demanding control than hitherto was introduced for new bodies, that would need to make their business case before authorization. Third, public agencies could be wound up if they had a financial deficit imbalance for two consecutive budget years. Finally, with exceptions, newly created entities would have to share common services with existing agencies in property management, legal assistance, information and communication systems, accounting and financial management, publications and public procurement. It is early to assess the impact of these measures, but the frequent change of government since 2015 and of reform priorities, as well as the limited progress of all these control features, may once again impact negatively on the attempt to rationalize the organizational structure of a central government that has moved to a more planning, regulatory, and evaluatory role.
15.4 A Centralized Decision-Making System Isolated from External Support 15.4.1 The Core Executive and its Coordination Capacity The coordination capacity of the executive is challenging when the government has to face the expansion of ‘wicked’ problems, that is, problems that are highly complex, transversal, and uncertain, using a bureaucratic machinery that is compartmentalized into silos located in different ministries and agencies (Lodge and Wegrich 2014). As a result, one capacity of government that is continuously challenged is coordination and the ‘coordination’ fixes merely give partially satisfactory answers to those problems. The core executive is shaped by a formal and informal network of actors who participate in the decision-making process. The formal actors are the line civil servants and political appointees, while the ministerial cabinets of policy advisors constitute the informal network. This duality displays the higher relevance of political appointees and advisors as compared to line civil servants (Fleischer and Parrado 2010) in a system where departmentalism dominates over collegiality (Molina et al. 2016). The ascendant
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248 Salvador Parrado role of policy advisers in coordination and decision-making is common to several polities (Eichbaum and Shaw 2007; Craft and Halligan 2017; Connaughton 2015). The Council of Ministers makes the relevant decisions on behalf of the executive. Apart from the ministers, state secretaries, when summoned, may attend the weekly sessions of this body. The Council decisions are adopted according to the principle of collegiality, through consensus without the need to cast a vote, and joint ministerial responsibility. The government decisions, prepared by different government commissions and the General Commission of State Secretaries and Under-Secretaries, receive inputs from civil servants and policy advisers. The government commissions, formed by sectoral ministers and state secretaries, usually operate in economic affairs, national security, intelligence, science and technology, equality, and cultural affairs. The General Commission, whose chair corresponds to the (political) vice president, filters the decisions submitted to the Council of Ministers. This formal centralized system operated by civil servants is supported and considerably influenced by a network of policy advisers that are appointed by the minister and work in the so-called ministerial cabinets. The state secretaries also have their own advis ory cabinets. Although policy advisers cannot be officially part of the decision-making machinery, they informally filter access to the decisions to be discussed by the Commission, prior to the Council of Ministers’ sessions (Fleischer and Parrado 2010; Olmeda, Parrado, and Colino 2017). The formal and informal networks take part in the decision-making process. In the process, the formal autonomy of line ministers is lost due to a quasi-presidential system that favours the prime minister (Fleischer and Parrado 2010). The formal networks of civil servants and political appointees focuses on the technical and legal issues, while the informal network deals with wider political issues and integrates them in the decisionmaking machinery, an aspect which is increasingly common in the executive but insufficiently explored (Craft 2015). The existence of a parallel informal network does not mean that they are able to focus on all ministerial areas, since the number of policy advisers, although comparatively big (Olmeda, Parrado, and Colino 2017), cannot outnumber line managers. Therefore, the prime minister will focus on political priorities (Molina et al. 2016). These arrangements, and the tradition of single-party executives, gave relatively high scores to Spain in terms of ‘strategic planning capacity’ (7 out of 10 best performers) and ‘inter-ministerial coordination’ (7.83) in 2017 (Bertelsmann Foundation–Sustainable Governance Indicators-SGI).4 On the other hand, according to Molina, Homs, and Colino (2016), ‘inter-ministerial coordination’ at the civil-service level is less frequent as a consequence of strong departmentalization of ministerial affairs. The role of inter-ministerial committees is restricted to the exchange of information or the solution of interdepartmental conflicts. More effective informal and positive coordination mechanisms are achieved through membership of cross-departmental corps, for example, civil administrators, who work in 4 http://www.sgi-network.org/2017/.
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Public Administration 249 most ministries. However, single-departmental corps tend to be less cooperative and more jealous of their turf (Olmeda, Parrado, and Colino 2017). Finally, since political appointees change at least with every government (or with the appointment of a new minister within the same government), some studies (Olmeda Parrado, and Colino 2017) have shown that political appointees are unlikely to stay more than three years in office, on average. This jeopardizes the sustainability of policies and the coordination capacity of the executive, since some projects may not outlast their promoters.
15.4.2 The Analytical Capacity of Central Government: Inward rather than Outward Looking ‘Policy analytical capacity is the generation of knowledge (organised or sponsored by the government) to be used in policy making’ (Parrado 2014, 88). It implies evidencebased policy-making and consultation with different stakeholders. Unsurprisingly, Spain scores low in the SGI (Sustainable Governance Indicators) from the Bertelsmann Foundation in the use of ‘societal consultation’ (5 out of 10—best performer) and of ‘evidence-based policy making’ (3.33 and 3.67 out of 10 respectively in 2014 and 2017) Comparatively, Spain is one of the worst performers of the Western countries considered in the Bertelsmann Foundation’s study. In general, there is no connection between policymaking and specific consultation with external experts from consultancy firms, think tanks, or academia. In particular, university scholars are absent when it comes to leading policy reports that may influence governmental policies, even though traditional and experimental research assign higher credibility to academic research than the work of think tanks (Doberstein 2017). Occasionally, some ministries may convene expert groups for a specific topic although those sessions are really ‘talking shops’ and are not backed by commissioned research. For instance, panels of experts were created to reform pensions, central administration, and higher education. Additionally, most line ministries have their own consultation mechanisms. The frequency, institutionalization, and substance of this support vary considerably across areas. Think tanks are starting to shape the public discourse on economic issues through different foundations related to the employers (Círculo de Empresarios, Círculo de Economía, COAG (Coordination of Farmers), ASAJA (Association of Young Farmers), the trade unions (Fundación Largo Caballero)), or even consumer associations. Since 2016, citizen consultation on proposals about the law was made compulsory although its impact is unclear as there have been no independent reports. Ministerial websites have a field for public opinion feedback, but each ministry deploys its own distinctive approach. The traditional influence of plural interest groups is not strong, and corporatist tradition has dominated. Lobbying is carried out more through business associations and trade
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250 Salvador Parrado unions. Entry to the European Union and the international context have promoted this dialogue among different social actors rather than undermining their capacity to strike enduring deals (Jordana 2016). Think tanks and organizations, including the Catholic Church, focusing on noneconomic topics, have not exerted effective influence on policy-making. Some exceptions are the Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals movement that supported same-sex marriage and CEPES (Spanish Business Confederation of Social Economy) in charge of social economic issues (see Verge, chapter 36 in this book). A very successful movement was the platform Indignados (15-M Movement), created in 2011 to advance real democracy, sowing the seeds of the far-left party Podemos (see Méndez, chapter 20 in this book). In general, there is little external consultation in public administration, and bureaucrats make limited use of knowledge gained from external stakeholders. According to Molina et al. (2016), the government of Partido Popular (2011–2016) did not consult social actors (such as trade unions) after 2011, in particular about relevant reforms related to the labour market, public-spending cuts, and other structural reforms. In the period up to 2016, the government signed only one social pact on long-term unemployment with the two most important trade unions and the main employers’ association.
15.5 The Delivery Capacity under Strain Compared to regional and local authorities, central government has had a limited role in service delivery since the decentralization of state functions (Colino 2008). However, some functions such as the delivery of passports, national identity cards, pensions, and similar documents, as well as services to business, are still carried out at the central level. In the concept of delivery capacity as outlined by Hupe and Hill (2014), central government deals principally with services that cannot be provided by the private sector (for instance, the issuing of passports) or are complex because they involve different agencies from different levels of government (for instance, starting a business). Spanish central government has focused on minimizing public-sector costs and on the digitalization agenda, in order to improve service efficiencies, but other tenets of managerialism have been neglected. This section examines digitalization and managerialism in turn.
15.5.1 The Digitalization Agenda The digitalization agenda foresees a high impact on the delivery of services by promising cost cuts, waiting-time reductions, and higher user satisfaction (West 2005). In 2007, it was mandated that all services operating at the central level should be available online.
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Public Administration 251 By 2011, 95 per cent of all processes and 99 per cent of potential administrative transactions in central government were online, according to CORA (2013). The digitalization of services for citizens and businesses ranked highly on the government’s reform agenda for tackling the impact of the world financial crisis (CORA 2013). Approximately 70 per cent of 222 reform measures involved the implementation of some e-government strategy related to digital-by-default public services, the use of electronic identification systems, implementation of e-invoices for companies, and formal e-notification systems for the public authorities. An important part of the reform measures targeted citizens and companies, simplifying their relationship with public-sector organizations. For example, thanks to the data interchange platform, a 1992 mandate of not requesting citizens and organizations to provide documents that are already in the possession of the administration was realized in 2015. This allows the administration to pre-fill forms, one of the sub-indices used by the European Commission to measure the penetration of e-government. At present, the social security, the tax administration, the statistics institute and the police share information which does not need to be requested of the citizens. This initiative received a United Nations Public Service Award in 2014. However, an OECD report (2014) on the reach of the reforms criticized the limited connectedness between central government and the regions. Closer linkage was deemed necessary to strengthen the overall delivery role of the state. The e-government agenda also targeted small and medium-sized enterprises by abolishing 5,800 regulations that hindered the full realization of a single market within Spanish territory, creating a single public-sector procurement platform with an increasing number of adherent services and regional governments, and reducing default payments in the public sector (Merino 2014). As an OECD (2014) report argued, the major problem in implementing these laws relates to the necessary cooperation of regional and local governments which is not always guaranteed. The 2013 reforms compelled public authorities to offer digital services, nudged citizens to opt for electronic services and mandated business to use electronic taxation and invoicing. For instance, the eight business-related services assessed by WIFO (2012) are offered online. In fact, the values and middle position of Spain in some of the rankings (e-government users, pre-filled forms) from DESI (Digital Economy and Society Index) of the European Commission masks the extraordinary effort made by central government to make all phases of service delivery digital. At the same time, in some areas such as online service or online service completion, Spain takes first place in the rankings, although in terms of digital public services, Scandinavian countries (relatively small compared to Spain) are ahead. The average values of the ‘ease of doing business’ in Spain are positive and the country is ranked twenty-eighth in the world, but for ‘starting a business’ it ranks only eightysixth (World Bank 2017), a poor rating for a large economy. There is a more entrenched problem underlying these data. In general, businesses have to interact with all levels of government for different permits, authorizations, and services. This complex licensing process, not always solved through one-stop shops for businesses, may be an underlying
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252 Salvador Parrado reason that it takes so long to set up a company. This takes longer in Spain (28 days) than the EU average (13.7 days) (WIFO 2012). In general, Spanish central government has made considerable progress in e-government, but bureaucratic inertia and political issues related to the limited sharing of data with authorities at other levels of government hamper the system’s capacity to exploit its potential.
15.5.2 The Managerial Approach The Spanish procedural and legalistic approach to public services has not facilitated the path to a more managerial framework in central bureaucracy, and the various attempts at reform have not focused on managerialization (Gallego and Barzelay 2010; Ongaro 2012). For instance, the CORA’s initial report (2013) indicated that there was no methodology for measuring the results achieved in central administration and relating them to inputs to identify effective ways of achieving efficiencies. CORA proposed improving the comparability of organizations whose results can be observed and measured. The final goal was to compare results and activities against the costs. This reform programme request has been pervasive (Parrado 2018). A System of Efficiency, Quality, and Effectiveness Indices (SIECE), implemented in 2007, could be the seed of this system, but the SIECE does not seem to have taken root in all ministries. There was limited use of SIECE by organizations such as the Cadastre, between 2009 and 2016, and the territorial delegations of central administration that are located in one ministry (MHAP 2015, 2016, 2017). However, beyond this ministry, the system had limited impact, revealing Spanish bureaucracy’s long-standing problem with the implementation of more managerial instruments at the systemic level, even though managerialism seems to be well rooted in the individual delivery agencies of central government (Olmeda, Parrado, and Colino 2017). The relative absence of managerialism at ministry level not only reduces capacity to manage their own resources but also the ability to evaluate the whole system, in particular the results achieved by the regions in the various areas in which the state has a regulatory and evaluatory role. Furthermore, a survey of European public servants’ perceptions shows several dimensions of the limited penetration of the managerialist approach in public administration in Spain (Curry et al. 2015). Spanish civil servants do not perceive that their goals are clear and measurable. In general, civil servants from the ministries find more goal ambiguity in this aspect than delivery agency managers. This is expected since executive agencies often provide direct services, while, in the Spanish case, ministries carry out planning and control tasks. On a scale of 1 (low ambiguity) to 7 (high ambiguity of goals), Spanish managers show a score close to an average of the countries in the study, approximately 3.6, compared to low goal ambiguity in the United Kingdom (3) and higher goal ambiguity in Germany (3.9). A more detailed examination of the same survey from Alonso and Clifton (2013) shows that there is a certain disparity of opinion over the possibility of measuring the goals to be achieved (27.4 per cent of the participants
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Public Administration 253 agree it is possible and 25.2 per cent disagree). In addition, 50.5 per cent of Spanish managers (77.6 per cent in other European countries in the study) believe that their goals are clear. Finally, only 35.3 per cent of Spanish respondents believe that the goals are clearly communicated (compared to 73 per cent in the rest of the countries in the study). Clearly, management by results has not yet been rooted in the Spanish administrative political culture. According to the managerial approach, results-based management can only be addressed adequately if managers have some management autonomy. The study by Curry et al. (2015) shows that Spanish managers (at central and regional level) have low managerial and political autonomy. Alonso and Clifton (2013) indicate that in policy design, the degree of managerial autonomy among Spanish managers is very low (17.7 per cent perceive themselves as having a high degree of autonomy compared to 40 per cent in other European countries), and also in the implementation of policies (27.5 per cent versus 61.7 per cent in the rest of Europe). Similarly, Spanish managers consider themselves to have little say or autonomy in decisions related to the structure of their organization, outsourcing of services, and the management of human or budgetary resources. In general, one would expect that a procedural administration that focuses rather on the legality of public affairs and less on the results that matter for citizens and users should yield low satisfaction rates of citizens. Service satisfaction offers a mixed picture of the evolution of public services. Several AEVAL reports (2010–2016) show that from 2009, the satisfaction of Spaniards with public services at all levels of governments demonstrated a zig-zag trend. In 2009, more than 50 per cent of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with public services. This percentage rose to 63 per cent in 2011 but started to fall after that with a 45 per cent approval rate in 2013 and 50 per cent in 2015. This general view contrasts with the more positive perception of the last time that citizens went to a public office. From 2010 onwards there were no significant changes. More than 70 per cent of the citizens were satisfied or very satisfied with their last transaction. In fact, the percentage of people very satisfied rose from 15 per cent in 2010 to 22 per cent in 2015. Therefore, while positive generic perceptions have declined, more specific experiences have remained unchanged or are even slightly better, illustrating the bureauphobia paradox explained by Del Pino et al. (2016). This single instance might be attributed to the increased effort of government to apply e-government and enhance the effectiveness of service delivery.
15.6 Conclusions This chapter has examined the capacities of a central administration whose tasks since the 1980s have become more regulatory, planning, and evaluatory as a consequence of the decentralization of powers to the regions.
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254 Salvador Parrado The national civil service is under scrutiny for not being open to the possibility of lateral recruitment from the private sector (which would enrich the managerial capacities of the state), is legalistic and process focused rather than result oriented, is highly politicized at the top, and lacks the competencies and the configuration that could be more adequate to the new challenges of the state. In spite of these shortcomings and limiting features, citizens consider civil servants at central level to display a high level of professionalism. Central government has systematically tried to find the optimal organizational design to deliver effective services and reduce waste. Except for merging some organizations, there has been no attempt to boost the productivity of public-sector organizations and the main accountability system remains centred on legality and expenditure. In the midst of an increasing fragmentation of political groups in parliament and the predominance of minority governments since 2015, the executive displays high levels of strategic capacity and inter-ministerial cooperation. These features, customary in a strong executive, are achieved by a network of civil servants and policy advisors who play different roles in decision-making, but in general display a political influence on the process that is stronger than the neutrality expected of a civil service. Although delivery functions are fewer, there are still some services provided by the central administration. Digitalization has helped to increase efficiencies for citizens and businesses but some obstacles related to limited cooperation with the regions are still pervasive. The success of the digitalization agenda contrasts with the low level of infiltration of managerial practices in some central-level organizations. In sum, there are several elements that may explain the persistence of a legalistic and procedural administration that still defines a central government whose role has changed in the last decades. Following Meyer-Sahling and Yesilkagit (2011), the longterm stability of the system and the internal consistency of ideas amongst civil servants with a legal background on how to manage public-sector organizations, and the dislike of (even resistance to) managerialist ideas coming from elsewhere and typical of Western democracies can explain why the Spanish system still belongs to the Rechtsstaat tradition. However, this does not imply that the state is unable to deliver. Certainly, it presents some problems, but citizens are relatively satisfied with the performance of central government at the same time as they question the transparency and ethics of political cadres (see Villoria, chapter 37 in this book).
15.7 Bibliography AEVAL, 2016, 2013, 2011. Informe de Seguimiento de la Actividad de los Ministerios en Relación con los Programas para la Mejora de la Calidad de la AGE. Madrid: AEVAL. Alonso, J. and J. Clifton. 2013. Public Sector Reform in Spain: Views and Experiences from Senior Executives. s.l.: COCOPS Work Package 3 Country Report. Alonso, J., J. Clifton, and D. Díaz-Fuentes. 2015. ‘The impact of New Public Management on efficiency: An analysis of Madrid’s hospitals’. Health Policy 119(3): 333–40. CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) 2006. Estudio 2604. Funcionarios públicos, III.
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Public Administration 255 CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas) 1980. Estudio 1252. Funcionarios públicos, I. Colino, C. 2008. ‘The Spanish model of devolution and regional governance: Evolution, motivations and effects on policy making’. Policy and Politics 36(4): 573–86. Colino, C. 2009. ‘Constitutional change without constitutional reform: Spanish federalism and the revision of Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 39(2): 213–40. Comisión para la Reforma de las Administraciones Públicas. 2016, 2015, 2014. Informe de Seguimiento. Madrid: MAP. Comisión para la Reforma de las Administraciones Públicas. Reforma de las Administraciones Públicas. Madrid: Comisión para la Reforma de las Administraciones Públicas. Connaughton, B. 2015. ‘Navigating the borderlines of politics and administration: Reflections on the role of ministerial advisers’. International Journal of Public Administration 38(1): 37–45. Craft, J. 2015. ‘Revisiting the gospel: Appointed political staffs and core executive policy coordination’. International Journal of Public Administration 38(1): 56–65. Craft, J. and J. Halligan. 2017. ‘Assessing 30 years of Westminster Policy Advisory System experience’. Policy Sciences 50(1): 47–62. Curry, D., G. Hammerschmid, S. Jilke, and S. van de Walle. 2015. Executive perceptions of public sector reform in Europe’. In: International Handbook of Public Administration and Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 369–98. Dahlström, C. et al. 2015. The QoG Expert Survey Dataset II. Gothenburg: The Quality of Government Institute. del Pino, E., I. Calzada, and J. Díaz-Pulido. 2016. ‘Conceptualizing and explaining bureauphobia: Contours, scope, and determinants’. Public Administration Review 76(5): 725–36. Doberstein, C. 2017. ‘Whom do bureaucrats believe? A randomized controlled experiment testing perceptions of credibility of policy research’. Policy Studies Journal, 45(2): 384–405. Eichbaum, C. and R. Shaw. 2007. ‘Ministerial advisers and the politics of policy-making: Bureaucratic permanence and popular control’. Australian Journal of Public Administration 66(4): 453–67. Fleisher, J. and S. Parrado. 2010. ‘Power distributions in ambiguous times: The effects of the financial crisis on executive decision-making in Germany and Spain’. Der Moderne Staat, 3(2): 361–76. Fuentetaja, J. 2013. Pasado, Presente, y Futuro de la Fundación Pública: Entre la Politización y la Patrimonialización. Madrid: Civitas. Gallego, R., N. Barbieri, and S. González. 2017. ‘Explaining cross-regional policy variation in public sector reform: Institutions and change actors in the health sector in Spain’. Public Policy and Administration, 32(1): 24–44. Gallego, R. and M. Barzelay. 2010. ‘Public management policymaking in Spain: The politics of legislative reform of administrative structures, 1991–1997’. Governance, 23(2): 277–96. García-Juanatey, A. J. Jordana, S. Parrado, L. Pascual, M. Salvador, and D. Sancho. 2017. ‘Las Agencias Públicas en España: Percepciones sobre Autonomía y Rendición de Cuentas’. Revista Española de Ciencia Política 43: 61–82. Gualmini, E. 2008. ‘Restructuring Weberian bureaucracy: Comparing managerial reforms in Europe and the United States’. Public Administration 86(1): 75–94. Hupe, P. and M. Hill. 2014. Delivery capacity. In: The problem-solving capacity of the modern state: Governance challenges and administrative capacities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–40.
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256 Salvador Parrado Inventario de Entes del Sector Público Estatal, 2018. INVESPE. [Online] Available at https:// goo.gl/A1Lwic (accessed 3 September 2018). Jiménez-Asensio, R., A. Palomar, and M. Villoria. 2009. La Dirección Pública Profesional en España. Madrid: Marcial Pons. Jordana, J. 2016. ‘Multiple crises and policy dismantling in Spain: Political strategies and distributive implications’. Political Studies Review 12(2): 224–38. Kickert, W. 2007. Public management reforms in countries with a Napoleonic state model: France, Italy and Spain. In: New Public Management in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 26–51. Lodge, M. and K. Wegrich. 2014. Coordination capacity. In: The Problem-Solving Capacity of the Modern State: Governance Challenges and Administrative Capacities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 41–62. Mapelli, C. 2018. La Visión Comparada: Nuevos Sistemas de Selección de la Alta Función Pública en las Democracias Avanzadas. Revista Vasca de Administración Pública 14: 32–50. Merino, M. 2014. Reforma de la Administración: Racionalización Organizativa y Mejoras Regulatorias. Madrid: OPERA. Meyer-Sahling, J. and K. Yesilkagit. 2011. ‘Differential legacy effects: Three propositions on the impact of administrative traditions on public administration reform in Europe East and West. Journal of European Public Policy, 18(2): 311–22. Ministerio de Política Territorial y Función Pública, 1991–2017. Boletín Estadístico del Registro Central de Personal. Madrid: MPTFP. Ministerio de Hacienda y Administraciones Públicas. 2017, 2016, 2015. Informe sobre el funcionamiento de los servicios de la administración periférica del estado. Madrid: MHAP. Molina, I., O. Homs, and C. Colino. 2016. Spain Report. Sustainable Governance Indicators 2016. Berlin: Bertelsmann Stiftung. OECD. 2017. Government at a Glance 2017. Paris: OECD. OECD, 2014. Public Governance Reviews Spain: from Administrative Reform to Continuous Improvement Paris: OECD. Olmeda, J., S. Parrado, and C. Colino. 2017. Las Administraciones Públicas en España. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanc. Ongaro, E. 2012. From reluctant to compelled reformers? Reflections on three decades of public management reform in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In: Emerging and Potential Trends in Public Management. Bingley: Emerald, pp. 105–27. Ongaro, E., S. Parrado, and K. Verhoest. 2012. Comparing agencification in Latin Countries. In: Government Agencies. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145–54. Painter, M. and B. Guy Peters. 2010. Administrative traditions in comparative perspective: Families, groups and hybrids. In: Tradition and Public Administration. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 19–30. Parrado, S. 2014. Analytical capacity. In: The Problem-Solving Capacity of the Modern State: Governance Challenges and Administrative Capacities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 84–104. Parrado, S. 2017 ‘El gobierno y el diseño organizativo de la Administración central’, In: Las Administraciones Públicas en España. Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, pp. 77–114. Parrado, S. 2018. De las reformas de la austeridad a las reformas de la calidad: las administraciones españolas a debate. In: La calidad de las instituciones en España. Madrid: Círculo de Empresarios, pp. 149–86. Pierre, J. and B. Peters. (eds) 2014. The Politicization of the Civil Service in Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge.
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Public Administration 257 Pollitt, C. and G. Bouckaert. 2017. Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis into the Age of Austerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramio, C. 2017. El Eslabón Perdido de la Administración Pública Española: la Ausencia de una Dirección Pública Profesional. Revista de Evaluación de Programas y Políticas Públicas. 1(8) 1–14. Rodríguez Teruel, J. 2006. Los ministros de la España democrática: Perfil, trayectorias y carrera ministerial de los miembros de gobierno de Suárez a Zapatero (1976–2005). Barcelona: Doctoral Dissertation (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Ruano, J., J. Crespo, and C. Polo. 2014. Los funcionarios ante el espejo: Análisis del ciclo de la selección de personal en la Administración General del Estado. Madrid: INAP. West, D. 2005. Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. WIFO (Austrian Institute of Economic Research) 2012. Excellence in Public Administration for Competitiveness in the EU Member States. Report prepared for the European Commission, DG Enterprise and Industry, s.l: Brussels: European Union. World Bank. 2017. Doing Business 2018. Washington, DC: World Bank.
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chapter 16
J u dici a l Politic s the constitutional court Nuno Garoupa and Pedro C. Magalhães
16.1 Introduction Different theories have been developed to explain judicial behaviour when engaging in constitutional review (Epstein 2016). Although most of these theories initially addressed the US Supreme Court, they have been already used to contextualize judicial behaviour in many constitutional courts, including the Spanish Constitutional Court. Legalists take the view that constitutional judges simply interpret and apply constitutional law in a conformist view of precedents. Consequently, formalism, precedent, and even procedural rules prevail over possible judicial preferences or other considerations. In a completely different perspective, the endorsers of the attitudinal model suggest that sincere judicial preferences, with special emphasis on ideology, are the main explanatory variable. Attitudes dominate judicial decision-making and might override formal considerations. The more flexible constitutional law is, the more we should observe attitudinal variables explaining outcomes of constitutional review. Finally, agency or strategy theorists recognize the importance of judicial preferences but argue that they are implemented taking into account political and varying institutional realities. Attitudes matter, but so do the consequences of constitutional review. Therefore, judges balance disposition, inclinations, policy, and other relevant outcomes. Consequently, it could be that, in many specific cases, judges sacrifice ideological preferences for alternative practical considerations. Such strategic behaviour, however, can only be rationalized once the institutional and political contexts are understood by agents. Judicial politics cannot be isolated from such contexts, and responds to or reflects party politics in a variety of ways. Parties design constitutional courts, making important choices about their powers—who has the right to appear before them (rules of standing), and how they are composed. They play a large
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The Constitutional Court 259 role in appointing constitutional judges. They are typically among those who have direct access to the court as litigants. They can react to individual and aggregate judicial decisions, rewarding or punishing judges and, ultimately, working to change the court’s jurisdiction and redesign it as an institution. Even attitudinalists accept that judicial preferences are not immune to the political context. Therefore, a first step towards understanding judicial politics in the Spanish Constitutional Court begs for a review of its institutional design. Furthermore, although judges have to adjudicate cases according to a set of possible (and maybe controversial) determinants, these cases are produced by plaintiffs and defendants. Before we can consider judicial behaviour in more detail, we should also discuss access to and the activity of the Spanish Constitutional Court. In particular, for a court yet with limited control of its docket, it matters how cases are generated. Finally, cases litigated in the Spanish Constitutional Court get them to be addressed by an institution of twelve judges appointed by different branches of government. In fact, the Spanish Constitutional Court has a unique combination of members chosen by the three branches of government. However, such unique combination has not saved the court from alleged politicization, occasional bad press, and accusations of activism and partisanship in line with other European countries such as Italy and Portugal. Nevertheless, the available empirical evidence shows a more nuanced picture. There is judicial politics. But not all constitutional review is determined by judicial politics. In that sense, the Spanish Constitutional Court is neither a traditional court of law (purely formalistic and with extremely low incidence of dissents as expected in the civil law tradition) nor a third chamber of parliament (since there is a certain norm of consensus and the alignment between the voting of constitutional judges and political appointers is not staggering).
16.2 The Institutional Design of Constitutional Review in Spain The Spanish Constitution approved in 1978, together with specific legislation passed a year later, introduced what has been called a ‘Kelsenian’ model of constitutional justice (named after the legal theorist Hans Kelsen, seen as the ‘father’ of the influential Austrian 1920 constitution). The basic features of this model are well known. First, it centralizes the power to review the constitutionality of legislation in a single court, detached from the ordinary judiciary: the Tribunal Constitucional. Second, it gives the Tribunal the ability to determine whether legislation complies with constitutional rules independently of particular legal cases or controversies, that is, abstract review powers. All legislative acts, passed by the national parliament or by those of the Autonomous Communities, the standing orders of those legislatures, and international treaties can be reviewed in this way. This occurs in response to appeals (recursos de inconstitucionalidad) that can be made by the prime minister, the ombudsman, fifty members of the lower
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260 NUNO GAROUPA AND PEDRO C. MAGALHÃES (Congress) or upper (Senate) chambers of parliament (about 15 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, of the size of those chambers), as well as by the executive and legislative bodies of Spain’s regions, whenever legislation impinges on their powers. These appeals can be lodged within three months after the legislation is enacted. Statutes struck down on the basic of their unconstitutionality through this procedure cease to be in force with general effects. The third basic feature of the Kelsenian model that is shared by the Spanish case concerns the rules for appointment and retention of the court’s judges (magistrados): appointment is made largely by political bodies, and terms are limited. There are twelve judges in the Tribunal. Eight are appointed by Congress and Senate, four each, in both cases using a qualified (60 per cent) majority rule. Two more are appointed by the executive. The remaining two magistrados are appointed by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), a body that mainly deals with the appointment and promotion of judges in the career ‘ordinary’ judiciary. However, since the CGPJ is itself appointed by the chambers of parliament by qualified majority, political bodies still play a role here, albeit indirectly. Judges serve non-renewable nine-year terms, and appointments are staggered, with one-third of the court being renewed every three years. The Constitutional Court also enjoys other competencies, less prototypical of a ‘Kelsenian court’ but still not comparatively uncommon. These include ‘constitutional questions’ (cuestiones de inconstitucionalidad) posed by ordinary judges who, when deciding a particular case, believe the applicable statute might be unconstitutional, and thus refer it to the Constitutional Court for a final ruling. The court also receives ‘constitutional complaints’ (recursos de amparo), lodged by individual citizens who believe their constitutional rights to have been violated. There are also conflictos de competencia and conflictos entre órganos constitucionales, through which the court adjudicates on whether non-legislative acts by the central government, its branches, or the regional governments abide by the distribution of powers defined by the Constitution and other higher laws. Finally, the court exerts preventive review (recurso previo, prior to promulgation) of the constitutionality of the draft bills of the Statutes of Regional Autonomy—home-rule charters—once they have been approved by parliament. Table 16.1 summarizes these and other competencies of the Spanish Constitutional Court. How did the Spanish system of constitutional justices end up looking like this? The basic solution found by the framers reflects—like many other features of Spanish democratic institutions—a deal between the reformist sectors within the authoritarian regime and the leftist opposition seeking a rupture with that regime, particularly the Socialist Party (PSOE). The former had begun advocating in the late 1960s for the creation of a ‘constitutional section’ within the apex court of the career judiciary, the Supreme Court, which would be in charge of constitutional review (Sánchez Agesta 1967). This ended up being the proposal of the Union de Centro Democrático, the broad federation of parties representing the right-wing reformist sector led by Adolfo Suárez and the largest party in the constituent assembly. In contrast, the leftist opposition to the regime, particularly PSOE, advocated the creation of a special Tribunal de Garantias Constitucionales, ultimately inspired by the German model (González and Guerra 1977, 40–1). However,
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Table 16.1. The Jurisdiction of the Spanish Constitutional Court. Competencies
Consists in:
At request from:
Recurso de inconstitucionalidad (‘action of unconstitutionality’)
Examining the conformity with the Constitution of laws and regulations, after legislation has been enacted (abstract a posteriori review).
Prime Minister Ombudsman 50 members of Congress of Deputies 50 members of Senate Executive and legislative bodies of Autonomous Communities (vis-à-vis central legislation affecting their sphere of autonomy)
Recurso previo de inconstitucionalidad (‘preliminary—ex ante—appeal of unconstitutionality’)
Examining the conformity with the Constitution of projects or proposals for reform of Statutes of Autonomy. Possible until 1985 against all organic laws, eliminated then, reinstated in present form (only regarding Estatutos de Autonomia) in 2015.
prime minister
Cuéstion de inconstitucionalidad (‘question of unconstitutionality’)
Examining the conformity with the Constitution of laws and regulations applicable to a judicial process, after legislation has been enacted.
Judges
Recurso de amparo (‘Appeal for constitutional protection of fundamental rights’)
Examining parliamentary, governmental and administrative, and judicial decisions on grounds of breaches of constitutional rights and freedoms.
Any natural or legal person.
Conflictos de competencia (‘conflicts of powers’)
Examining the conformity of non-legislative acts with norms delineating division of powers between state and autonomies communities in the Constitution and the Statutes of Autonomy.
Central government
Conflictos entre órganos constitucionales (‘conflicts between constitutional bodies’)
Examining whether decisions by government, the Congress of Deputies, the Senate, or the General Council of the Judiciary violate distribution of competencies between these bodies as defined by the Constitution and organic laws.
Government
ombudsman 50 members of Congreso 50 members of Senate
Executive bodies of Autonomous Communities
Congress of Deputies Senate General Council of the Judiciary
Note: Other competencies: Declaration on the constitutionality of International Treaties; Challenges against nonbinding regulatory provisions and resolutions issued by any organ of the Autonomous Communities; conflicts in defence of local autonomy (since 1999); Conflicts in defence of foral (Basque provinces) autonomy (since 2010); Complaints and questions on tax matters against the Basque regional provisions (since 2010).
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262 NUNO GAROUPA AND PEDRO C. MAGALHÃES the Socialists proposed several interesting adaptations to that model. On the one hand, this new court would be able to review the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. On the other hand, PSOE proposed that all judges would be selected by the two chambers of parliament by qualified majority rules, but only five of them by the Senate, where the electoral system had dictated a brutal under-representation of the Socialists. Interestingly, to the left of PSOE, the Communists were never as keen on this model. Anything was better than allowing a largely non-purged career judiciary a role in reviewing the constitutionality of the laws passed by the new democratic parliament, but the Communists also feared that a constitutional court might become an instrument usable to introduce ‘rigidity in the political process’ (Solé Tura 1978, 58), that is, to block the actual implementation of a progressive constitution. Furthermore, the Communists knew that their modest presence in the lower chamber of parliament and their complete absence in the upper chamber would leave them with little chance of participating in judicial appointments. Ultimately, the deal struck results from a compromise between UCD and PSOE. The former accepted the attribution of constitutional review powers to a specialized court. However, UCD imposed a series of apparently small but highly relevant changes to the Socialists’ original intentions, blocking the proposal of making Supreme Court decisions subject to review by the Constitutional Court and refusing the notion of awarding fewer appointments to the Senate. Instead, UCD demanded appointment rights for both the government itself (two judges) as well as for the Judicial Council, dominated by career judges. Finally, both UCD and PSOE made sure that only their own parliamentary groups would be able to refer legislation for abstract review, by defining the thresholds of the number of MP’s and senators required way above the representation of smaller parties. While the access to litigation by the executive and legislative bodies of the Autonomous Communities protected the interests of the Basque and Catalan nationalists in this regard, both the Communists and the rightists of Alianza Popular (AP) were sidelined. This was not the final step in the institutional design of the court. There was still the more specific legislation regulating the functioning of the Constitutional Court to be approved—the Ley Orgánica del Tribunal Constitucional—requiring, this time, the support of an absolute majority in parliament. However, the fact that neither UCD nor PSOE had obtained such a majority in the 1979 elections forced them again to negotiate. That negotiation took place in the shadow of another crucial process, the approval of other ‘organic laws’, particularly the Statutes of Autonomy for the different regions. The bill originally presented by the UCD reflected this clearly, by assigning a new power to the court: preventive or ex ante—pre-promulgation—abstract review of organic laws, and only at the request either of the executive or a majority in the parliamentary chambers. In this way, the government aimed at placing the political negotiations around Spain’s particular brand of quasi-federalism, left rather vague in the Constitution but to be concretized in the Statutes of Autonomy, under the shadow of the court (Herrero de Miñon 1993, 196). Ultimately, however, UCD was forced to two concessions. On the one hand, the Basques and Catalans negotiated with the government that such preventive review would not apply to their own statutes and only to those of all other comunidades.
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The Constitutional Court 263 On the other hand, the government conceded to PSOE the possibility that ex ante review of organic laws could also take place at the request of Socialist MPs. By 1982, PSOE obtained an absolute majority in parliament and the leadership of the right moved from UCD to Alianza Popular (AP) following the former’s spectacular electoral debacle. Swiftly, AP began transfiguring the recurso previo away from its originally intended goal (constraining the negotiation of the Statutes of Autonomy). Instead, AP referred a series of organic laws passed by the Socialists for preventive review by the court, including issues such as local elections’ legislation, the decriminalization of abortion, labour union regulations, and public financing of private (mostly Catholic) schools. PSOE’s response was to use their absolute majority to change the court’s organic law, simply eliminating recurso previo. Much later, in 2015, ex ante review would end up being reinstated, but exclusively vis-à-vis draft bills reforming the Statutes of Autonomy. The story goes back to the early 2000s. The Partido Popular (the successor of AP) was the main force supporting the partial reinstatement of the recurso previo in the context of the reform of the Basque and, especially, the Catalan home-rule charter. The party even attempted, in different ways, to bring before the court the charter proposals approved by the Basque and Catalan parliaments. The court ultimately refused to concede these appeals, alleging that this could only be made under a non-existing ex ante review (Alegre Martínez, 2016). However, it would eventually be forced to rule on the Catalan Estatuto, in ex post review and at the request of MPs of the Popular Party, the ombudsman, and several regional governments. This 800-page ruling was issued no less than four years after the approval of the charter in a referendum, and struck down fourteen of its clauses, effectively bringing the reform to a halt (López Aguilar, 2011). By 2014, as the political consequences of this traumatic process were unfolding in full force, PP and PSOE joined forces in 2015 to reinstate ex ante review for the homerule charters, with the opposition of all remaining parliamentary groups, but only after the Estatuto of Castilla-La-Mancha had already been approved (Alegre Martínez, 2016). Therefore, even a cursory look at this sequence of events is enough to dispel any naïve notions about why these institutions are designed the way they are and the motivations behind that design. The Spanish right understandably favoured a system where predominantly conservative judges would review the constitutionality of legislation, while the Spanish left was understandably reluctant to accept such a system. The result was a compromise: UCD traded the creation of a Kelsenian-style court desired by PSOE with, among other concessions, rules of appointment and retention that favoured the possibility of appointing a majority of its judges. Later, when the populares began turning ex ante review into a counter-majoritarian weapon, a PSOE absolute majority eliminated it. And as the profound cleavage between centralism and regional nationalism took hold of Spanish politics in the 2010s, PSOE joined forces with the right in reinstating ex ante review of autonomy statutes. The political and partisan stakes around the institutional design of constitutional review were and remained clear for all players, and the outcome of such process reflects their pursuit of self-interested goals and the extent to which the different weights of the parties in the relevant decision-making arenas allow them to reach those goals.
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16.3 Accessing and Activating the Court Regardless of the range and depth of the powers awarded to constitutional courts, they only become truly empowered when cases are brought before them by litigants. How frequently have private individuals, judges, and political actors resorted to the different avenues of access to the court? Figure 16.1 gives a very general picture of how the court has been activated since its creation. It plots the basic trends in the use of the four most important types of constitutional litigation in Spain from 1980 to 2017: amparo appeals by individual plaintiffs;
Appeals for protection of rights (recursos de amparo)
Questions of unconstitutionality (cuestiones de inconstitucionalidad) 250
14000 12000
200
10000 8000
150
6000
100
4000
50
2000 0 1980
1989
1998
2007
2016
0 1980
250
250
200
200
150
150
100
100
50
50
1989
1998
2007
2016
1998
2007
2016
Conflicts of competence (conflictos de competencia)
Actions of unconstitutionality (Recursos de inconstitucionalidad)
0 1980
1989
0 1980
1989
1998
2007
2016
Figure 16.1 Trends in litigation in the Spanish Constitutional Court, 1980–2017 (appeals lodged by year). Source: Statistical Tables of the Spanish Constitutional Court
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The Constitutional Court 265 questions posed by ordinary court’s judges; abstract review referrals by political actors; and conflicts of competence between the central government and the Autonomous Communities. The first noticeable aspect is the fact that the vertical-axis scale of one of the graphs is rather different from the others: from very early on, thousands of recursos de amparo— appeals by natural or legal persons seeking protection of fundamental rights—have been lodged every year in Spain. Their sheer number is many times higher than that of any other form of accessing the court. As far as we know, there is no systematic empirical study of the dynamics and determinants of amparo appeals, but several observations can nonetheless be made. First, the stratospheric figures concerning these appeals do not mean that the sentencing activity of the court has been totally dominated by amparo. From early on, the court started summarily declaring the vast majority of these appeals as formally and substantively inadmissible. This occurred with almost 90 per cent of appeals during the 1980s, and with an even greater share in subsequent years as their number kept rising. Second, the number of amparo appeals left to be decided after these inadmissibility decisions—often more than two hundred per year—remained increasingly difficult to manage. The pressure posed by amparo on the court’s workload is a perennial theme in the Spanish legal literature (Cruz Villalón 1994; López Pietsch 1998), as it is in most other cases where this mechanism is available, most notably in Germany. In 2007, the court’s organic law was changed to allow non-admissions to be motivated more easily, either by resorting to a better-defined panoply of procedural requirements or by using a substantive argument: whether the appeal had any special ‘constitutional transcendence,’ in light of the importance for the interpretation of the Constitution that a decision might have. Although short of introducing a pure certiorari model, this new rule seems to have considerably increased the discretion of the court when deciding which appeals to hear. In the last few years, the court has been issuing consistently less than 100 amparo rulings per year, with close to two-thirds of summary decisions of inadmissibility resorting to some variation of the ‘constitutional transcendence’ argument. The dissuasive effect of this reform is also visible in Figure 16.1. By 2017, the court was receiving about half of the recursos de amparo it received about a decade earlier. Having said that, with the number of appeals still ranging on several thousands per year, it still ‘burdens the activity of the Tribunal in all aspects’ (Ahumada Ruiz 2017, 615), with some observers remaining critical of the transformation of the court into a sort of ‘factory of inadmissibility decisions’ (Cabañas García 2010, 79). Cuestiones de inconstitucionalidad, posed by judges in ordinary courts when doubts arise about the constitutionality of laws applicable in judicial process, constitute the second most frequent type of litigation. The empirical study of their dynamics and determinants also remains to be done in Spain. However, we know somewhat more about both the recursos and the conflicts of competence. The use of referral of legislation for abstract ex post review is typically treated by the literature on comparative judicial politics as a weapon available to parliamentary oppositions in order to introduce further veto-points in the legislative policy-making process (Stone 1992, 236). However, the
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266 NUNO GAROUPA AND PEDRO C. MAGALHÃES situation in Spain is somewhat more complex. While abstract review litigation against legislation passed by the national parliament is indeed available to (sizeable) groups of opposition party MPs and Senators (as well as to the ombudsman), it is also available to the executives and assemblies of the Autonomous Communities when that legislation affects their sphere of autonomy. Furthermore, legislation by the Autonomous Communities themselves can be reviewed at the request of the prime minister, members of parliament, and the ombudsman. From 1980 to 2017, nearly half (48 per cent) of all recursos de inconstitucionalidad have been placed by the Autonomous Communities against central legislation. A further 39 per cent of those referrals have been placed by the prime minister and (much less frequently) by MPs, senators, or the ombudsman against legislation from the Autonomous Communities. Ultimately, only about 13 per cent of all referrals have corresponded to the pattern of abstract review litigation typically envisaged by comparative judicial politics studies elsewhere: referrals by opposition MPs, senators, or the ombudsman against legislation passed by the national parliament. Conflicts between the central government and the Autonomous Communities can take an additional form, the aptly named conflictos de competencia: lodged by Autonomous Communities against central government’s provisions, resolutions, or acts without the force of law (and vice-versa) in order to determine their adequacy to the Constitution and to the Estatutos de Autonomía. If we add them to abstract review referrals against central legislation by the Autonomous Communities or by the national government against regional legislation, we quickly find that litigation by political actors near the court is much less catered towards judicializing conflicts between parliamentary majorities and oppositions than it is to judicializing conflicts between the national government and the Autonomous Communities. In other words, litigation is much more used ‘to solve the problems of distribution of competencies between the national and the regional legislatures’ (Bon 1993, 59), more so than in the systems—like the German—on which the institutional design of the Spanish court was inspired. This results from a combination between the general vagueness of the constitutional regulation of the ‘state of autonomies’ and the marginal role of the Senate as a chamber of territorial representation where conflicts might be politically addressed. Some have even argued that Spain’s particular brand of federalism has been turned into ‘a judicial state of autonomies’ (López Guerra 1989, 64). Unsurprisingly, as Harguindéguy et al. (2017) show, of all legal actions (recursos and conflictos) of this nature, those involving conflicts between the central government and just two regional governments (Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, the Basque Country) represent half of all such cases. Unsurprising as well is the fact that such massive levels of litigation have led to very large delays in the processing of sentences (Ferreres Comella 2009, 193), with the corresponding irresponsibility of political actors (who can act and legislate at the ‘borderlines’ of constitutional norms knowing that the court will only be able to rule on the issue many years later— Aja, 2016, 13). Having said that, the dynamics of litigation in Spain seem to broadly follow the patterns found elsewhere: they tend to be more frequent when legislative power is more
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Table 16.2. Yearly Average recursos de inconstitucionalidad, 1980–2017. Majority government years (1983–1992; 2001–2003; 2012–2015)
Minority government years (1980–1982;1994–1999; 2005–2011; 2016–2017)
By MPs, senators or ombudsman against national parliament legislation
4.9
3.2
By autonomous communities against national parliament legislation
19.6
7.4
By prime minister, MPs, senators, or ombudsman against Autonomous Communities’ legislation
15.2
10.9
Source: Statistical Tables of the Spanish Constitutional Court
concentrated (Stone 2000, 55), that is, in situations when governments are supported by absolute majorities in parliament. Table 16.2 shows the average number of abstract review referrals per year under situations of majority vs. minority government.1 Recursos placed against national legislation were more frequent either on the part of opposition parliamentarians or (especially) from Autonomous Communities under periods of majority government. Interestingly, minority governments were also less likely to appeal against legislation from the Autonomous Communities. A crucial element of these dynamics, of course, is the fact that the ability of minority governments to survive in Spain has frequently hinged on the ability to seek formal or at least temporary political alliances with major regional parties in the Basque Country, Catalonia, and elsewhere (Field 2016), thus creating fewer incentives to the judicialization of conflicts between the central government and the communities. Instead, under majority governments, greater judicialization ensues (Magalhães 2003; Harguindéguy et al. 2017). However, concentration of power in the national government might not be the only determinant of this sort of litigation. On the one hand, Harguindéguy et al. (2017) show that, above and beyond the presence of an absolute majority in the national parliament, who controls the government in either the centre or in Catalonia also matters: such controversies are more likely both when the central government is conservative (i.e. more centralist) and when a nationalist party is in government in Catalonia. On the other hand, there is also evidence that litigants are strategic when considering the benefits of judicializing conflicts. An extreme example is provided by the Basque Country’s authorities’ decision in 1990 to stop presenting referrals and conflicts near the Court altogether. This was a year after the court’s recomposition was negotiated exclusively between the Socialists and the populares (Aja 1999, 135), leading Basque authorities to see the court as, as a Basque government official put it, as ‘a sort of third chamber controlled by the 1 Since we only have yearly data, years when both majority and minority governments were in power for more than one month were excluded.
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268 NUNO GAROUPA AND PEDRO C. MAGALHÃES two major parties’ (cited in Harguindéguy et al. 2017, 85). The Basque government resumed its role as litigant in the court in the early 2000s, first episodically and then somewhat more systematically since 2012. However, it seems that, in general, above and beyond government status or composition, abstract review litigation against central legislation in the court seems to decline as the number of justices in the court that were appointed by the government party increases (Magalhães 2003, 236).
16.4 Judicial Behaviour Due to the specific constitutional arrangements and political dynamics, it is no surprise that political scientists and legal economists have debated the Spanish Constitutional Court in light of modern theories of judicial behaviour (Garoupa 2019).Moreover, given recent advancements in empirical methodology, there has been the opportunity to study Spanish judges both with regression analysis and ideal point estimation. All studies point out that the Spanish Constitutional Court has a strong left–right or progressive–conservative cleavage (Hanretty 2012). Nevertheless, the specific patterns of judicial behaviour and empirical determinants vary. A first impression about the composition of the court from the 1980s until 2018 is provided by Table 16.3. It lists the names of Spanish constitutional judges, their year of appointment, and their appointer (whether PSOE or UCD/PP). PSOE has chosen 52 per cent of the sixty-three listed judges against 48 per cent by the right (UCD and PP). This largely reflects the political dynamics since the early 1980s. Unlike other countries such as Germany and Portugal, there is no fixed quota system as a result of the appointment system. An early pioneering study, covering the 1980–85 period, showed how the judges who sided in favour and against the government (PSOE, at the time, mid 1980s) regarding the two most hotly contested issues (abortion and expropriation of a controversial business tycoon) formed two distinct clusters, progressive and conservative (these labels have been used by the media and scholars since then). In other words, some judges concurred significantly more often with judges of one group than they did with those of the other (del Castillo 1987). These were two salient and controversial cases at the time. Therefore, it is not surprising that they divided the court and enhanced attitudinal explanations. A later empirical study questioned the actual sharp prevalence of party alignments and offered a more nuanced empirical characterization of judicial behaviour in the SCC (Magalhães 2003). The study discussed the importance of unanimous decisions in the period 1980–2001 as well as the institutional constraints that individual judges faced in the court (non-renewable terms, later entry in age into the Spanish Constitutional Court and, thus, shorter post-court careers that may be used to reward party loyalty). This study points out to judicial behaviour closer to the agency or strategic model rather than purely attitudinal. For example, judges were found to be more likely to
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Table 16.3. List of Spanish Constitutional Judges, 1980–2018. Justice Aragón Reyes, Manuel Arozamena Sierra, Jerónimo Asua Batarrita, Adela Balaguer Callejón, M. Luisa Begué Cantón, Gloria Cachón Villar, Pablo Casas Baamonde, M. Emilia Conde Martín de Hijas, Vicente Conde-Pumpido Tourón, Cándido Cruz Villalón, Pedro De los Mozos y de los Mozos, José Luís Delgado Barrio, Javier Díaz Eimil, Eugenio Díez de Velasco Vallejo, Manuel Díez-Picazo y Ponce de León, Luis Enríquez Sancho, Ricardo Escudero del Corral, Ángel Fernández Viagas, Plácido Gabaldón López, José García Manzano, Pablo García-Calvo y Montiel, Roberto García-Mon y González Regueral, Fernando García-Pelayo y Alonso, Manuel Garrido Falla, Fernando Gay Montalvo, Eugeni Gimeno Sendra, Vicente Gómez-Ferrer, Morant, Rafael González Campos, Julio Diego González Rivas, Juan José González-Trevijano Sánchez, Pedro José Hernando Santiago, Fco. José Jiménez de Parga y Cabrera, Manuel Jiménez Sánchez, Guillermo Latorre Segura, Ángel Leguina Villa, Jesús López Guerra, Luis María López y López, Enrique Martínez-Vares García, Santiago Mendizábal Allende, Rafael de Menéndez Menéndez, Aurelio Montoya Melgar, Alfredo Narváez Rodríguez, Antonio Ollero Tassara, Andrés Ortega Álvarez, Luis Ignacio
Year Appointment 2004 1980 2010 2017 1980 1998 1998 1998 2017 1992 1989 1995/2001 1986 1980 1980 2014 1980 1980 1990 1996 2001 1986 1980 1998 2001 1989 1980 1992 2012 2013 2010 1995 1998 1980 1986 1986 2013 2013 1992 1980 2017 2014 2012 2010
Party PSOE UCD PSOE PSOE UCD PP PSOE PP PSOE PSOE PP PP PSOE PSOE UCD PP UCD PSOE PP PSOE PP PSOE UCD/PSOE PP PSOE PSOE UCD PSOE PP PP PP PSOE PP PSOE PSOE PSOE PP PP PP UCD PP PP PP PSOE (continued)
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Table 16.3. Continued Justice
Year Appointment
Pera Verdaguer, Francisco Pérez de los Cobos Orihuel, Francisco Pérez Tremps, Pablo Pérez Vera, Elisa Roca Trías, Encarnación Rodríguez Arribas, Ramón Rodríguez Bereijo, Álvaro Rodríguez-Piñero y Bravo-Ferrer, Miguel Rodríguez-Zapata Pérez, Jorge Rubio Llorente, Francisco Ruiz Vadillo, Enrique Sala Sánchez, Pascual Tomás y Valiente, Francisco Truyol Serra, Antonio Valdés Dal-Ré, Fernando Vega Benayas, Carlos de la Viver Pi-Sunyer, Carles Vives Antón, Tomás Salvador Xiol Ríos, Juan Antonio
1983 2010 2004 2001 2012 2004 1990 1986 2002 1980 1995 2004 1980 1981 2012 1986 1992 1995 2013
Party PP PP PSOE PSOE PSOE PP PSOE PSOE PP UCD/PSOE PP PSOE PSOE UCD PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE
Source: Garoupa et al. (2013); update by same authors.2
declare unconstitutional legislation passed by already dissolved legislatures than that passed by contemporary majorities. A later empirical analysis shows that political variables, including the progressive (PSOE) and conservative (UCD and PP) characterization, partially (but not fully) explain the behaviour of constitutional judges in Spain (Garoupa et al. 2013). Looking at 297 decisions (recurso de inconstitucionalidad) for the period 1980–2006, the authors find that 192 were unanimous decisions, of which 64 per cent were decisions for constitutionality, while 36 per cent invalidated the challenged statute. The patterns do not seem to vary across time and political cycle. There are forms of party alignment detected by regression analysis, but other considerations seem to matter (for example, involvement of Catalan and Basque parties). Additional work about the Spanish Constitutional Court seems to validate the idea that party loyalty and ideology play an important role, but in no way do they fully characterize judicial behaviour in Spanish courts (Ramos 2006; Garoupa et al. 2012; Mayoral Díaz-Asensio 2013). Table 16.4 reports data presented by Garoupa et al. (2013) and a recent update prepared by the same authors (up to May 2018). Votes according to party interest convey
2 Although reappointment is not allowed, Justice Delgado Barrio was an exception because he did not complete his first term in office for the entire period of nine years, since he served as Chief Justice of the Spanish Supreme Court and President of CGPJ from July 1996 to November 2001.
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Table 16.4. Data on the Spanish Constitutional Court (recurso de inconstitucionalidad). Period Decisions Decisions with dissents Number of observations (individual votes) Number of judges Left Male Career judges Decisions UCD Government Decisions González Government Decisions Aznar Government Decisions Zapatero Government Decisions Rajoy Government Votes Unanimous Votes Nonunanimous Votes for Constitutionality Votes against Constitutionality Vote according party interest
Garoupa et al. 2013
Update by same authors
1980–2006 297 105 3402 46 26 (57%) 43 (93%) 16 (35%) 19 163 84 31 0 2186 (64%) 1216 (36%) 1369 (40%) 2033 (60%) 1752 (52%)
1980–2018 773 271 8675 63 33 (52%) 56 (90%) 25 (40%) 19 163 84 99 408 5601 (65%) 3074 (35%) 4010 (46%) 4665 (54%) 4377 (50%)
Source: Spanish Constitutional Court, authors’ calculations
the extent to which judicial behaviour reflects the choices of the appointing party as revealed in the political chambers. The descriptive statistics confirm a high percentage of unanimous decisions, something which is inconsistent with a mere attitudinal account. We can also see a fairly balanced score between validation and invalidation of statutes (getting closer to 50 per cent with the 2018 update). The percentage of cases in which constitutional judges vote according to party interest also documents that party alignment is important but not overwhelming. The comparison between Garoupa et al. (2013) and the 2018 update shows the significance of the last few years (Rajoy’s period in government, the Catalan crisis, and austerity legislation after the financial crisis). More than 50 per cent of the constitutional decisions for the entire court are from the period 2012–2018. They do not seem to be statistically different from previous periods in characterization (invalidation of statutes, voting according to party interest, unanimous decisions), but the absolute number of decisions is clearly distinct. The original statistical characterization of Garoupa et al. (2013) shows a court dominated by the left. About 57 per cent of the constitutional judges were associated with PSOE, while 43 per cent with UCD (up to 1982) and PP (originally AP up to 1990, PP after 1990). That was explained by the long duration of González’ government (1982–1996). The 2018 update reconfirms such characterization. Since the late 1990s, the
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272 NUNO GAROUPA AND PEDRO C. MAGALHÃES influence of both parties has been balanced (PSOE has ruled seven years while PP has ruled ten years since 2000), both in terms of parliamentary majority and composition of the judicial council. At the same time, appointments to the court have been delayed on several occasions due to lack of agreement between the parties. Therefore, the court has been more balanced in terms of the progressive–conservative axis since the late 1990s. The issue of federalism in the court has inevitably attracted significant attention, not least given its political importance in recent years. As we have seen in the preceding section, due to the somehow incomplete nature of the Spanish Constitution and the polit ical trend to shirk responsibility over contested policies, in particular with reference to the balance between national and regional powers, the court has been pushed to play a controversial and uneasy role (Sala 2013). As a consequence, the role of ideology and party loyalty is tempered by the weighting of crucial federal challenges, thus making the agency or strategic model once again a more appealing set-up (Sala, 2014). Inevitably, judicial behaviour might respond to institutional constraints that could be of particular concern when it comes to the specifics of Autonomous Communities such as the Basque Country and Catalonia (Sala 2011). In fact, empirical evidence (Garoupa et al. 2013) does seem to support the idea that constitutional judges face conflicting and diffused interests when addressing the balance between the two national parties (PSOE and PP) and strong regional parties (for example, Basque Nationalist Party, PNV, in the Basque Country and the former Convergence and Union, CiU, in Catalonia). Other mechanisms (such as the civil law tradition and judicial background) might also reinforce the observed trend to unanimous voting in earlier periods of the court. Quite recently, a new empirical study focused on cases addressing conflicts of power between national and regional governments for the period 1981–2014 (López-Labourda et al. 2018). In this study, 365 decisions on conflicts of competence between central and regional governments for the period 1981–2014 are considered. There are two important periods—the 1980s and after 2003—while the 1990s seem to have low constitutional litigation. The earlier period is dominated by litigation from the Basque country (although Catalonia, Galicia, and other Autonomous Communities also play a significant role), while the later period is led by jurisdictional conflicts with Catalonia. The authors suggest that a complex combination of ideological, legal, and strategic motivations describes judicial behaviour, and show that the court is actually less likely to decide in favour of the central government when either Catalonia or the central government itself initiates the conflict. However, overall, most rulings in conflicts of competence do tend to favour the central government, fully or partially (about 77 per cent overall, above 80 per cent for Catalan cases and 78 per cent for Basque cases). This tends to be particularly the case, at least in some statistical specifications, when the party that happens to control the central government also holds a majority in the court. At the same time, unanimous rulings prevail (81 per cent), with a lower incidence in Catalan cases (about 77 per cent) and a significantly higher number for Basque cases (almost 90 per cent). We can conclude that the empirical evidence rejects both the purely legalistic model (since political determinants play a role in explaining judicial behaviour) and the purely attitudinal model (the ideological preferences of judges are not the only relevant
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The Constitutional Court 273 determinants). It seems the agency or strategic model is more adequate to understand how constitutional judges adjudicate in Spain. However, the empirical evidence also points out multiple (and not always consistent across studies) manifestations of strategic behaviour, ranging from unanimity-seeking to responsiveness to party preferences. One particular point is also worth emphasizing: the data suggest that the determinants of judicial behaviour (as measured by the variables considered by different authors) have not changed dramatically since the early 1980s. Different political cycles, trends in media exposure, additional challenges in Catalonia and in the Basque Country, might shape the general perception about judicial behaviour. It could be that certain salient cases confirm a certain degree of partisanship. Still, the overall data shows remarkable stability in terms of invalidation of statutes, unanimous decisions, even voting according to party interests.
16.5 Conclusion A lot of what the Spanish Constitutional Court does—particularly when deciding on recursos de amparo or cuestiones de constitutionalidad—seems to be broadly detached from any major partisan-political stakes. Many of the court’s rulings, even those resulting from litigation by political actors, have been unanimous, leading judges to appear rather frequently in misalignment with the preferences of the parties that appointed them. There are clear signs that other goals besides advancing ideological preferences or the priorities of appointing authorities—such as preserving collegial relations and legitimacy near the ordinary courts and the public—play a role in judicial decision-making (Garoupa et al. 2013). And yet, the rules regulating the court, its composition, who accesses it, and its powers were designed with their political implications very much in mind. Those rules were the objects of compromises between policy- and power-seeking agents, and have allowed them to extend their influence through time in determining the composition of the court. Political variables also partially explain the courts’ caseload, as well as the behaviour of the judges that compose it. A non-irrelevant part of the variance in judicial decisions is explained by partisan alignments and what they convey, not only in terms of ideological goals but also responsiveness to the partisan priorities and political context. Thus, the court is not an otherworldly and apolitical institution, nor could it be, considering the political implications of what it actually does. Nor is any of this fundamentally new, replicating the patterns found elsewhere in other constitutional jurisdictions. However, what this means for the constitutional and political role of constitutional courts and their legitimacy can vary, depending on the political context. From very early on, the main ‘political’ role of the Spanish Tribunal seems to have been its conversion into the ultimate recourse to address the problems involved in defining and redefining the balance of powers between the central government and the Autonomous Communities, in the absence of broad political understandings and political institutions
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274 NUNO GAROUPA AND PEDRO C. MAGALHÃES able to perform that role. However, in the last few years, new partisan players have emerged at both the national and regional levels. The importance of the vertical identity or centre–periphery cleavage has increased significantly, for both voters and parties, in comparison with the traditional horizontal left–right cleavage. And yet, the court, both in its institutional design and in its composition, remains largely a creature of understandings between the main ‘conservative’ (UCD first, PP later) and ‘progressive’ (PSOE) forces in the party system. Therefore, the emergence of signs of loss of public legitimization is not surprising. By 1994, according to survey data from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, only about 20 per cent of Spaniards rated the court, on a scale of 0 (No trust at all) to 10 (A lot of trust), with any value below 5. By 2015, that percentage had risen to no less than 50 per cent.3 With time, appointment rules will inevitably bring the court more in line with a reconfigured party system. However, an approximation to the current German arrangement, whereby the upper chamber’s contribution to the appointment of half of the court’s judges is done by a proper chamber of territorial representation, remains elusive, while the Spanish Senate remains unreformed (Aja, 2016, p. 16). Hence, the next few years might present new challenges, reconstructing some of the old dynamics. Yet it is very likely that the court will be again and again an important actor in the political dynamics of the country.
16.6 Bibliography Ahumada Ruiz, M. 2017. The Spanish Constitutional Court. In: Comparative Constitutional Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 604–640. Aja, E. 1999. El estado autonómico: federalismo y hechos diferenciales. Madrid: Alianza. Aja, E. 2016. The Foundation and Crisis of the Autonomous State in Spain. Ius Publicum Network Review 2. [Online] Available at http://www.ius-publicum.com/repository/ uploads/15_06_2016_15_24-IUS_PUB_Constitutional-Ref-Spain.pdf. Alegre Martínez, M. Á. 2016. ‘El Recurso Previo de Inconstitucionalidad según la Ley Orgánica 12/2015: Un Regreso Esperado, una Reforma Insuficiente.’ Revista de Derecho Político 1(97): 89–140. Bon, P. 1993. Le functionnement des pouvoirs publics. In: L’Espagne aujourd’hui. Paris: La documentation Française, pp. 47–60. Cabañas García, J. C. 2010. ‘El Recurso de Amparo que Queremos (Reflexiones a Propósito de la Ley Orgánica 6/2007, de 24 de mayo, de Reforma Parcial de la Ley Orgánica del Tribunal Constitucional)’. Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional 88: 39–81. del Castillo Vera, P. 1987. ‘Notas para el Estudio del Comportamiento Judicial: El Caso del Tribunal Constitucional’. Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional 20: 177–94. Epstein, L. 2016. ‘Some thoughts on the study of judicial behavior’. William and Mary Law Review 57: 2017–73. Ferreres Comella, V. 2009. Spain: The Spanish Constitutional Court: Time for reforms. In: Constitutional Courts: A Comparative Study. London: Wildy, Simmonds & Hill. Field, B. N. 2016. Why Minority Governments Work: Multilevel Territorial Politics in Spain. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 3 Data available online at http://www.analisis.cis.es/cisdb.jsp/ (accessed 2 August 2019).
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The Constitutional Court 275 Garoupa, N. 2019. Constitutional Review. In: Oxford Handbook of Public Choice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Vol. 2, pp. 134–55. Garoupa, N., F. Gómez-Pomar, and M. Gili. 2012. ‘Political influence and career judges: An empirical analysis of administrative review by the Spanish Supreme Court’. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 9: 795–826. Garoupa, N., F. Gómez-Pomar, and V. Grembi. 2013. ‘Judging under political pressure: An empirical analysis of constitutional review voting in the Spanish Constitutional Court.’ Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 29: 513–34. González, F. and A. Guerra. 1977. Partido Socialista Obrero Español. Bilbao: Albia. Hanretty, C. 2012. ‘Dissent in Iberia: The ideal points of justices on the Spanish and Portuguese Constitutional Court’. European Journal of Political Research 51: 671–92. Harguindéguy, J. B., E. Rodríguez-López, and A. Sánchez. 2017. ‘Inter-governmental conflicts between Spain and Catalonia’. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 158: 79–115. Herrero de Miñon, M. 1993. Memorias de estío. Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy. López Aguilar, J. F. 2011. ‘La Sentencia Más Larga: Repercusiones de la STC 31/2010, Política y Jurisprudencia’. Teoría y Realidad Constitucional 27: 221–38. López Guerra, L. 1989. The Spanish Constitutional Court and regional autonomies in Spain. In: University of Rome II-Department of Public Law, Yearbook 1989. Volume II. Rome: Editoriale Scientifica. López-Labourda, J., F. Rodrigo, and E. Sanz-Arcega. 2018. ‘Is the Spanish Constitutional Court an instrument of the central government against the autonomous communities?’ Constitutional Political Economy 29: 317–37. López Pietsch, P. 1998. ‘Objectivar el Recurso de Amparo: Las Recomendaciones de la “Comision Benda” y el Debate Español.’ Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional 53: 115–51. Magalhães, P. C. 2003. The Limits to Judicialization: Legislative Politics and Constitutional Review in the Iberian Democracies. Doctoral thesis, Ohio State University. Mayoral Díaz-Asensio, J. A. 2013. ‘La Politización de la Aplicación Judicial del Derecho Europeo: Un Estudio del Tribunal Supremo Español’. Revista de Estudios Políticos 161: 117–41. Ramos Romeu, F. 2006. ‘Law and politics in the application of EC law: Spanish courts and the ECJ, 1986–2000’. Common Market Law Review 43: 395–421. Sala, G. 2011. Courts as Political Institutions with Legal Constraints: Evidence from Spain. Paper presented at the ECPR general conference 2011. [Online] Available at https://ecpr.eu/ Filestore/PaperProposal/a7be6ca9-da31-4cc5-806e-f52845668ee4.pdf. Sala, G. 2013. ‘Federalism without adjectives in Spain’. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 44: 109–134. Sala, G. 2014. ‘Can courts make federalism work? A game theory approach to court-induced compliance and defection in federal systems’. Economies 2: 193–217. Sánchez Agesta, L. 1967. La Función Constitucional del Juez. Las Interpretaciones del Modelo Americano y su Posible Vigencia en España. Madrid: Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislación. Solé Tura, J. 1978. Los Comunistas y la Constitución. Madrid: Forma. Stone, A. 1992. The Birth of Judicial Politics in France: The Constitutional Council in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sweet, A. S. 2000. Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Villalón, P. C. 1994. ‘Sobre el amparo’. Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional 41: 9–23.
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chapter 17
The Spa n ish A r m ED FORCE S Rafael Martínez
17.1 Introduction During the nineteenth century, the military (especially the Ayacuchos)1 supported the liberal, pro-democracy revolution in Spain. In the absence of a bourgeoisie to lead the revolution, it was left to the armed forces (hereinafter AFs) to steer it. However, given the legacy of defeat in the colonial wars (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines), and the 1898 crisis (military humiliation and widespread discrediting of the corrupt political system), the AFs abandoned their liberal position and moved towards conservatism in the early twentieth century (Payne 1968, 1977; Serrano 1976, 1984; Ballbé 1983). This faltering historical legacy faded as a large part of the AFs abandoned liberal democratic principles and staged a military uprising that spiralled into a fratricidal civil war (1936–1939). In fact, in contemporary Spain, civil–military relations (CMRs) began after the civil war, and the alternating progressive and conservative past of the AF has almost disappeared from the social memory. Although a good part of the AFs remained loyal to the Republican government (1931–1936), they are socially perceived as having been combatants against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic. After three years of confrontation in the battlefield, the victory of the insurgent troops turned the then Republic into a dictatorship led by Franco. The Francoist dictatorship was not a standard military dictatorship; it was the product of an army member who articulated a triangle of power in order to protect himself and ensure social control from a range of perspectives: the army, the Catholic Church, and the only political party, the fascist Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (known by its Spanish acronym of FET-JONS). 1 Thus named because they had returned from the Battle of Ayacucho. The defeat of the royalist troops in this battle meant that on 9 December 1824, they capitulated and recognized Peru’s independence. The end of this battle is usually interpreted as the turning point for the independence movements in Latin American countries.
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 277 During the nearly forty years of totalitarian/authoritarian rule, there were millions of Spanish men who spent a period of their lives as conscripted soldiers, subjected to the orders of mostly fascist army members and under the domination of an oppressive political power. Franco died in a hospital bed in November 1975, and it was not until the summer of 1976 that King Juan Carlos I appointed Adolfo Suárez as prime minister. Only then could the transition to democracy begin, but not without severe difficulties, since the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the landed and financial oligarchy, and the military, were all largely opposed to breaking away from Francoism. The successful democratic transition dispelled many stigmas of the past and resulted in the longest period of peaceful coexistence for centuries. In the strictly military field, the reforms undertaken by the first deputy prime minister of Adolfo Suárez’s government (General Gutiérrez Mellado) during the transition to democracy were particularly remarkable. These were continued and strengthened by the first socialist government’s defence minister, Narcís Serra (1982–1991). Their purpose was (1) to modernize the armed forces; (2) to separate them from political power, by transforming them into a military administration at the service of the executive branch of the government; and (3) to reduce their numbers to figures consistent with the needs and threats of a democratic state surrounded by countries that might become future partners within the European Community. In 1986, once Spanish democracy had become consolidated and Spain had been accepted as a full member of the European Economic Community, Spain still faced important challenges. One of them was to build fruitful and fluid CMRs. This was no small task, as the Spanish military was not socially well regarded and carried a negative political charge. In 1986, 47 per cent of young Spaniards considered them professionally incompetent, whereas 37 per cent believed that they were competent.2 Data from the European Value Systems Study Group shows that the Spanish armed forces were viewed as one of the least trustworthy state institutions in the 1980s and 1990s (Villalaín Benito 1992, 284). They were seen as being incapable of defending the country, since 39 per cent of Spaniards and 57 per cent of young people perceived them as being poorly prepared to defend Spain in the event of an attack from another country; in contrast, 35 per cent of the population in Spain (29 per cent of young people) believed that the army was suitably prepared for defence against a potential attack.3 In addition, the significant presence of US bases and troops on Spanish soil, and the belief that it was a violation of sovereignty, did not help to reverse this trend. In 1989, the Spanish population held compulsory military service in low regard, and it was considered an unpleasant experience by 42 per cent of conscripts.4 In 1990 political parties were the only institutions that were held in lower esteem than the armed forces.5 This was not a pacifist society, but rather it was a society that was more viscerally opposed to the military than rationally
2 Survey no. 1518, of March 1986, conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS). This is Spain’s most important public-opinion research institution, which comes under the Ministry of the Presidency. 3 CIS Surveys nos. 1518 (1986), 1636 (1986) and 1762 (1988). 4 CIS Survey no. 1784 (1989). 5 CIS Survey no. 1870 (1990).
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278 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ (Martínez and Díaz 2005). Changing this perception would require much patient work (Martínez and Díaz 2007). Given the pronounced estrangement between the AFs and society, successive governments postulated the need to develop a defence-friendly political culture (Martínez 2007a). However, since the 1990s, public perceptions of the military have steadily improved. The situation had changed to such an extent that in a 2015 survey, the Civil Guard, the National Police, and the armed forces were ranked higher than the national and regional governments and parliaments, the Constitutional Court, the ombudsman, the monarchy, the media, political parties, unions, the General Council of the Judiciary, and the Catholic Church.6 What happened? What accounts for this extraordinary change over less than thirty years? As argued in Martínez and Durán (2017, 2), there were various factors involved in this change: legal and institutional reforms, the historical distance from the 1981 coup d’état, the severe decrease of the US military presence, the abolition of conscription, the decline of military inbreeding, the absence of corruption scandals in the military administration, even the mere passage of time. All these aspects were undoubtedly influential, but it was the international missions carried out by the AFs in the twenty-first century that resulted in the most positive social impact. For a very long time, the notion of civil–military relations referred exclusively to civilian control (Huntington 1957), which Agüero (1995) called civil supremacy. But a new type of analysis has clearly shown that CMRs involve something much more profound than mere control (Stepan 1988; Serra 2008; Bruneau and Matei 2013; Croissant et al. 2013). I believe that the holistic view proposed by Pion-Berlin and myself (2017) is a suitable approach to use. We have proposed that civil–military relations are a permanent interaction between the military, society, and the state (political institutions). This interaction integrates six dimensions: the reduction of military power, the establishment of defence institutions, the legal framework, mutual knowledge, convergence, and effectiveness. An analysis of these six dimensions will provide a good understanding of the armed forces and how civil–military relations operate in Spain. The most thorough analysis available of the first three dimensions was conducted by Serra (2002, 2008). What has never been addressed until now is how society perceives the different analytical dimensions. This is precisely the focus adopted in this chapter to analyse the social perception about the prestige of the military profession, an occupational assessment, the missions entrusted to the armed forces, the future of the armed forces, and the cognitive dissonance found among the Spanish military. The survey data used was collected from several research projects (Martínez 2007b, Martínez and Díaz 2005, 2007, Martínez et al. 2013, Durán et al. 2016), which included interviews with: (i) all the students who were being trained in the thirty-two officer and non-commissioned officer academies of the three military branches (more than 2,500 in total), (ii) a significant sample of future civilian and military elites, first and fifth-year law, economics, and politics ‘students’ from four Spanish universities (University of 6 CIS Survey no. 3080 (2015).
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 279 Barcelona, University of Granada, Rey Juan Carlos University, and University of Burgos), and first and final year ‘cadets’ at military academies (Army, Navy, and Air Forces); (iii) economic, political, military, and media elites; and (iv) more than 200 soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers with experience in international missions. Data from more than twenty surveys on defence and/or armed forces issues (whether monographs or not) conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) between 1975 and 2015 were used.7
17.2 Being in the Military Profession The CIS included members of the AFs in an occupational prestige ranking for the first time in 1989. Respondents were presented with seven occupations and requested that they be ordered from first to last. Military officers were relegated to the last position.8 They have remained in the same position in later surveys, although the perception has become increasingly and steadily more favourable over the last twenty years (Figure 17.1). In 1999, practically half of Spaniards discouraged their child from becoming a professional soldier because this was in direct opposition to their convictions (as an example of the budding antimilitarism referred to earlier), and 20 per cent claimed that it was a very tough profession with many risks.9 More than 80 per cent of young people aged between 16 and 24 stated that it was fairly unlikely or not at all likely that they might choose to be professional soldiers. In contrast, four-fifths of the population held that, given the rejection of military service by young people, the only solution was that the military should become a completely professional force.10 The abolition of conscription in 2000 involved the subsequent comprehensive professionalization of the armed forces and a change in the reasons why a parent might discourage their child from becoming a professional soldier. In 2007 only a third of the respondents referred to their convictions or the displeasure generated by the army, whereas 44 per cent spoke instead of the harshness of the profession and the risks it entailed.11 This could account for the fact that 7 The specific research projects used were: ‘Los futuros mandos del Ejército español’, 98/14 of Instituto Universitario ‘General Guiterrez Mellado’ and ‘Cultural Gap Between the Military and Their Parent Society’, European Research Group on Armed Forces and Society (ERGOMAS) 2004. From the latter, data from Spain and Europe (Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey) was employed. Other sources were the ERGOMAS Asymmetric Warfare (2010) and Officer and Commander in Asymmetric Warfare Operations (2013), as well as CIS Surveys numbers: 1080 (1975); 1095 (1976); 1518, 1559 (1986); 1636, 1722 (1987); 1725, 1762 (1988); 1784 (1989); 2085 (1994); 2234, 2270 (1997); 2312, 2277 (1998); 2317 (1999); 2379, 2417(2000); 2447 (2002); 2540 (2003); 2571 (2004); 2592, 2620 (2005); 2657, 2663 (2006); 2680 (2007); 2825 (2009); 2853 (2010); 2912 (2011); 2998 (2013); 3110 (2015). 8 Survey No. 1784. The ranking was: 1st: Doctor, 2nd: Full Professor, 3rd: Judge, 4th: Engineer, 5th: Architect, 6th: Lawyer and 7th Military Officer. 9 CIS Study no. 2317. 10 CIS studies no. 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447 and 2680 carried out between 1997 and 2007. 11 CIS Study no. 2680.
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280 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ 9.5 9 8.5 8 7.5 7 6.5 6 5.5 5
1997 1998 1999 2000 2002 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
Lawyer
Teacher
Military Officer
Salesperson
Businessman
Soldier
Doctor
Police
Journalist
Firefighter
Figure 17.1 Occupational prestige ranking. Source: Developed by the author based on a series of CIS surveys on the AFs (Surveys Numbers: 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110
two-thirds of Spaniards believed that the main reason for choosing the military as a profession was that it was a personal vocation. However, the main reason for choosing this profession were eminently occupational for the Spanish population: to secure a decent, regular salary and to obtain training that would enhance future employability in civilian life.12 The data obtained from the future European civil and military elites in 2004 revealed a more nuanced picture of occupational prestige (Table 17.1). On the one hand, the military profession was, in general, more prestigious for Europeans than for Spaniards. This was especially significant among future military elites (it ranked fourth among European cadets and twelfth among Spanish cadets). In fact, in the overall count by country, only the Swiss held the military profession in lower regard; but in this case, it was the very poor assessment by university students that was largely accountable for the disrepute into which this occupation had fallen. However, in Spain (as was the case in Slovenia, but to a lesser degree), the views on the military profession held by civilians and members of the AFs accounted for its disrepute to the same extent. This endemic and generic discredit did not preclude some sectors of the population from having a positive view of the military. This was the case of non-traditional recruits (women and foreigners), who are today fully integrated into the AFs. Since 2002 regulations have allowed the entry of foreigners into the AFs, provided that they are originally 12 CIS studies no. 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, and 2447 carried out between 1997 and 2002.
Table 17.1. Occupational Prestige Ranking, According to Future Civil and Military Elites.
Cadets
Students
Spain
Europe
Occupations
Occupations
Spain
Europe
Medical doctor Engineer Diplomat Company manager University professor Lawyer Entrepreneur Civil airline pilot Chemist Journalist Police inspector Military officer Artist Secondary school teacher Civil servant Priest, member of clergy
3.95 5.17 5.43 5.96 6.36 6.60 6.90 7.33 8.54 9.48 10.18 10.58 10.86 11.51 12.06 12.68
3.85 5.17 5.27 5.73 6.21 7.16 7.79 8.03 8.61 9.01 9.68 10.11 10.29 10.39 11.34 11.72
Medical doctor Diplomat University professor Military officer Lawyer Company manager Civil airline pilot Engineer Police inspector Entrepreneur chemist Priest, member of clergy Secondary school teacher Journalist Civil servant Artist
Medical doctor Diplomat Engineer Company manager Lawyer University professor Entrepreneur Civil airline pilot Journalist Chemist Police inspector Military officer Artist Civil servant Secondary school teacher Priest, member of clergy
3.05 5.00 5.30 5.68 5.78 6.23 6.59 8.20 8.25 8.49 9.87 10.78 10.81 10.95 11.01 13.28
3.45 4.78 4.82 5.45 6.61 7.78 7.83 8.29 8.42 9.02 9.18 9.58 9.91 10.12 10.76 11.02
Source: Developed by the author based on data from the Cultural Gap Project conducted by ERGOMAS (2004).
Occupations Medical doctor Diplomat University professor Lawyer Company manager Entrepreneur Engineer Civil airline pilot Military officer Journalist chemist Police inspector Priest, member of clergy Secondary school teacher Artist Civil servant
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Occupations
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282 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ from ‘countries that are historically, culturally and linguistically linked to Spain’.13 Between 2009 and 2015, 69 per cent of Spaniards said they were in favour of foreigners who were legally resident in Spain joining the AFs.14 From February 1988 onwards, women were allowed to enter certain AFs branches and ranks. In 1992 this was extended to all branches and ranks, with the exception of the main operational combat units. In 1999, women were fully integrated into all military areas and roles on an equal footing with men. On 1 January 2018, women represented 12.7 per cent of troops (16.6 per cent of the rank and file). In 1987, social perceptions about women’s entry into the military were discouraging. The majority of Spanish citizens were opposed to women joining the AFs (43.5 per cent were opposed, whereas 39 per cent were in favour), and only 28.6 per cent of the population believed that women should be present in combat units. In fact, 47.1 per cent believed that female-only units should be created, and 64.9 per cent believed that their presence would cause problems in barracks and units. The general view was that women are more responsible and less selfish than men; but also less courageous, and with poorer command abilities. Some 70 per cent estimated that men would refuse to accept women with higher ranks than them.15 One year after the limited entry of women in the AFs, 55 per cent of Spanish citizens were already in favour of their presence.16 In 2002, 80 per cent of Spanish citizens not only advocated their presence, but also their integration into combat units; among the future Spanish civil elites, this position was held by a total of 87 per cent, whereas only 54.8 per cent of the future European civilian elites supported their integration into combat units.17 Data also showed that the military and their parent society gradually moved closer together in values over the years. Huntington (1957) reported that civilians and military were culturally different, which was positive. Additionally, Janowitz (1960) advocated that military personnel should be representative of a broad range of social backgrounds, to ensure peaceful and integrated coexistence between civilians and military. The data (Table 17.2) show convergence and divergence simultaneously; that is, both future military elites and future civil elites sought similar values for their children, and at the same time, both wanted similar values for the military, but different from those that they wished for their offspring.
13 Preamble to Royal Decree 1244/2002, of 29 November, which approved the Regulation on the access of foreigners to the status of professional army and naval personnel. Eligible recruits are required to be nationals of any of the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela. 14 CIS Surveys numbers: 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110. 15 CIS Survey no. 1722. 16 CIS Survey no. 1784. 17 CIS Survey no 2447, and Cultural Gap Project Database (2004). The main reasons why the future European elites rejected the integration of women into the AFs were: that women are not as fully deployable as men because of pregnancy (32 per cent), that they could be taken prisoner and abused (30 per cent), that the deaths of female soldiers would demoralize male soldiers and the public (30 per cent), and that men will not fight as effectively if there were women present in combat units (29.6 per cent).
Table 17.2. Top Ten Qualities Future Civil and Military Elites Want for Their Children and for the Military. Students’ Opinions
Cadets’ Opinions
Students’ Opinions
Qualities to be promoted in education
Cadets’ Opinions
Qualities for the Military
Europe
Spain
Europe
Spain
Europe
Spain
Europe
Responsibility Tolerance Honesty Open-mindedness Spirit of equality Comradeship Generosity Initiative Team spirit Creativity
Responsibility Honesty Open-mindedness Tolerance Initiative Creativity Self-control Spirit of equality Determination Loyalty
Responsibility Honesty Comradeship Tolerance Honour Loyalty Open-mindedness Spirit of equality Team spirit Creativity
Responsibility Honesty Self-control Open-mindedness Honour Initiative Determination Creativity Loyalty Comradeship
Discipline Loyalty Responsibility Orderliness Obedience Patriotism Honour Team spirit Comradeship Self-control
Discipline Responsibility Team spirit Obedience Loyalty Self-control Orderliness Honour Comradeship Determination
Discipline Patriotism Honour Comradeship Loyalty Responsibility Obedience Team spirit Self-control Orderliness
Responsibility Discipline Team spirit Comradeship Loyalty Honesty Honour Determination Self-control Orderliness
Source: Developed by the author from data from Cultural Gap Project from ERGOMAS (2004). The nineteen values proposed were: Comradeship, Creativity, Determination, Discipline, Generosity, Honesty, Honour, Initiative, Loyalty, Obedience, Open-mindedness, Orderliness, Patriotism, Responsibility, Self-control, Spirit of equality, Team spirit, Tolerance, and Traditionalism.
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Spain
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284 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ Responsibility, honesty, open-mindedness, and creativity are qualities that both European and Spanish future civilian and military elites stated that they wanted for their children (Table 17.2). In addition, Spanish civilians and military agreed with the European students in expecting tolerance and a spirit of equality from their children, whereas the European cadets desired team spirit and comradeship. Future Spanish civil elites shared with the European civilians and military a desire that their offspring show initiative. When it comes to determining what qualities a member of the military should have, discipline, loyalty, responsibility, orderliness, team spirit, honour, and comradeship were identified by both Spanish and European civilians and military (Table 17.2). Looking at data from the whole of the Spanish population, technical preparation, obedience, honesty, determination, discipline, and responsibility were the main values that they wanted from their AFs.18 In short, Spanish military personnel wanted their children to have the same qualities as civilians did for theirs, and civilians wanted the members of the military to have the same values that they wanted for themselves; in other words, their views are similar to those in the rest of Europe.
17.3 Occupational Assessment In a changing international context, it seems that hard security (the most physical aspect, associated with weapons and the military) is declining, to the detriment of the AFs; but at the same time, the challenges of soft security (drugs, migrations, terrorism, etc.) have increased in number and complexity, to the point that they can undermine the sovereignty of states. This new scenario, where immediate direct threats to the national territory no longer exist, and there is a lack of stability in the business markets, is likely to require the boundaries between security actors to be blurred, and increasing intervention from the police, the intelligence services, and the AFs (Boëne et al. 2000). In this state of affairs, a smaller, more flexible military administration will be needed, as the military are likely to be used in a wide range of missions other than war (i.e. humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping missions, and emergency relief). At the time of Franco’s death, the Spanish army was oversized, poorly paid, and largely focused on the internal control of the population; its equipment was obsolete, its technical training very poor, it had an insufficient budget, and it lacked an investment plan. Logically, the modernizing reforms undertaken from the start of the transition to democracy have sought to reverse this situation. Thereby, whereas in 1984 the Spanish military consisted of 373,000 personnel; in 1991, it had a workforce of 180,000; in 1999, of between 150,000 and 170,000; and in 2014, it had a total of 120,000 personnel. The latest reduction also transformed the structure of the Joint Forces—joint capabilities from the three armed services—including 67,000 personnel (15,000 rapid response, 12,000
18 CIS Surveys numbers: 1784, 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110.
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 285 operational support, permanently assigned to units; 40,000 training for relief missions)19 and the 53,000 posted at headquarters and in combat service support units. The latter could still be adjusted further. In the decade prior to Franco’s death, Spain’s management of the defence budget (2 per cent of its GDP) was highly inefficient. From the death of Franco (1975) to the entry of Spain into NATO (1982), and later into the EU (1986), this increased to 3 per cent. Since then, it has gradually dropped, to the extent that in 2016 it was 1.1 per cent.20 This was a relatively low level of expenditure when compared to Spain’s partners. Turning now to the changing social perceptions of the professional training of the military personnel, their technical capabilities, and their volume of troops, there has been a substantial improvement in Spain since the end of the twentieth century (Figure 17.2). Professional military training is the area has improved most significantly, according to public opinion surveys. In 1986, 47 per cent of Spaniards believed that the AFs were unskilled, whereas 37 per cent saw them as being skilled, and only 4 per cent that they were highly skilled. In contrast, in 2015, 18 per cent of the respondents referred to military personnel as being professionally unskilled, and 15 per cent believed that they were highly qualified professionally. Until the army became completely professional, it can be observed how the perception of increasing preparedness levels of the military was accompanied by the idea that their preparedness was significantly better than five years before. These curves separated in 2002 and, while the assessment of military capabilities has continued to grow, the same kind of qualitative leaps are no longer seen. Being in the military is not considered to be a socially prestigious profession, but today members of the AFs are clearly seen as good professionals. Regarding the technical means available to the AFs, the main change is that in 2015 more Spaniards believed them to be sufficient to the task than insufficient (approximately one third of the population). What is noteworthy is that the percentage of the population that perceived their technical abilities to be appropriate was nearly equivalent (in terms of trend) to the percentage of the population who thought that the number of troops was sufficient and to the percentage of the population who believed that military expenditure levels were suitable. For these three variables, a steady third of the population had no opinion, and a sixth thought that they were insufficient; but interestingly, the percentage of the population who considered that the volume of troops and the amount spent was excessive had decreased. This means that the majority thought that both these areas were appropriately covered. What is obvious, particularly in times of economic crisis, is the growing percentage of Spaniards who disagreed with the idea of increasing the defence budget. A survey conducted in 1994 asked the Spanish public about eleven expenditure areas. Three of them were assessed as having a ‘fair’ level of funding 19 The 15,000 rapid response personnel are distributed as follows: 5,000 for operations led by Spain (whether at home or abroad) and 10,000 to be deployed overseas on combined operations. The 12,000 operational support personnel are permanently posted to Joint Special Operations Command, Maritime Surveillance and Security, Air Defence operations, military cyber-defence, military intelligence, and the Spanish Military Emergency Management Unit. 20 SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 1949–2017.
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286 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30
2015
2013
2011
2009
2007
2005
2002
2000
1999
1998
1997
1989
1988
1987
20
1986
25
Professional training
Adequate Volume of troops
More prepared than 5/6 years ago
Adequate annual budget
Sufficient technical means
Disagreement with increasing the level of expenditure
Figure 17.2 Technical assessment of the Spanish armed forces. Source: Developed by the author based on a series of CIS surveys on the AFs (Surveys Numbers: 1518, 1636, 1762, 1784, 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110
(public works, public order, transport and telecommunications); seven areas were assessed as being underfunded (education, unemployment, health, housing, justice, pensions, and culture) and only the area of defence was assessed as being overfunded.21
17.4 When and How They Act The traditional function of the AFs is the defence of territorial integrity in the event of an attack from an external enemy. However, ever since the Francoist rule, Spain has been strongly dependent for defence purposes, first on the US and later on NATO. It is worth remembering that the agreements entered into between the US government and the Francoist government in 1953 enabled US troops to be stationed on the air bases of Morón, Zaragoza, and Torrejón de Ardoz, as well as on the Rota naval base, over the ensuing decade. In 1975 and 1976, when Spaniards were asked what they believed the position of the United States would be if Spain was attacked, an average of 47.8 per cent 21 CIS Survey no. 2085.
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 287 believed that the United States would militarily defend Spain; whereas 26.3 per cent of the population thought that the US would leave Spain to their own devices.22 Therefore, 20 per cent of the respondents wanted the joint-use bases to remain active, and 30 per cent wanted them to remain so only if this guaranteed the military defence of Spain by the US. But 31.9 per cent believed that these bases only benefited the US and even then, 36 per cent wanted the US military troops to leave the bases. In one decade this percentage almost doubled, as it reached 57 per cent. When the Agreement of Defence Cooperation between the US and Spain was signed on 1 December 1988, which involved the termination of the cooperation under the 1953 agreement, the percentage of the population who rejected the presence of US troops had reached 61 per cent.23 At the time of Franco’s death in 1975, 57 per cent of Spaniards were in favour of entering NATO, while 24 per cent preferred to remain outside the alliance.24 After a decade, despite the Cold War, only 32 per cent of young people believed that there was great danger that a war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO could break out.25 Spain joined the NATO Alliance on 30 May 1982, under the government of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo. The Socialist party’s victory in the election in October of that same year, brought the talks on Spain’s military integration into NATO to a halt. Two years later, Felipe González presented the Spanish parliament with a Decalogue on Peace and Security stating that Spain’s participation in the Alliance would not entail its incorporation into the integrated military structure; and that the prohibition to install, store, or introduce nuclear weapons in Spanish territory would remain. On 12 March 1986, a referendum on Spain’s accession to NATO was held and the proposals contained in the Decalogue won with 52.54 per cent of the votes. In November 1986 despite the outcome of the referendum, 35 per cent of Spaniards believed that the government would not succeed in keeping Spain out of NATO’s military structure and only 22 per cent thought it would be capable of doing so. In barely half a year, 39 per cent of the population believed that it would succeed and 32 per cent believed that it would not.26 The signing of several technical agreements gave rise to a procedure whereby the participation of Spanish troops in NATO’s actions would be negotiated on a case-by-case basis and Spanish officers would maintain command but ceded operational control of the units to the allied commanders. In 1988, when this procedure had just been articulated, NATO membership was seen as being positive by 35 per cent of Spaniards, and as negative by 23 per cent of the population.27 It was believed that belonging to the Alliance reinforced Spain’s defence capabilities (51 per cent) and strengthened its international role (49 per cent). It was also perceived to be beneficial in terms of Spain’s relations with EEC countries (52 per cent), the acquisition of advanced technology (52 per cent), the promotion of science and technology (50 per cent), and the modernization of Spanish AFs (57 per cent).28 On 14 November 1996, the Spanish parliament authorized the government to negotiate the entry of Spain 22 CIS Surveys numbers 1080 and 1095. 23 CIS Surveys numbers 1080, 1095, 1559, 1636 and 1725. 24 CIS Survey number 1080. 25 CIS Survey number 1518. 26 CIS studies 1559 and 636. 27 CIS Study no. 1725. 28 CIS Study no. 1762.
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288 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ into NATO’s Command Structure (with 91.5 per cent of votes in favour). This was completed on 1 January 1999. Between 2005 and 2015, the CIS Surveys show how, considering how international affairs have fared, 47.25 per cent of citizens believed that NATO membership had been positive for Spain’s interest, whereas 15.69 per cent of the population thought it had been negative.29 As indicated earlier, the essential role of the military is defence against an attack from another country. Spain showed a severe downward trend of citizens willing to become ‘a nation in arms’ (Figure 17.3). Today less than 40 per cent would be willing to do so. This could be attributed to the existence of the AFs’ professionals whose job it is to do precisely that, defending the country and its population. This would seem to be the case, since the trend of the curve that represents how well the AFs are prepared to defend the country is exactly the opposite of this—and growing. However, 30 per cent of Spaniards consistently did not want armies to intervene, not even in the situations for which they were created (Figure 17.3). The data were conclusive: a third of the population did not want military defence against a foreign attack (probably failing to consider the defencelessness that this could involve). Moreover, three-fifths of Spaniards believed that the 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35
2015
2013
2011
2009
2007
2005
2002
2000
1999
1998
1997
1988
1987
1986
30
If Spain is militarily attacked, would you voluntarily participate in its defence? Can an invasion of Spain justify the government in ordering military action? The AFs are prepared to defend Spain from an attack from another country
Figure 17.3 What to do if Spain is attacked/invaded? Source: Developed by the author based on a series of CIS surveys (numbers 1518, 1636, 1762, 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110
29 CIS Surveys numbers 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998 and 3110.
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 289 AFs were no longer necessary for the maintenance of peace, security, and defence, and that the AFs should only be used to intervene in catastrophes and to provide humanitarian aid (37 per cent), a position advocated by a fifth of the population.30 One in ten also believed that the military should be abolished. In contrast, society as a whole highly valued the AFs being involved in new missions, mainly international operations and collaboration in catastrophes and disasters. In fact, the Military Emergency Unit (UME) has been part of Spain’s military structure since 2005, with 3,500 personnel that basically complement the emergency services of the respective autonomous regions.31 Regarding international operations, 89 per cent of the population agreed with Spain’s participation in international peace missions, and most believed that missions abroad contributed to increasing the importance of Spain in international politics, increasing security in Spain, enhancing international trust in Spain, and preventing international terrorism.32
17.5 Cognitive Dissonance Ever since the transition to democracy in Spain, public opinion has held the military in increasingly higher regard.33 The idea that the AFs are an institution with political power is no longer an issue, nor are the former beliefs that they have the ability to influence governmental decisions, that they are a hindrance to democracy (together with the Catholic Church, they are the political actors that are believed to have been the least in favour of the transition to democracy), or that they are capable of staging a coup d’état, as even in 1989 only 14 per cent of Spaniards considered this to be a possibility.34 As a result of what is considered successful action on the international stage, the AFs are perceived to bring international prestige to Spain. In contrast, the AFs do not believe that they 30 Data from CIS Survey number 3110. 31 Royal Decree 1097/2011, of 22 July, approved the Protocol of Intervention of the Military Emergencies Unit (MEU) and established that the MEU may intervene in a number of serious emergencies, namely a) those involving natural disasters, including floods, earthquakes, landslides, large snowfalls, and other major adverse weather events; b) forest fires; c) those arising from technological hazards, including chemical, nuclear, radiological, and biological hazards; d) those resulting from terrorist attacks or unlawful violent acts, including threats to critical infrastructures, dangerous installations or the use of nuclear, biological, radiological, or chemical agents; e) environmental pollution; and f) any other to be decided by the president. 32 Data extracted from CIS Survey number 3110. 33 In 1989, 46 per cent of Spanish citizens thought that the military were well integrated socially, while 36 per cent that thought they were a closed group (CIS Survey number 1784). The reasons provided by the latter were that the military had different values from the rest of society, and that they had privileges and comfort levels (houses, shops, recreational centres, schools, etc.) that were different from the rest of society, from which they lived apart. Today, the values held by the military are in line with the rest of society, and all socio-economic privileges have disappeared. 34 See CIS Surveys numbers 1784, 2201, 2270, 2312, 2417, 2540, 2571, 2620, 2657, 2663 and 2853. Regarding the current democratic profile of the Spanish military, I refer to Martínez (2007b: 171–218).
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290 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ
Table 17.3. What is the Public Image of the Armed Forces in Society (in percentages)? Very good Rather good Not very good Not good at all No opinion
European
Spanish
Cadets
Students
Cadets
8.3 42.8 41.4 5.9 1.7
6.8 37.2 43.2 7.6 5.1
0.0 20.9 54.9 16.5 7.7
Students 2.8 32.2 41.8 10.2 13.0
Source: Developed by the author based on data from Cultural Gap Project (ERGOMAS) (2004).
have the trust or the respect of their fellow citizens. Therefore, it was found that there was an element of cognitive dissonance among the military. This cognitive dissonance can be seen in the data contained in Table 17.3. The percentages regarding their beliefs about a positive and negative public image of the military were found to be very similar among the future European civil and military elites. There was a distance of 7.1 points between the two groups regarding a positive public image, and a distance of 3.5 concerning a negative public image. The cadets stated that the military had a more positive and less negative public image than university students. However, compared to the European students, the Spanish university students believed that the AFs had a slightly less positive image. But what truly stands out was the enormous distance between the assessment of the cadets and that of Spanish students. Regarding their positive assessment, there was a difference of 14.1 per cent between both groups, and regarding their negative view, the difference was 19.4 per cent. In both cases, the future civil elites perceived the military as having the best public image. Since 2009, more than three-fifths of Spanish society as a whole have had a good or a very good opinion of the AFs.35 Ultimately, the military believe that society holds them in much worse regard than it actually does. However, this belief cannot only be exclusively attributed to their judgement, as certain social factors may have led to them to think that they have a negative public image. It has already been shown that the military profession is not considered to be a prestigious one. In addition, scarcely 5 per cent of the population showed some intention of becoming a reservist; a third would actively discourage their children from doing so; practically half do not feel any emotion when witnessing a military ceremony; a third feel no emotion when they listen to the national anthem or see the Spanish flag; and a fifth are not proud of being Spanish.36 The military, therefore, have some good reasons for thinking that society may hold them in poor esteem. 35 In 1997, 44.6 per cent of Spaniards had a good opinion of the military, whereas 46.6 per cent had a poor opinion of them. However, this tendency started to change, and in 2015 60.9 per cent had a good opinion of the AFs, while 31.6 per cent had a poor opinion of them. CIS Surveys numbers 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998 and 3110. 36 CIS Surveys numbers 2825, 2912, 2998 and 3110.
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 291 70 65 60 55 50 45
2015
2013
2011
2009
2007
2005
2002
2000
1999
1998
35
1997
40
The AFs contribute to a country’s international prestige The Spanish AFs have contributed to Spain’s international prestige After the participation of Spanish soldiers in internal missions, my view of the AFs has improved
Figure 17.4 Impact of the AFs on international prestige. Source: Developed by the author based on a series of CIS surveys (numbers 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110
According to Martínez and Duran: ‘The armed forces have become a common foreign policy that governments employ to conduct operations and defend interests overseas, which have even turned into the most important type of operations for the armed forces’ (2017, 8). They even contribute to the international prestige of a country. Figure 17.4 shows how the curve that indicates the contribution of the AFs of any country to its prestige, and the curve that indicates the contribution of the Spanish AFs to Spanish prestige have an identical trend. The only difference between them is that the Spanish scores are slightly lower than the generic ones. The participation of the Spanish AFs in international missions has been one of the main factors responsible for the improvement in public opinion.
17.6 Future Prospects Spanish citizens do not feel that their national security is under threat. In 1989, when they were asked about the likelihood of a war in which Spain might be involved, only three out of ten saw it as a real possibility. Moreover, out of the six objectives for the future that they were consulted on, defence was last, with a meagre 3 per cent support.37 37 CIS Surveys numbers 1784 and 1518, respectively.
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292 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ The following question was asked repeatedly from 1986 to 2015: Do you believe that there is a country that represents a military threat to Spain at present? All the surveys showed that only a third of the population answered ‘yes’. The countries that permanently posed a threat, according to this third, were Morocco and the Arab/Islamic countries. The US and Iraq have also been mentioned on many occasions. But within that third of the population, none of the countries mentioned exceeded 40 per cent.38 The latest CIS surveys asked respondents about the risks and threats included in the National Security Strategies (from 2011, 2013 and 2017, respectively). Only two of those threats reached the status of being serious (scoring above 7 out of 10): terrorism, and economic and financial instability (See Figure 17.5). This perception of a lack of threats is one of the reasons why only 53.1 per cent believe that, in the future, armies will continue to be necessary for defence.39 Even though 78.3 per cent consider that the Islamic State is a real threat to Spain, only 53.9 per cent agree that Spain should militarily intervene outside its borders in actions against these terrorist forces.40
Threats against critical infrastructure Vulnerability at sea Natural emergencies and disasters Espionage Illegal migration flows Proliferation of NBC weapons Threats to the energy supply Threats to… Economic and financial Economic and… Organized Crime Ciber-attacks Terrorism Armed conflicts 0
1
2
3
4
5 2015
6
7
8
9
10
2013
Figure 17.5 Importance of risks and threats for Spanish citizens. (0 = not important for our safety and 10 = very important for our safety) Source: Developed by the author based on a series of CIS surveys numbers 2998 and 3110
38 Data taken from CIS Surveys numbers: 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998 and 3110. At the end of the 1980s, a question was asked as to which country represented a bigger threat: the US or the USSR? The US was always slightly ahead; but the majority response was ‘both equally’ (CIS Surveys numbers 1518, 1559, and 1636). 39 Average obtained from the answers to CIS Surveys numbers 2234, 2277, 2317, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3110. 40 CIS Survey number 3110.
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 293 The potential members of future European civil and military elites were of the opinion that the AFs will not be dissolved, as they exist to defend the country and its interests. The role of the military involves guaranteeing peaceful and free trade in the international arena. This does not make them either a necessary evil or the most important part of public life. Their main role is, if necessary, to wage war; but, the military must be increasingly better prepared to face a wide range of missions. In this regard, peacekeeping and other non-combat activities should be central to the military role (See Table 17.4). Something is changing in the ideas about what the AFs should be and do. While Spanish data are in line with European trends, there are some nuances worth discussing (Table 17.4). A total of 90.75 per cent of Europeans thought that the military existed for the defence of the country, and there were less than 7 points’ difference
Table 17.4. The Future of the Military’s Role.
Spanish Cadets
Europeans Students
Cadets
Students
Agree Disagree Agree Disagree Agree Disagree Agree Disagree
The military should be abolished.
15.4
82.4
22.0
68.3
5.7
90.6
17.4
78.0
The military is necessary evil. 23.3
70.0
36.9
48.9
23.7
72.0
35.1
59.1
The military is the most 15.4 important part of public life.
72.5
7.9
81.5
32.6
63.2
16.7
78.8
The military exists for the 85.7 defence of the country and its interests.
12.1
72.5
20.8
94.5
5.0
87.0
11.0
73.7 The military job implies guaranteeing a peaceful and free-trade international arena.
20.9
53.9
35.4
70.5
27.7
55.4
40.0
66.0 Today, peacekeeping and other non-combat activities should be central military function.
30.8
78.7
13.4
71.2
26.7
79.6
16.3
86.8 The military should be prepared to cover the whole spectrum of possible missions (from war to aid to the civil power).
12.1
77.1
15.3
86.4
12.7
76.8
18.9
The most important role of 63.4 the military is preparation for and conduct of war.
35.5
24.7
66.9
62.5
36.3
36.2
60.3
Source: Developed by the author based on data from the Cultural Gap Project (ERGOMAS) (2004)
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294 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ between the views of European university students and cadets in this respect. In contrast, among Spaniards the difference was 13.2 points and the average was 79 per cent. Logically, similar data were obtained in connection with the dissolution of the AFs, where 10 per cent more European university students disagreed with this idea than Spanish university students; and also more Spanish cadets believed that this will happen than their European counterparts (10 per cent), another example of the cognitive dissonance. Among European cadets, 32.6 per cent considered the AFs to be the most important part of public life in their countries; whereas only 15.4 per cent of Spanish cadets held this belief. Finally, when Spanish citizens were offered three alternatives for the management of the AFs in the future (remaining under the Spanish government’s control, becoming integrated into the EU’s army and coming under the UN’s command), they favoured the option that the AFs should remain under the government’s control (Figure 17.6). But an analysis of the data that distinguishes between a single-state defence approach and a collaborative/multilateral endeavour reveals that, within only a few years, the different multilateral alternatives have superseded the more traditional view.
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1997
1998
1999
2000
2002
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
AFs under the Spanish government’s control EU Afs AFs under UN’s control AFs as something multilateral
Figure 17.6 AFs management alternatives. Source: Developed by the author based on a series of CIS surveys (numbers 2234, 2277, 2317, 2379, 2447, 2592, 2680, 2825, 2912, 2998, and 3310
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THE SPANISH ARMED FORCES 295
17.7 Conclusions The military profession was held in low esteem; however, its status is constantly rising. The profession integrates non-traditional recruits and society accepts and shares the differing military ethos. Some of the core features of the Spanish AFs’ model is that they are small and well prepared, but are considered to be expensive. In fact, the social perception is that they are increasingly better trained and equipped and the military personnel numbers are appropriate, unlike the budget allocated to the AFs. Society willingly accepts the new AFs missions (international operations, catastrophes and disasters, etc.); but, although the population believes the AFs are well prepared to defend Spain, a good part of civil society has difficulty in accepting that the more traditional roles are assigned to them. Military personnel in Spain suffer from a cognitive dissonance, since they believe that they do not have the trust and respect of their fellow citizens. In contrast, the Spanish population, in general terms, hold them in high esteem. They generally believe that the AFs enhance the country’s international prestige and perceive them as having no designs on political power. The Spanish population do not seek to eradicate the AFs; but they would like to see a greater—multilateral—level of integration into European defence policies.
17.8 Bibliography Agüero, F. 1995. Militares, civiles y democracia: la España posfranquista en perspectiva comparada. Madrid: Alianza. Ballbé, M. 1983. Orden público y militarismo en la España constitucional: 1812–1983. Madrid: Alianza. Boëne, B., W. Von Bredow, and C. Dandeker. 2000. The military in common-risk societies: Elements of comparison among nine countries of West, Central and East Europe. In: Military and Society in 21st Century in Europe: A Comparative Analysis. New Brunswick, Münster, Hamburg, London: Transaction Publishers & Lit Verlag, pp. 305–332. Bruneau, T. C. and F. C. Matei. 2013. The Routledge Handbook of Civil-Military Relations. New York and London: Routledge. Croissant, A., D. Kuehn, P. Lorenz, and P. W. Chambers. 2013. Democratization and Civilian Control in Asia. Basingstoke: Palgrave, MacMillan. Durán, M., I. Adé, R. Martínez, and A. Calatrava. 2016. ‘Experiencias de la participación militar española en misiones internacionales: el caso de los oficiales del Ejército de Tierra (1993–2015)’. Revista Española de Ciencia Política 42: 125–45. Huntington, S. P. 1957. The Soldier and the State. Nueva York: Vintage Books. Janowitz, M. 1960. The Professional Soldier. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe CollierMacmillan Inc. Martínez, R. 2007a. ‘Cultura política sobre Inteligencia: Hacia un encuentro con la sociedad. In: Terrorismo global. Gestión de información y servicios de inteligencia. Madrid: Plaza y Valdes Ed.
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296 RAFAEL MARTÍNEZ Martínez, R. 2007b. Los mandos de las fuerzas armadas españolas del siglo XXI. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. Martínez, R., I. Adé, M. Durán, and A. Díaz. 2013. ‘Experiencias de la participación militar española en misiones internacionales (2000-2012)’. Revista Española de Ciencia Política 32: 205–23. Martínez, R. and A. Díaz. 2005. Spain: An equation with difficult solutions. In: Military Missions and Their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th. Amsterdam; Boston: Elsevier. Martínez, R. and A. Díaz. 2007. Threat perception: New risks, new threats and new missions. In: Cultural Differences between the Military and Parent Society in Democratic Countries. Amsterdam; Boston: Elsevier. Martínez, R. and M. Durán. 2017. ‘International missions as a way to improve civil–military relations: The Spanish case (1989–2015)’. Democracy and Security 13(1): 1–23. Nunciari, M. 1998. Value orientations and political attitudes of cadets in a comparative view. In The European Cadet: Professional Socialisation in Military Academies. A Crossnational Study. Badem-Badem: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Pion-Berlin, D. and R. Martínez. 2017. Soldiers, Politicians and Civilians: Reforming Civil–Military Relations in Democratic Latin-America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Payne, S. G. 1968. Los militares y la política en la España contemporánea. París: Ruedo Ibérico. Payne, S. G. 1977. Ejército y sociedad en la España liberal: 1808–1936. Madrid: AKAL, colección Manifiesto. Serra, Narcis. 2002. El control de las fuerzas armadas en la transición democrática. In: Nuevos temas de seguridad en América Latina. Barcelona: CIDOB. Serra, Narcis. 2008. La transición militar: Reflexiones en torno a la reforma democrática de las fuerzas armadas. Barcelona: Random House Mondadori. First published in English by Cambridge University Press 2010 as The Military Transition: Democratic Reform of the Armed Forces. Serrano, C. 1976. La Guerre d’Afrique et ses répercussions en Espagne: idéologies et colonialisme en Espagne 1859–1904. París: PUF. Serrano, C. 1984. Final del Imperio: España 1895–1898. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Stepan, A. 1988. Rethinking Military Politics. Brazil and the Southern Cone. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Villalaín Benito, J. L. 1992. ‘Los valores predominantes en la sociedad española de los noventa: su progresiva homogeneización y polarización en el mundo de lo privado’. Revista de Educación 297: 275–91.
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chapter 18
The Qua lit y of Democr acy Joan Font
18.1 Introduction The discussion about factors favouring or hindering democracy has been central in political science discussions: achieving and maintaining a democratic status was a main concern, when democracy seemed a really fragile reality. Now that democratic institutions have become the dominant reality in many areas of the world, the discussion focuses on a different subject. Are all these democracies the same thing? Do they all work similarly well? Should we qualify these democracies through an assessment of their quality? These are crucial normative questions: not only is the quality of democracy an interesting subject in itself, but also because of all its potential consequences on how social and political life develops. For example, recent research points to its clear effects on the degree of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (Christmann 2018). Which is the Spanish quality of democracy? Specific research about the topic is still relatively scarce, but at least three recent phenomena have provided reasons for concern about the quality of democracy in Spain. First, the short- and long-term impacts of the economic and political crisis known as the Great Recession. These impacts include lessened social equality, which could also have effects on important aspects of the quality of democracy.1 Second, the continued presence of corruption scandals in public debate in Spain has also been a matter of concern. This has not only clearly impacted public
1 Morlino and Quaranta (2016) identify three main comparative consequences of this period in the quality of democracy: deterioration of the rule of law, citizens becoming more sensitive about governmental outcomes, and an increase in political protest as a central means of providing citizen inputs into the political process.
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298 Joan Font opinion,2 but has also raised serious concerns in international institutions about the continued persistence of these practices and their effects on democracy (GRECO 2017). Third, different scenarios of repression and limits imposed to freedom of expression have emerged, including the enactment of a 2015 law popularly known as ‘Ley Mordaza’ (Muzzle Law) that facilitates prosecution of demonstration organizers’, pre-trial detentions, banning of Facebook comments, prosecution of rap songwriters, and the repression of the Catalan pro-sovereignty movement, including the imprisonment of social movement activists. This set of events has contributed to raising considerable concerns about political freedoms, even among traditional liberal institutions (e.g. The Economist 2018). Important subjective indicators, namely, satisfaction with democracy, have suffered a dramatic setback in the first decades of the twenty-first century for which it is difficult to find many recent comparable examples. The goal of this chapter is to discuss the status of the quality of democracy in Spain. To address the issues involved, the text is divided into three additional main sections, plus a final discussion. The next section reviews existing research about the subject in two stages: first, comparable rankings that measure the health of Spanish democracy are examined, followed by a conceptual discussion about what should be considered quality of democracy. My definition of quality of democracy is developed in the next section, where its two main dimensions (political equality and spaces for voice) are discussed in the Spanish case. The third empirical section addresses the more subjective evaluations of democratic quality, including a discussion about which kind of democracy Spanish citizens would like to have. A final section brings together all these issues and the overall image provided by the different types of evidence reviewed through the chapter is discussed.
18.2 State of the Art Where does Spain stand in terms of the comparative quality of its democracy? To answer this question two complementary areas must be examined. First, the different international comparative measurements on the status of democracy and the position Spain has in them. Second, since these rankings show different results because they depart from diverse definitions of democracy and its quality, a step back must be taken to reflect about what exactly is the quality of democracy.
18.2.1 Spain from a Comparative Perspective According to one of the most commonly used rankings, The Economist Democracy Index, in 2017 Spain ranked nineteenth among 167 world countries, the lowest position 2 According to official CIS data, corruption reached the second position (after unemployment) as the most important perceived problem facing the country in February 2013 and has been there for five years, reaching a maximum number of mentions in November 2014 (64%).
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The Quality of Democracy 299 among those countries labelled as full democracies (among which the US, France, and Portugal were not included then). This position has remained fairly stable, though some important recent events have affected it. For example, in 2006, before the start of the 2008 economic crisis, Spain ranked sixteenth but it fell nine positions (down to twenty-fifth) in 2012, mostly due to a deterioration of the political culture indicator (especially, a declining trust in democracy). With a diminished impact of the crisis in 2016, Spain climbed up the ranking to position 17, but fell again two positions ‘as a result of the national government attempt to stop by force Catalonia’s illegal referendum on independence’ (The Economist 2018, 22). A second source, the Freedom House Index provides one of the most positive pictures. This index mostly distinguishes between free, non-free, and partly free countries, with Spain consistently in the first group. In 2017, Spain’s 95 score (of a maximum of 100), was similar to the average score of other Western European countries (below Germany or Portugal, but above France or Italy). This is the only comparative measurement which shows no major effects of the Great Recession. In other more recent measurements, such as the Sustainable Governance Indicators3 which include a set of results dealing specifically with the quality of democracy, Spain ranked twenty-fourth in 2017 among forty-one countries (below all Western European countries except Greece and Iceland), slightly better than in the previous (and first) 2014 data provided by this index. These results are the product of uneven performances, with the country scoring high as regards some of the regulations governing electoral processes and in access to information, but considerably lower in party finance, corruption, judicial independence, and decision-making by citizens. One of the more negative assessments comes from the more recent Varieties of Democracy Index, in which the deeply felt effects of the Great Recession lead to considerable declines in all indicators as from 2012. As a result, in 2017 Spain ranked below all Southern European countries in all the main measurements, except in liberal democracy, where it appears very slightly above Greece. The substantial decline also appears in the annual Spanish national report about democracy, compiled every year since 2008 by the Fundación Alternativas team, normally based on an expert survey, among other sources. These series of reports also show a significant decline over the 2008–2013 period, which started improving (without reaching pre-crisis levels) in 2016. This overall pattern of Spain being comparatively below intermediate positions (among Western European countries) also appears when we move from this set of more expert-based rankings to others in which citizens’ opinions are central. For example, Quaranta (2018) has recently created one of these indices, based on the results of the European Social Survey, where he aggregates several components of evaluations of democracy: his latent scores (ranging approximately from 1 to −1) place Spain at −0.5, seventh from the bottom (out of 29 European countries), only Italy having a lower score among Western European countries. Pickel and her colleagues (2016) offered an alternative 3 https://www.sgi-network.org/2018/ (accessed 28 September 2019).
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300 Joan Font measurement of the quality of democracy, based on the same set of data (but using a different selection of information in a fewer number of countries) and placed Spain nineteenth out of twenty countries (with a 34.4 score, compared to a maximum of 86.6 for Sweden), only above Portugal. In sum, we could focus on the bottle being half full (Spain usually appears among the set of clearly democratic countries, close to many other European neighbours), or on it being half empty (appearing often close to the last positions among Western European countries). In any case, what seems remarkably clear is that the consequences of the political and economic crisis on how democracy was doing were still deeply felt in 2017, even if the worst effects of the economic downturn had disappeared some years previously.
18.2.2 Which Definition of Quality of Democracy? These measurements of the quality of democracy yield different results because their starting points are also quite different. Quality of democracy ‘has still not been turned into a well-formed and widely accepted concept’ (Munck 2016, 10). The discussion about its meaning has been considerably prolific, particularly since the early twentyfirst century. The recent review by Munck (2016) shows a scenario that could be divided into two main strategies: for some authors (including Munck himself) the quality of democracy cannot be truly distinguished from democracy itself since it is simply the realization of its defining characteristics. For others, the quality of democracy is some sort of perfect, good, or ideal democratic model (e.g. Lijphart 1999), a mirror in which existing democracies can see their image and decide what could be improved to bring their reality closer to the ideal model. Another recent review (Fishman 2016) proposes to distinguish four different concepts, each having a particular meaning: authenticity, quality, depth, and consolidation. According to this proposal, authenticity would include those characteristics that allow distinguishing between democracies and non-democratic polities; depth should be used to distinguish those which are ideal features of democracy only for some political ideologies (e.g. social equality or private property); consolidation would incorporate the discussion about whether democratic characteristics are likely to be overturned; and quality would be reserved to ‘desirable features of political life that are expected to be found in democracies’ (299). The proposal has clear advantages, since it ascribes to the quality of democracy a distinctive content, different from democracy itself as well as from other similar concepts, including consequences of democracy.4 Fishman’s proposal represents an important break with most previous contributions, whose main problem is precisely related to the broad and extremely diverse set of characteristics included in the concept. Most of the previous definitions as well as the 4 The vitality of the public sphere is mentioned by Fishman (2016) as an example of its potential contents.
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The Quality of Democracy 301 rankings just examined suffer from the problems mentioned by Fishman. For example, they include basic defining characteristics of what distinguishes democracies from non-democratic systems (from political rights to pluralism), and thus do not contribute to a distinct meaning of the quality of democracy concept. Furthermore, they also include very broad societal characteristics (e.g. political culture), that may be important factors favouring or resulting from democracy, but that analytically should be differentiated from it.5 As a result, lacking a universally accepted definition and trying to reach a balance between too broad or too narrow definitions of quality, my approach here encompasses two main features that are not absolutely required for all democracies (authenticity), but nevertheless contribute to drawing closer to the realization of democratic ideals: political equality and spaces for voice.6 The next section discusses the contents of my definition of the quality of democracy in the Spanish case.
18.3 Quality as Voice and Political Equality Key (1961) was among the first to note that public opinion has two almost equally important dimensions in democratic societies: the extension of opinions and their intensity. This distinction is a central inspiration for my proposal: democracy develops much closer to its ideals with the extension of political equality, when the (almost) universal political rights that a democracy incorporates translate into effective political equality (no consistent reproduction of social inequalities into political ones). Also, whereas opportunities for voice exist in any democracy, having ample opportunities for these voices to be heard, allows the different intensities and messages of these voices to be more clearly heard, fostering further alignment between citizen preferences and political decisions.7
18.3.1 Extension: Political Equality To what extent is political equality present in Spanish politics? Do all social groups achieve similar effective opportunities to have their interests heeded? If democratic 5 A similar distinction is also present in Dahl (1998), when he distinguishes three different things: the institutions required for real democracy, the ideal goals of democracy (where political equality would play a central role) and the external societal conditions that favor the flourishing of democracy. 6 Thus, aspects that are often covered in research about the quality of democracy (e.g. judicial system or civil liberties) will not be covered here in more detail, since they would belong to a discussion about authenticity, not about quality. 7 Factors favoring the existence and performance of these spaces like information, accountability, or public debate are not discussed in this chapter.
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302 Joan Font institutions exist, why would anyone have greater political opportunities than anybody else? This could happen mostly due to two main phenomena that have their roots in society and in political institutions respectively. The first one is major social inequalities that would translate into systematically different degrees of effective political opportunities, an almost universal comparative pattern that is only moderated when important mobilizing agents for the least privileged exist (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). This issue has yet received limited systematic attention in the Spanish case. The existing research shows an intermediate scenario, where political inequalities clearly appear, but are probably less profound and deeply structured than in other quite unequal democracies such as the US. For example, one central place where these inequalities are visible is in the main instrument for the voice of citizens to be heard in any representative democracy: elections and the different turnout levels for each social group. Although some of the existing Spanish research shows that the usual differences also appear in Spain (e.g. higher turnout among adults, married, or actively religious people; Montero and Santana, 2018), some of the relevant socioeconomic differences have completely disappeared (e.g. gender), or are remarkably minor or inconsistent in the Spanish case (e.g. education; Gallego 2015). On the other hand, even if a generalized and linear relationship does not exist, this is a form of participation, where intense social exclusion strongly translates into political inequalities, with the poorest Spanish neighbourhoods registering turnout rates between 20 and 30 per cent (compared to close to 80 per cent in some others, see Gomez Fortes and Trujillo 2011).8 Systematic unequal participation, where social inequalities emerge, always following a pattern of limited presence of the least privileged, also affects every other form of bottom-up participation, from membership of associations (Morales et al. 2006) to protest (Ferrer et al. 2006). Even if some relevant changes have appeared in the recent wave of mobilizations (Anduiza et al. 2014) favouring the presence of traditionally less active groups, such as greater numbers of women, young people, or non-members of associ ations, forms of systematic socioeconomic bias (e.g. larger presence of the most educated) continue to be quite visible among the more mobilized sectors of society. In any case, two important caveats should be highlighted. First, comparative research in the field is limited.9 Political inequalities rooted in an unequal society exist in Spain, but we lack systematic analyses about whether this happens to a greater or lesser degree than in neighbouring countries. Second, we should seriously discuss the possibility that traditional forms of inequality are no longer so central in relation to political inequalities (e.g. gender or class), but that other social cleavages (some of them reinforced by the recent crises) may be replacing the traditional ones (e.g. permanent vs. precarious employees or other age-related differences; Polavieja 2003). The second source of political inequalities could be institutional design, in which some voices may be given more or less weight than others. Two characteristics of the 8 See also chapter 24 in this volume. 9 A relevant exception is Teorell et al. (2007). These authors place Spain at intermediate-high levels of political inequality in participation among 13 European countries.
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The Quality of Democracy 303 Spanish political system have been especially mentioned in this respect. First, the electoral system for the Chamber of Deputies (see chapter 23 in this volume), which clearly leads to an over-representation of rural districts and conservative opinions. Second, the Senate or higher chamber, that also provides a space for the louder voice of many rural and politically conservative areas, resulting in periods with somewhat different majorities in the two legislative chambers (fifth and twelfth legislative periods, see chapter 13 in this volume). The combination of both institutional characteristics is due to the control of crucial power resources by the political right during the transition to democracy and favours the continued over-representation of the opinions of these sectors in Spanish democratic institutions. In sum, political inequalities can be a matter of concern in the Spanish case and result in some social and political sectors such as conservatives and higher-middle classes having better chances to have their opinions correctly represented in the political arena. The two avenues for these inequalities (social inequalities and rural and conservative over-representation) do not necessarily systematically reinforce each other in all circumstances, but when they do, this becomes a crucial problem for political equality. In any case, this is a field where more comparative research is especially needed to ascertain the degree to which this problem is or is not more significant than in other democracies, but the probabilities that recent increases in social inequalities have reduced political equality are real.
18.3.2 Intensity: Further Opportunities for Voice? Equal voice is different from richer voice. In this section my main concern will shift from equal opportunities to more varied ones, the provision of places or institutions where more nuanced messages about citizen preferences can be channelled, where the intensity and especially the details of these preferences can be heard. In principle, these two dimensions (extension and intensity) should be independent from each other, that is, we could have only one of them, both or neither. However, most empirical research tends to show that some tension exists naturally between them: most of the additional opportunities for voice imply higher participation costs, which result in a more biased set of participants (Fiorina 1999). Does this tension also appear in the Spanish case? We will focus on three particular instances. First, bottom-up participation opportunities (partly discussed in the previous section). Second, possibilities offered by organized civil society, including political parties. Third, participatory institutions created by public administrations at different levels of government. Fishman (2017) shows a higher tendency for Spanish political elites to isolate themselves from political protest and to disregard the messages coming from that source. These two assertions point to an ostensible contradiction: are Spaniards especially irrational that they continue insisting in using messages (protest) that are going to be systematically disregarded by their target audience? This could be due to different
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304 Joan Font reasons (citizens protesting mostly for expressive reasons, or being unaware of the lack of consequences of their acts), but the possibility that these activities may have more policy consequences should also be seriously considered. For example, if we think of some of the largest protest waves by the left since 1977, only the 2003 protests against the Iraq War were without policy consequences in the short term, but they probably had an electoral impact in the 2004 election, and the withdrawal of Spanish troops was the first very visible policy change adopted by the new 2004 Zapatero government (2004–2011). Other important mobilization waves have left relevant policy consequences in their wake, from the 1988 general strike and its effect on social policies (Gonzalez and Requena 2005) to the more recent pro-democracy and anti-austerity 2011 15M protests, with considerable cultural, programmatic, and policy consequences. Even protest not directed at the government (against terrorism) is perceived as having had an important effect on the end of ETA’s activity (Euskobarometro 2017). Thus, even if there is a reluctant attitude toward protest among the Spanish political elites, at least those very high mobilization episodes have probably had relevant policy consequences, and the possibility that this may have happened also in less widespread mobilizations and other political arenas (local, regional) should not be disregarded. A second important set of spaces for voice is afforded by the intermediate organizations that constitute organized civil society, including the special case of political parties. While the traditional Spanish scenario was one of limited activity in this field, two relevant changes deserve some attention. First, a new set of organizations devoted to the promotion of further democratization, have appeared in recent decades.10 Much of their activity revolves around either how new information technologies could be used to enrich democratic opportunities in organizations, or in the public administration. Their tools and ideas have been incorporated both by organizations (e.g. the Agora voting system to facilitate on-line consultations adopted by Podemos) and public administration regulations (e.g. the remarkable influence the pro-transparency NGO Civio had on the 2017 Law of Public Contracts), representing at the very least, an interesting new wave of tools and ideas added to the Spanish public debate. The second important set of changes in intermediate organizations has taken place in political parties, where the development of new internal democracy tools, most notably the organization of party primaries to elect leaders and candidates, has become widespread (Fundación Alternativas 2017). This trend appeared early and has gone much further in left-wing parties, but even the traditionally more reluctant PP resorted to something akin to party primaries to elect its new leader in 2018. The creation of top-down complementary institutions to listen to citizen preferences is an activity in which the Spanish public administrations have been very unequally active. At the national level, a very restrictive legislation on referendums (any referendum, even for minor local issues has to be approved by the national government) has resulted in limited use of direct democratic instruments. As a result, almost all activity has been developed by the nearly 100 sectorial advisory councils that exist for almost 10 For an overview of the activity of several of them in the Spanish case, see Alarcón et al (2015).
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The Quality of Democracy 305 any policy field, and that bring together public administrations and the main stakeholders in each policy network (Font et al, 2019). To date, the Third Plan for Open Government presented by the Spanish government in 2017 has resulted in limited effective activity, but at least it represents the first attempt by the executive to address this issue, with plans for a future observatory for participation and experiments in participatory budgeting at the regional level. There has been more activity at the regional level, especially in certain regions and periods, where different types of participatory programmes have been developed. These include participation laws (e.g. Andalusia or Canary Islands), innovative citizen dialogue processes around specific policy areas (e.g. Aragón or Basque Country) or programmes supporting participatory processes in local government (e.g. Aragón or Catalonia). Regional governments have also had a rich set of advisory councils, ranging from less than forty in Cantabria or Rioja, to more than 130 in Catalonia or Valencia. Many of them are almost inactive or perform purely ceremonial roles, but others contribute to creating a rich policy network where regional public policies are discussed and sometimes modified. The richest (but extremely diverse) arena for these participatory institutions has been local government. There, a wide array of institutions and processes, from advisory councils to participatory budgeting, and a myriad of diverse ad hoc political arrangements have been developed, especially since the late 1990s. These participatory institutions have achieved several significant results, from influence in policy-making (Font et al. 2018), to an improvement in the relationship between civil society and local administrations (Bherer et al. 2016). However, their limitations also remain clear: important clashes with organized civil society and the local bureaucracy have existed (Baiocchi and Ganuza 2016), often only minor policies are dealt with by them (Font et al. 2108), and their use has resulted in several instances in enhanced frustration (Font and Navarro 2013). Also, there have been clear difficulties in mobilizing new social sectors: ‘[I]n most cases, what these institutions achieve in practice is that those who already participate have further opportunities to make their voices heard by local governments; the social profiles of participants are the same ones we find in any research about other forms of participation’ (Navarro et al. 2009, 91). In sum, social and institutional environments to better listen to citizens’ voice have been created, but their overall results show a mix of successes and failures. This is not surprising from a comparative perspective,11 since both the increase of this political offer and its still unclear results also appear in other countries (Geissel 2009; Baiocchi and Ganuza, 2016). The tension between voice and political equality has also emerged in the Spanish case, so that very often, and especially with more opportunities for voice, participation has been quite unequal. If this is the overall balance when applying my definition of the 11 In the most comprehensive existing repository about these experiences (https://participedia.net/ (accessed 3 August 2019)) Spain appears as the eighth country having recorded more participatory processes.
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306 Joan Font quality of democracy, we can still move to a final complementary strategy: to listen to citizens’ own definitions of democracy and their subjective evaluations of how democracy is doing.
18.4 What if Democracy was Something Else? One of the main discussions in research about the quality of democracy has been between those favouring expert-based assessments and those preferring citizens’ evaluations of democratic health. Gómez Fortes and his colleagues (2010) were the first ones to develop a citizen-based audit of Spanish democracy, following the model developed by O’Donnell et al. (2004) in some Latin American countries. Their overall assessment of the Spanish case pointed to a moderate evaluation (5.1 score in a 0–10 scale), but especially to a very diverse one, where some aspects showed really good results (e.g. legitimacy or perceived corruption in public administration), while others reflected quite critical perceptions (e.g. corruption among politicians or civil society). This use of perceptions is important, especially in scenarios like the current one where very high levels of political distrust exist, so that citizens could be pointing to spheres of democratic distress not apparent in other sources and data (Fernandez Albertos 2018). Though the voices heard in these two types of assessments are very different, both share a central characteristic: the choice of which indicators are to be used is made by the project directors, and this choice ‘reveals the idea of democracy’ they have in mind (Quaranta 2018, 214), and imposes their views of what is important in a democracy. In fact, in recent years there has been an extensive comparative move towards incorporating this subjective dimension of the quality of democracy (Mayne and Geissel, 2018; Pickel et al. 2016) so as to ascribe a more central place to citizens’ perceptions and their definitions and aspirations of democracy. What would happen if we adopted citizens’ definitions of what democracy should be? Montero (1992) showed that since the early years of democracy, the debate about its meanings has also been present in Spanish politics: associating democracy with liberty was the majority option, but two other significant groups existed that related it more to participation or to its social dimension (reducing inequalities). More recently, the discussion about what democracy is and what democracy should be has been quite extensive12 and has also resulted in interesting European Social Survey (2012) data. Keeping our focus on the three dimensions mentioned by Montero, Spanish citizens seem to strongly value the three of them: about 70 per cent assign an importance of 9 or 10 12 Hibbing and Theiss-Morse’s findings (2002) for the US have been replicated in Europe showing, at least, that preferences for a mostly representative, a more participatory, and a more technocratic democratic model do exist. For a comparative European perspective, see Ferrin and Kriesi (2016) and Fernandez and Font (2018).
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The Quality of Democracy 307 (in a 0–10 scale) to voting directly in referendums or reducing income differences. Both are deemed important desirable characteristics of democracy (participatory and social dimensions, respectively). This support climbs to more than 80 per cent when it refers to holding ‘free and fair elections.’ Thus, twenty-five years on from 1992, for a majority of citizens, freedom and elections continue to be the defining features of democracy, but for many the social and participatory components related to it are also important. Since each of these three characteristics is highly valued by most citizens, one alternative approach is to examine how wide the gap is between the role that citizens believe these characteristics should play in democracy with respect to the role they actually play in their countries. Figures 18.1 to 18.3 show where Spain stands as regards each of them, compared to other European countries, the upper continuous line reflecting the desired presence of each of these three characteristics, whereas the other two lines
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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Denmark Finland Norway Sweden Germany United Kingdom Ireland Netherlands Switzerland Belgium France Cyprus Slovakia Israel Portugal Czech Republic Iceland Poland Slovenia Spain Hungary Estonia Italy Lithuania Russian Federation Bulgaria Kosovo Ukraine Albania
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National elections are free and fair In country national elections are free and fair Difference
Figure 18.1 Perceived and desired role for free and fair elections. Source: European Social Survey, Round 6, 2012
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308 Joan Font 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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Switzerland Ireland Sweden Norway Slovenia Finland Denmark Iceland Netherlands United Kingdom Slovakia Belgium Hungary France Czech Republic Cyprus Estonia Lithuania Poland Israel Portugal Germany Russian Federation Italy Spain Albania Bulgaria Kosovo Ukraine
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Citizens have the final say on political issues by voting directly in referendums In country citizens have the final say on political issues by voting directly in referendums Difference
Figure 18.2 Perceived and desired role for voting directly in referendums. Source: European Social Survey, Round 6, 2012
show the perceived reality and the difference between reality and ideals. In all three cases Spain ranks among the countries where there is higher dissatisfaction (right side of the graph, corresponding to a more significant difference), that is, a wider gap between perceived reality and ideals, always close to Italy and to some Eastern European countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Ukraine). Differences are slightly smaller regarding the role played by elections (nine countries perform worse than Spain here), and are especially important in the participatory dimension (only four countries showing a greater difference than Spain). These results mainly show two significant trends. First, they point to quite a profound level of disaffection (especially intense in the 2012–2014 period, when data was collected). Second, it shows that the dissatisfaction gap is especially deep with respect to participatory opportunities. In fact, in this field, citizens and experts mostly agree since the (expert-based) Varieties of Democracy results also show that although all Spanish democratic dimensions were hit by the Great Recession effects, the electoral one continued to be quite better valued than the egalitarian and participatory ones. In sum, if one moves from expert-based definitions of democracy to citizens’ subjective ideals, one finds that their content is diverse. In the recent period, as was the case in the early days of democracy, Spanish citizens’ vision of democracy, together with strong
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The Quality of Democracy 309 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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Denmark Norway Netherlands Finland Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom Ireland Belgium Iceland France Germany Czech Republic Slovakia Cyprus Hungary Estonia Russian Federation Israel Lithuania Poland Portugal Slovenia Spain Albania Italy Kosovo Ukraine Bulgaria
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The government takes measures to reduce differences in income levels In country the government takes measures to reduce differences in income levels Difference
Figure 18.3 Perceived and desired role for measures to reduce differences in income levels. Source: European Social Survey, Round 6, 2012
central liberal and representative ideas, also incorporates the wish by many for it to have a social and a participatory dimension. And their assessment of how these additional dimensions are doing in practice is even more critical than their perception about the electoral dimension.
18.5 Conclusion How is the quality of democracy doing in Spain? Social and academic discussions about this question show quite different points of view. For example, in a mostly positive assessment of the health of Spanish democracy by Fernandez Albertos (2018: 46), Spain is not an outsider compared to its neighbours. Several other of the sources reviewed here make more critical assessments, ranging from a bare pass (e.g. Gomez Fortes et al. 2010)
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310 Joan Font to comparatively quite critical views (e.g Varieties of Democracy) that place Spain below many other similar countries. One of the clearest conclusions of this chapter is that these different final assessments vary so much because they are based on competing definitions of what the quality of democracy is, and any final conclusions will be completely dependent on which of these definitions is adopted. Lacking a universally accepted definition of the concept, my option has been to combine three different approaches: to review the existing quantitative indicators, to provide our own normative definition, and to examine citizens’ own definitions of what democracy should be. Many citizens, as well as some of the international rankings, use definitions mostly based on the characteristics of liberal representative democracy. From this perspective, Spanish democracy functions similarly to that of neighbouring European countries. Significant political inequalities occur, as they do in other democratic countries. Only some recent curbs on freedom of expression and repression of political dissent represent serious threats from this point of view. However, adopting this perspective means mixing up the discussion about Spain’s status as a democracy (authenticity) with the quality of its democracy. To keep both issues separate I have adopted a more limited definition of quality, mostly based on two main ideas: political equality and voice. Lacking clear comparative measurements of these ideas, I have examined two sources of political inequalities (the translation of social inequalities into systematic political inequalities, as well as the bias introduced by institutional design) and several spaces for voice, both in civil society and in public administrations. Interesting activities are organized by civil society, political parties, and local governments, but arriving at a compromise between voice and political equality not detrimental to the latter is a matter of concern. Some citizens and experts would prefer to go beyond this definition of quality and incorporate ideas related to the social and participatory dimensions of democracy (‘depth’ characteristics according to the Fishman distinction). Incorporating these alternative definitions would show quite a less favourable image of Spain, revealing a considerable gap between citizens’ wishes and institutional realities regarding both social equality and the provision of more opportunities for direct democratic participation. Whichever the definition adopted, the quality of Spanish democracy has not gone through the Great Recession unscathed, unlike what has happened in most other countries (Morlino and Quaranta 2016): all the longitudinal measurements except the Freedom House Index, show major and lasting impacts (up to 2017). How much of these impacts will remain in the long term is yet to be seen, since some of the recent changes in political life (e.g. in the party system or in new social and institutional spaces for voice) may facilitate accommodating citizen demands in future. The result of this overall scenario is that the alignment between citizens’ preferences and public policies has been below the European average (Rasmussen et al. 2018). However, if the short-term legitimacy effects of the Great Recession period have been dramatically negative, their potential translation into mid-term societal and institutional changes is still to be seen.
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The Quality of Democracy 311
18.6 Bibliography Alarcón, P., J. Font, and E. Madrid. 2015. Participación ciudadana y desigualdad. Oxfam. Anduiza, E., C. Cristancho, and J. M. Sabucedo. 2014. ‘Mobilization through online social networks: The political protest of the indignados in Spain’. Information, Communication & Society 17(6): 750–64. Baiocchi, G. and E. Ganuza. 2016. Popular Democracy. Stanford, Stanford University Press. Bherer, L., J. L. Fernández-Martínez, P. Garcia Espin, and M. Jimenez Sanchez. 2016. ‘The promise for democratic deepening: The effects of participatory processes in the interaction between civil society and local governments’. Journal of Civil Society 12(3): 344–363. Christmann, P. 2018. ‘Economic performance, quality of democracy and satisfaction with democracy’. Electoral Studies 53: 79–89. Dahl, R. 1998. On Democracy. Yale: Yale University Press. Euskobarómetro (2017). Euskobarometro, Mayo 2017. Bilbao. [Online] Available at https:// www.ehu.eus/eu/web/euskobarometro/home/ (accessed 28 September 2019). Fernández, J. L. and J. Font. 2018. ‘The devil is in the detail: What do citizens mean when they support stealth or participatory democracy?’, Politics, doi.org/10.1177/0263395717741799 Fernández-Albertos, J. 2018. La salud de la democracia española. In: La calidad de las instituciones en España. Madrid: Círculo de Empresarios, pp. 43–66. Ferrer, M., L. Medina, and M. Torcal. 2006. La participación política. Factores explicativos. In: Ciudadanos, asociaciones y participación en España. Madrid: CIS, pp. 133–56. Ferrín, M. and H. P. Kriesi. 2016. How Europeans View and Evaluate Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fishman, R. 2016. ‘Rethinking dimensions of democracy for empirical analysis: authenticity, quality, depth and consolidation’. Annual Review of Political Science 19: 289–309. Fishman, R. 2017. ‘How civil society matters in democratization: Setting the boundaries of pot-transition political inclusion’. Comparative Politics, 49(3) 391–409. Fiorina, M. 1999. Extreme voices: A dark side of civic engagement. In: Civic Engagement in American Democracy, Brookings Institution, Washington, pp. 395–425. Font, J. and C. Navarro. 2013. ‘Personal experience and the evaluation of participatory instruments in Spanish cities’. Public Administration 91(3): 616–31. Font, J., G. Smith, C. Galais, and P. Alarcón. 2018. ‘Cherry-picking participation: Explaining the fate of proposals from participatory processes’. European Journal of Political Research 57(3): 615–36. Font, J; Pasadas, S.; Fernandez-Martínes, J. L. 2019. Participatory Motivations in Advisory Councils: Exploring Different Reasons to Participate, Representation, DOI: 10.1080/ 00344893.2019.1643774. Fundación Alternativas. 2017. Informe sobre la democracia en España 2017. Madrid. Gallego, A. 2015. Unequal Political Participation Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geissel, B. 2009. ‘How to improve the quality of democracy? Experiences with participatory innovations at the local level in Germany’. German Politics and Society 27(4): 51–71. Gómez Fortes, B., I. Palacios, M. Peréz Yruela, and R. Vargas-Machuca. 2010. Calidad de la democracia en España. Barcelona: Ariel. Gomez Fortes, B. and M. Trujillo. 2011. Los excluidos también pueden votar: abstención y exclusión social en España. Fundación Alternativas Working Papers, 269/2011.
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312 Joan Font González, J. J. and M. Requena. 2005. Tres décadas de cambio: una introducción. In: Tres décadas de cambio social en España. Madrid: Alianza editorial, pp. 11–20. GRECO (Group of States against Corruption). 2017. Fourth Evaluation Round Report. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Hibbing, J. and E. Theiss-Morse. 2002. Stealth Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Key, V. O., Jr, 1961. Public Opinion and American Democracy. New York: Knopf. Lijphart, A. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mayne, Q. and B. Geissel. 2018. ‘Don’t good democracies need “good” citizens? Citizens’ dispositions and the study of democratic quality’. Politics and Governance 6(1): 33–47. Montero, J. R. 1992. Sobre la democracia en España: legitimidad, apoyos institucionales y significados. Juan March Working Papers, Madrid, 1992/39. Montero, J. R. and A. Santana. 2018. Los votantes españoles. Madrid: Alianza editorial. Morales, L., F. Mota, and S. Pérez-Nievas. 2006. La participación en asociaciones. Factores individuales. In: Ciudadanos, asociaciones y participación en España. Madrid. CIS, pp. 157–82. Morlino, L. and M. Quaranta. 2016. ‘What is the impact of the economic crisis on democracy? Evidence from Europe’. International Political Science Review 37(5): 618–33. Munck, G. 2016. ‘What is democracy? A reconceptualization of the quality of democracy’. Democratization. 23(1): 1–26. Navarro, C., M. Cuesta, and J. Font. 2009. Municipios participativos? Participación política y ciudadana en ciudades medias españolas. Madrid: CIS. O’Donnell, G., J. Vargas, and O. M. Iazzetta (eds). 2004. The Quality of Democracy: Theory and Applications. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Pickel, S., W. Breustedt, and T. Smolka. 2016. ‘Measuring the quality of democracy: Why include the citizens’ perspective? International Political Science Review 37(5): 645–55. Polavieja, J. 2003. Estables y Precarios: Desregulación Laboural y Estratificación Social en España. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. Quaranta, M. 2018. ‘How citizens evaluate democracy: An assessment using the European Social Survey’. European Political Science Review, 10(2): 191–217. Rasmussen, A., S. Reher, and D. Toshkov. 2018. ‘The opinion-policy nexus in Europe and the role of political institutions’. European Journal of Political Research. doi: 10.1111/ 1475–6765.12286. Rosenstone, S. and M. Hansen. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and American Democracy. New York: Macmillan. Teorell, J., P. Sum, and M. Tobiasen. 2007. Participation and political equality: An assessment of large-scale democracy. In: Citizenship and Involvement in European Democracies. London: Routledge, pp. 384–413. The Economist (2018). Democracy Index 2017. Free Speech under Attack.
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PA RT I V
PA RT I E S , E L E C T IONS , A N D VOT E R S
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chapter 19
Politica l Cu ltu r e i n Spa i n i n th e T w en t y-First Cen t u ry symptoms of a crisis of representation Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann
19.1 Introduction The political culture in Spain has been relatively stable since the end of the 1970s in three important aspects: there have been high levels of citizen support for democracy, relatively low levels of political trust, and fluctuating levels of satisfaction with the functioning of democracy (SWD) over time (Montero and Torcal 1990; Montero et al. 1997). This situation is similar to the one observed in the rest of Southern Europe and many third-wave democracies (Torcal and Magalhaes 2010). However, since 2008, political trust has declined substantially, despite the already low levels of trust, and SWD has fallen to the lowest level since reliable records of this attitude have been available (since the mid-1980s). Both changes have given way to a debate about their causes. For some scholars, these changes are due to the effect of the Great Recession and its social consequences which were particularly harsh in Spain (Polavieja 2013). For other scholars, these changes are due to the defective functioning of the political process during this period (Orriols and Cordero 2016; Christmann and Torcal 2016). In this latter line of thought, the economic crisis and the subsequent austerity measures constituted a ‘stress test’ of the Spanish model of democracy which, in the eyes of most of its citizens, seems to be regarded as a failure.
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316 Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann The academic dispute about the factors explaining the current deterioration of p olitical trust and SWD is not limited to analysis of the Spanish case; similar trends have been observed in other European countries as well. One position in comparative research explains that increasing distrust in national parliaments, political representatives, and political parties as due to the poor economic performance since the beginning of the Great Recession (Van Erkel and Van der Meer 2016; Van der Meer 2017), or constitutes a public response to the resulting social and welfare austerity measures adopted by their governments in response to it, especially among those citizens who are more affected by them (Lamprianou and Ellinas 2017; Foster and Frieden 2017; Kumlin and Haugsgjerd 2017). Yet, there are also a number of studies that argue that that the decrease in political trust is a symptom of deficits in the functioning of the political process (Hakhverdian and Mayne 2012; Harteveld et al. 2013; Norris 2011), and that political institutions are increasingly perceived as unresponsive to citizens’ demands (Alesina and Wacziarg 2000). In other words, the increasing political distrust of the public is probably not just a direct effect of the 2008 Great Recession, but has also been caused by the ways in which democratic systems have coped with the economic crisis (Torcal 2014). The same arguments have been put forward to explain the remarkable deterioration of SWD during the same period. Where people suffered significantly from the consequences of the economic and fiscal crisis, the literature mainly attributes the declining levels of SWD to poor economic performance (Armingeon and Guthmann 2014; Cordero and Simón 2016; Quaranta and Martini 2016; Morlino and Piana 2014; Sousa et al. 2014). There is also evidence of a link with performance evaluations of policy outputs in areas such as healthcare, social protection, and education (Mattes and Bratton 2007; Huang et al. 2008; Lühiste 2014; Stockemer and Sundström 2013). However, there is a second group of comparative research that links lower democratic satisfaction with the deterioration of the ‘objective’ quality of governance (where quality refers to the existence of the rule of law and the provision of effective public administration in the absence of corruption) (Anderson and Tverdova 2003; Ariely 2013; Dahlberg and Holmberg 2014; Norris 2011; Peffley and Rohrschneider 2014; Stockemer and Sundström 2013). Similarly, at the individual level, there is evidence that public perceptions of corruption are associated with lower SWD (Ariely 2013; Mattes and Bratton 2007; Huang et al. 2008; Linde 2012; Peffley and Rohrschneider 2014). The present chapter starts with a descriptive analysis of the main features of public attitudes towards democracy and their evolution in Spain since the mid-1980s. Then, we discuss the Spanish case in a comparative perspective, paying special attention to political trust and SWD, and showing that their decline has been remarkable in the European context. Next, we test which of the two aforementioned factors (instrumental economic calculations or evaluations of the political process) are better suited to explain the most recent changes in political trust and SWD. By analysing individual-level panel data from 2015, we show that political trust and SWD are mostly related to two interrelated political factors: political corruption and citizens’ perception of lack of responsiveness of the political system. Thus, while economic conditions and personal economic expectations certainly appear to have had a notorious effect on the negative evolution of these
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Political Culture 317 a ttitudes since 2008, currently they appear not to be the most relevant factors, which also explains why the economic recovery of the last few years has not translated into rising political trust or democratic satisfaction.
19.2 The Evolution of Political Attitudes in Spain Figures 19.1 and 19.2 show the evolution in Spain of support for democracy between 1996 and 2018, and SWD between 1985 and 2018. This data trend displays two important features of Spanish political culture. First, Spanish citizens have supported democracy during all these years without significant changes, even despite the 2008 economic crisis. On the other hand, SWD—a good indicator of political discontent (Montero et al. 1997)—has suffered important variations over time and seems to be very closely related to the evolution of assessments of political and economic situations. Between 1985 and 2018, we can identify five periods in the evolution of SWD. In the first, between 1985 and 1992, the percentage of citizens satisfied with democracy remained fairly stable, holding at around 60 per cent. The second period, which started in 1992 and lasted until 1996, shows a dramatic decline in SDW. At the peak of this downswing, at the end of 1993, SWD was only about 30 per cent. However, this was followed by a quick recovery until 1996, when SWD reached its pre-crisis level. In the third period, from 1996 to mid2008, despite some fluctuations, SWD reached levels close to 80 per cent. In the fourth
1996 1997 1998 1998 1999 2000 2001 2001 2002 2003 2004 2004 2005 2006 2007 2007 2008 2009 2010 2010 2011 2012 2013 2013 2014 2015 2016 2016 2017 2018
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
%-Democracy is preferable to any kind of government %-In some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable %-For someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have
Figure 19.1 Support for democracy in Spain. Note: The values for support for democracy are interpolated (line); dots show the observed values Sources: CIS (2018)
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318 Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
0
%-Satisfied with Democracy
Figure 19.2 Satisfaction with democracy in Spain (1985–2018). Notes: The values for s atisfaction with democracy are interpolated (line); dots show the observed values Sources: Eurobarometer (2018), Latinobarómetro (2016)
period, which commenced with the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, SWD suffered a tremendous decline, falling to 20 per cent, while support for democracy remained high. Finally, after 2015, SWD showed signs of a modest recovery as the general economic conditions in Spain improved; however, SWD remained far from the high levels enjoyed during the preceding periods of economic recovery. As we can observe in Figure 19.3, political trust differs in important aspects from the patterns observed in relation to the support for democracy or satisfaction with its functioning. Even during times of economic boom at the end of the 1990s/first half of the 2000s, levels of political trust were relatively low and stable (although this also depended on the type of institution), with trust in the judiciary being the highest. Additionally, since 2008, political trust has also seen a significant decrease, although it has been more pronounced for institutions of representation (parliament) and political actors (political parties) than for the legal system. The current situation is unique because it was not observable during the preceding economic crises (Montero et al. 1997). Thus, the unprecedented low levels of SWD and the important decline of political trust can be attributed at first glance to the remarkable recession of the Spanish economy after the financial crisis. In particular, as we can observe in Figure 19.4, the evolution of these two attitudes coincides with a dramatic increase in unemployment, negative economic growth, and a soaring budget deficit in Spain. Nevertheless, there also exists a second plausible explanation for the dramatic deterioration in these two attitudes related with the functioning of the political system: the great political distress caused by a series of major corruption scandals. As we can see from Figure 19.5, increased public concern about cases of corruption seems to go hand-in-hand with the more recent decline of political trust. This period of political discontent has also been marked by increasingly critical opinions about the government’s
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Political Culture 319 80
60
40
20
1997 1997 1998 1999 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2003 2004 2005 2006 2006 2007 2008 2009 2009 2010 2011 2012 2012 2013 2014 2015 2015 2016
0
%-Trust in Parties
%-Trust in Judicary
%-Trust in Parliament
Figure 19.3 Political trust in Spain (1997–2016). Notes: Measured on a quarterly basis. Weighted percentages. The values for political trust are interpolated (line); dots show the observed values Sources: Eurobarometer (2018)
28 24 20 16 12 8 4 0 –4 –8 1997 1997 1998 1999 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2003 2004 2005 2006 2006 2007 2008 2009 2009 2010 2011 2012 2012 2013 2014 2015 2015 2016
–12
Inflation rate
GDP growth rate
Budget Deficit
Unemployment Rate
Figure 19.4 Economic performance in Spain (1997–2016). Notes: Measured on a quarterly or yearly basis Sources: OECD Stat (2017), IMF WEO Database (2017)
performance (see Figure 19.5), especially after a number of political scandals over party funding. In 2012, the newly elected conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, not only had to face the debt crisis but was also confronted with a series of corruption scandals related to the illegal funding of his political party, the Partido Popular (PP), and the subsequent salience of the topic in the political agenda (Orriols and Cordero 2016).
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320 Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann 70 60 50 40 30 20 10
1997 1997 1998 1999 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2003 2004 2005 2006 2006 2007 2008 2009 2009 2010 2011 2012 2012 2013 2014 2015 2015 2016
0
Perception of Corruption
Political Situation
Government Performance
Figure 19.5 Public evaluations in Spain (1997–2016). Notes: Quarterly averages Sources: CIS (2017)
Scandals also affected, although to a lesser extent, other political parties, such as the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) in the Andalusian region, and even important financial institutions such as Bankia. Indeed, when we compare the trends in Figure 19.3 and Figure 19.5, the salience of corruptions seems to be highly related to the decline in political trust, most notably for political parties and SWD. Additionally, although there have been signs of modest economic recovery since the end of 2013, the economic growth and decreases in unemployment have not been reflected in higher levels of political trust or substantial increases in SWD, stressing the importance of political factors as an alternative explanation.
19.3 Political Trust and SWD from a Comparative Perspective In this section, we will compare the evolution of political trust and SWD in Spain with developments in the rest of Europe. To this end, we compare the Spanish time trends of the last eighteen years (2000 to 2018) with average values of these attitudes by European regions: Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, West/Continental Europe, and the rest of Southern Europe. Quite remarkably, the levels of political trust and SWD in Spain are very similar to those observed in other Western/Continental European countries until
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Political Culture 321
Scandinavia Southern Europe Eastern Europe
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
2000
2008; however, since then, these have fallen dramatically to levels even below other Southern or Eastern European countries. We begin now with a more detailed longitudinal comparison of trust in national parliaments (see Figure 19.6). The deterioration of trust in parliaments does not seem to be unique to Spain, because we can observe a similar pattern for the rest of the Southern European countries since 2008. Since 2012, trust in national parliaments has been even lower in Southern Europe than observed in Eastern Europe, which has traditionally displayed the lowest levels of political trust on the continent. One the other hand, trust in the national parliament has historically been high in Scandinavian countries and has remained so, despite the financial crisis. This also seems to be the case for West/ Continental Europe. We can observe similar patterns for trust in political parties (Figure 19.7) and SWD (Figure 19.8), with the only difference being that SWD has shown some modest increase, probably following economic recovery. Thus, the decline in these two attitudes that we have witnessed in Spain is not a general phenomenon in Europe. As Norris (2011, 73) argued, longitudinal trends in these attitudes vary in direction and size by country without showing a general, structural decline. Only some countries displayed a decline in political trust and SWD since 2008 (these mostly consist of the group of Southern European countries, such as Greece, Portugal, and Cyprus). At the same time, trust in national parliaments and political parties, and SWD have not fluctuated much on average for Scandinavian and Western European countries, as was also observed for the preceding decades (Newton and Norris 2000, 71; Norris 2011, 73).
Spain West/Continental Europe
Figure 19.6 Trust in parliament in European regions (2000–2018). Notes: Yearly averages. Scandinavia = Denmark, Finland, Sweden; Southern Europe = Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal; Western/Continental Europe = Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom; Eastern Europe = Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia Sources: Eurobarometer (2018)
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322 Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2
Scandinavia Southern Europe Eastern Europe
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
0
2000
0.1
Spain West/Continental Europe
Figure 19.7 Trust in parties in European regions (2000–2018). Notes: Yearly averages. Scandinavia = Denmark, Finland, Sweden; Southern Europe = Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal; Western/Continental Europe = Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom; Eastern Europe = Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia Sources: Eurobarometer (2018)
1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4
Scandinavia Southern Europe Eastern Europe
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
0.0
2000
0.2
Spain West/Continental Europe
Figure 19.8 Trust in legal system in European regions (2000–2018). Notes: Yearly averages. Scandinavia = Denmark, Finland, Sweden; Southern Europe = Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal; Western/Continental Europe = Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom; Eastern Europe = Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia Sources: Eurobarometer (2018)
On the other hand, Figure 19.9 shows the levels of trust in the legal systems. It is important to note two features relating to trust. First, the decrease in political trust we observed in some countries seems to be limited to institutions and actors of representation, but does not encompass the legal systems. This confirms that, even though levels of trust in different institutions are highly related and might form part of the same unique dimension (Marien 2017), recent events have not affected legal institutions equally. Thus, the cause for the deterioration of trust is related to the mechanisms of representation
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Political Culture 323 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2
Scandinavia Southern Europe Eastern Europe
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
0
1999
0.1
Spain West/Continental Europe
Figure 19.9 Satisfaction with democracy in European regions (2000–2018). Notes: Yearly averages. Values for 2008 are interpolated. Scandinavia = Denmark, Finland, Sweden; Southern Europe = Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal; Western/Continental Europe = Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom; Eastern Europe = Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia Sources: Eurobarometer (2018)
and vertical accountability, and to a lesser extent to the rule of law. This might also indicate the plausibility of multiple reasons for the decline in institutional trust and SWD, because economic conditions cannot fully explain their evolution over time.
19.4 Analysing the Reasons for the Decline of Political Trust and SWD in Spain This section provides a comprehensive test of the effects of political and economic perceptions on political trust and SWD at the respondent level. To this end, we analysed individual-level panel data for Spain: the CIUPANEL (Torcal et al. 2016). This panel consisted of an online sample of the Spanish population followed over six different waves between 2014 and 2016. Quotas were applied for gender, age, education, and size of city/ village of residence and autonomous regions. For the present study, we made use of waves four and five of the panel, which were administrated in May–June and December, 2015, respectively.1 Trust in parliament, trust in parties, and trust in the judiciary were 1 Several key variables of our study, such as perceptions of performance, were only collected in the fourth and fifth wave.
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324 Mariano Torcal and Pablo Christmann queried using an eleven-point response scale, ranging from 0 (absolutely do not trust) to 10 (fully trust). SWD was measured on a four-point scale using the following question: ‘On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in your country?’ To analyse this individuallevel panel data, we estimated four fixed-effects (FE) regression models. This method allowed us to study the effects of changes in political and economic perceptions, political responsiveness, and political corruption on changes in political trust and SWD within the same individuals. A benefit of this estimation method was that we could exclude the possibility that time-invariant unobserved characteristics of the respondents were biasing the within(longitudinal) coefficients.
19.4.1 Explanatory Variables To test the effects of the economic outputs of the political system, we used a question asking about respondents’ sociotropic evaluations of the economy.2 Furthermore, previous studies reported a relationship between the personal economic well-being of a respondent and their political trust. In our study, we measured personal economic insecurity by creating an index based on factor scores for answers to four questions.3 To test the effects of the political outputs of the political system, we constructed an index by relying on a set of variables designed to capture policy performance in Spain.4 We also used an individual-level index of perceptions of corruption. There is already considerable evidence that factors related to the fairness and impartiality of the political decision-making process are connected to political trust. Thus, perceptions about corruption among politicians, the police, and judges have been shown to have a negative relationship to political trust (Della Porta 2000; Uslaner 2011), while positive perceptions related to fairness and impartiality have been linked to increased political trust. Our perception-of-corruption index is based on factor scores from six questions asking about the extent to which corruption is widespread in (A) the Spanish parliament, (B) political parties, (C) the judicial system, (D) the police, and (E) civil servants.
2 Question: ‘What do you think about the state of the economy in Spain? Would you say it is very good, good, neither good nor bad, bad, or very bad?’ 3 The questions are: (A) ‘Today, to what extent are you worried about paying the bills for your home?’, (B) ‘Today, to what extent are you worried about needing to reduce your standard of living?’, (C) ‘Today, to what extent are you worried about having a job?’, (D) ‘Today, to what extent are you worried about paying back bank loans or mortgages?’ 4 For this, we relied on four different items which asked about respondents’ evaluations of the employment situation, the education system, the healthcare system, and immigration policy. The index was created by calculating factor scores for a single un-rotated factor solution. Our expectation was that more favourable evaluations of the policy output should be related to higher political trust.
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Political Culture 325 Finally, we tapped into evaluations of the political system by relying on an evaluation of government performance.5
19.4.2 Control Variables We also added a set of important individual attitudinal control variables. The first of these was the respondent’s left–right self-placement, because there is documented evidence of a relationship between this and political trust (Hetherington and Rudolph 2015).6 We also controlled for respondents’ political interest.7 Citizens who understand politics and think that their participation has an impact on policy-making should have greater trust in political institutions. Finally, we included a variable that captured the extent of respondents’ identification with the Spanish nation-state.8 Although identification with the political community is relatively high in Spain, citizens in some regions of Spain also exhibit strong regional identities, which might affect their evaluation of Spanish democracy. We did not need to account for socio-demographic variables, such as age, gender, or education level, because these variables changed very little in the period under consideration and we estimated FE regression models.
19.4.3 Results Table 19.1 presents the results of the four linear FE models based on the individual-level panel data from the CIUPANEL. To facilitate the interpretation of the results, all the explanatory variables were standardized to an average of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.9 Overall, the fit of the models was very good, and they can explain between 59 and 68 per cent of the temporal variation of the dependent variables. In Table 19.1, we can see that changes in individuals’ political trust and SWD are strongly driven by changing perceptions of responsiveness and corruption, for which we found consistent and substantial effects within respondents. In light of the previous discussion on the aggregate evolution of political trust in Spain, it is not very surprising that we found a strong indication that worsening perceptions of corruption 5 Question: ‘Overall, how do you evaluate the performance of the PP government? Would you say it is (5) very good; (4) good; (3) fair; (2) bad; (1) very bad?’ 6 Question: ‘In politics, people sometimes talk of left and right. Where would you place yourself on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means the left and 10 means the right?’ 7 Question: ‘How much are you interested in politics?’ Are you (4) very much; (3) much; (2) a little bit; or (1) not at all?’ 8 Question: ‘To what extent do you identify with Spain? To answer this question, please use the following scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means ‘no identification’ and 10 means ‘strong identification.’ 9 Please be cautious with a direct comparison of effect sizes across models because the trust items and SWD have been measured on different scales.
Trust in Parliament (Model 1)
Trust in Parties (Model 2)
Trust in Judicary (Model 3)
Satisfaction with Democracy (Model 4)
β
(se)
β
(se)
β
(se)
β
(se)
Perception of responsiveness index
0.68***
(0.05)
0.51***
(0.05)
0.33***
(0.05)
0.13***
(0.02)
Perception of corruption index
−0.41***
(0.06)
−0.37***
(0.05)
−0.42***
(0.05)
−0.06***
(0.02)
Government performance evaluation
0.45***
(0.09)
0.25**
(0.07)
0.33***
(0.08)
0.13***
(0.03)
Policy performance index
0.30***
(0.06)
0.17**
(0.05)
0.21***
(0.06)
0.05**
(0.02)
Economic situation in Spain
0.05
(0.06)
0.08
(0.05)
0.11
(0.06)
0.05**
(0.02)
Personal economic situation index
−0.12
(0.06)
−0.16**
(0.06)
0.01
(0.06)
−0.04
(0.02)
Identification with Spain
0.52***
(0.07)
0.24***
(0.06)
0.21**
(0.07)
0.04
(0.02)
Left-right ideology
0.20*
(0.08)
0.09
(0.07)
0.20*
(0.08)
−0.03
(0.02)
Political interest
0.18*
(0.07)
0.02
(0.06)
−0.05
(0.07)
0.03
(0.02)
Constant
3.02***
(0.02)
1.92***
(0.02)
2.91***
(0.02)
1.99***
(0.01)
Adjusted R-Square
0.66
0.59
0.68
0.67
Observations
4,417
4,417
4,417
4,417
Number of respondents
2,702
2,702
2,702
2,702
Notes: Fixed effects (FE) regression; standardized β; standard errors in parentheses; significance (two-tailed) *** p