Towards a regional political class?: Professional politicians and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland 9781847793492

Citation preview

Towards a regional political class?

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd i

20/8/09 11:45:39

DEVOLUTION series series editor Charlie Jeffery Devolution has established new political institutions in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London and the other English regions since 1997. These devolution reforms have farreaching implications for the politics, policy and society of the UK. Radical institutional change, combined with a fuller capacity to express the UK’s distinctive territorial identities, is reshaping the way the UK is governed and opening up new directions of public policy. These are the biggest changes to UK politics for at least 150 years. The Devolution series brings together the best research in the UK on devolution and its implications. It draws together the best analysis from the Economic and Social Research Council’s research programme on Devolution and Constitutional Change. The series has three central themes, all of which are vital components in understanding the changes devolution has set in train. 1 Delivering public policy after devolution: diverging from Westminster: Does devolution result in the provision of different standards of public service in health or education, or in widening economic disparities from one part of the UK to another? If so, does it matter? 2 The political institutions of devolution: How well do the new devolved institutions work? How effectively are devolved and UK-level matters coordinated? How have political organisations which have traditionally operated UK-wide – political parties, interest groups – responded to multi-level politics? 3 Public attitudes, devolution and national identity: How do people in different parts of the UK assess the performance of the new devolved institutions? Do people identify themselves differently as a result of devolution? Does a common sense of Britishness still unite people from different parts of the UK?

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd ii

already published Devolution and constitutional change in Northern Ireland Paul Carmichael, Colin Knox and Bob Osborne (eds) Beyond devolution and decentralisation Alistair Cole Between two Unions Europeanisation and Scottish devolution Paolo Dardanelli Territorial politics and health policy UK health policy in comparative perspective Scott L. Greer The English Question Robert Hazell Devolution and electoral politics Dan Hough and Charlie Jeffery (eds) Debating nationhood and government in Britain, 1885–1939 Perspectives from the ‘four nations’ Duncan Tanner, Chris Williams, Wil Griffith and Andrew Edwards (eds) Devolution and power in the United Kingdom Alan Trench The Northern Veto Mark Sandford (ed.)

20/8/09 11:45:39

Towards a regional political class? Professional politicians and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland Klaus Stolz

Manchester University Press Manchester

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd iii

20/8/09 11:45:40

Copyright © Klaus Stolz 2009 The right of Klaus Stolz to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 7979 5 hardback First published 2009 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, UK

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd iv

20/8/09 11:45:40

Contents

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1

2

3

page viii viii x xii

The quest for a regional political class When regionalisation meets political professionalisation: object of analysis and objectives of the study Political professionalisation, regionalisation and the political class: theoretical deliberations, conceptual framework and a double research question How and where to study a regional political class: methodological deliberations, case selection and outline of the study Regionalism, regionalisation and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland: setting the stage for a regional political class Catalonia: from Francoism to regional party democracy Scotland: inserting a regional parliamentary system in a unitary state Two cases, similar pattern and yet considerable differences Political careers: the making of a regional political class in itself Functional differentiation: the professionalisation of regional politicians Personal, occupational and political background: who gets in and where do they come from? Occupational status, concurrent political positions and time expenditure: what do they do, how much time do they spend?

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd v

1 1

4 16

24 25 35 46

49 53 55 67

20/8/09 11:45:40

vi

CONTENTS

Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tenure: how long do they stay? 81 Resumé 96 Territorial differentiation: the regionalisation of professional political careers 97 The territorial orientation of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland 100 Moving up: career movements from the regional to the national level 106 Moving down: career movements from the national to the regional level 116 Patterns of movements 137 Political careers and regional political class in Catalonia and Scotland 137 Political careers 138 A regional political class? 148 4

5

(Re)making political institutions: a regional political class for itself Theoretical considerations: the institutionalisation of professional politics in a regionalist context Professional politicians as self-interested actors in institutional politics A regional political class in a regionalist context Regional institutions as objects of reform The Catalan case Regional parliamentarians and the institutionalisation of their professional self-interest in the parliamentary system Political parties and the colonisation of state and society The Scottish case Regional parliamentarians and the institutionalisation of their professional self-interest in the parliamentary system Political parties and the colonisation of state and society Comparison: a tale of two regional political classes Focused v. diffused patterns of political professionalisation Explanations: regional institution-building and national path dependency

157 158 158 160 164 167 167 192 212 212 237 258 259 263

Conclusion: traces of a regional political class in Catalonia and Scotland 277 The impact of political professionalisation on democracy and autonomy in Catalonia and Scotland 277

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd vi

20/8/09 11:45:40

CONTENTS

vii

Theoretical insights and conceptual progress: the regional political class as epitome of the complementary character of territorial and functional social organisation Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 References

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd vii

Survey of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland Interview series with Catalan and Scottish politicians Time commitments of regional politicians

286

294 297 302 304

20/8/09 11:45:40

Illustrations

Figures

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3

Politicians at the regional level Causal model of the formation and role of a regional political class The Catalan party system The Scottish party system Career patterns in multi-level systems The Scottish career pattern The Catalan career pattern

10 15 34 44 99 141 146

Tables

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Prior offices of MCPs and MSPs Occupational situation of MCPs Political positions of MCPs Types of politicians in the Catalan Parliament Occupational situation of MSPs Political positions of MSPs Occupational status, concurrent political positions and time commitments of MCPs and MSPs 3.8 MCPs’ tenure in the Catalan Parliament 3.9 MCPs’ full parliamentary tenure 3.10 Volatility, seat change and turnover in Catalonia and Scotland 3.11 Preferences, ambitions and perceptions of MCPs and MSPs 3.12 Share of national parliamentarians with experience in a regional parliament

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd viii

65 68 69 71 73 74 75 82 83 93 104 107

20/8/09 11:45:40

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

3.13 Members of the Catalan Parliament moving to the Spanish Congress (1982–2008) 3.14 Regional parliamentarians with experience in the national parliament 3.15 Direct and indirect movements from the Spanish Congress to the Catalan Parliament 3.16 Movements from the Spanish Congress to the Catalan Parliament, by party 3.17 Career movements of Catalan parliamentarians between regional and national parliament (1982–2008) 3.18 Career movements of Catalan parliamentarians, by parties (1982–2008) 3.19 Career movements of Catalan (1980–88) and Scottish (1999–2007) parliamentarians 4.1 Evaluation of remuneration, resources and support A1.1 Members of the Catalan Parliament (MCPs) survey A1.2 Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs) survey A2.1 List of interviews A3.1 Time commitments (hours per week), by type of politician in the Catalan Parliament A3.2 Time commitments (hours per week) of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd ix

ix

110 117 119 121 127 128 131 177 295 296 298 302 303

20/8/09 11:45:40

Acknowledgements

In completing this study I have received support from a large number of institutions and individuals. The most substantial source of funding came from the Volkswagen Foundation, which, between 1998 and 2004, funded a research group on ‘Politik als Beruf’ (‘Politics as a Profession’) directed by Jens Borchert. The work in this group provided not only the material basis but also the intellectual stimulus for this study. I am indebted to the research group members – Jens Borchert, Klaus Detterbeck, Susanne Koenen, Michael Koß, Jörg Lohse, Peter Matuschek, Marion Reiser, Dominik Schunk and Jürgen Zeiß – for their benevolent criticism and constant encouragement. The final stages of this project were generously supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) allowing me to concentrate on writing up the manuscript. I am very grateful to both these funding institutions. During my research visits to Catalonia and Scotland I enjoyed the hospitality of the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, and the Institute of Governance at the University of Edinburgh, where I felt very welcome as a visiting scholar. My thanks go to Francesc Pallarés and David McCrone who were heading these institutions at that time, but also to Klaus-Jürgen Nagel and Paddy Bort who made sure that I felt at home in both these places. Special thanks go to my friend Liam McArthur and his family who were putting me up during my stays in Edinburgh, providing their German visitor with a couthie Scottish home and their enjoyable company. There is one group of people without whose support this study would have been inconceivable: the politicians under investigation. I would like to thank all those who anonymously filled in my survey questionnaire and even more so all those who granted me an interview on their professional life and career, despite being not too keen to be portrayed as members of a political class. Presenting different parts and versions of the study at international conferences and workshops I have received valuable comments from Heinrich

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd x

20/8/09 11:45:40

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xi

Best, Gary Copeland, David Docherty, William Downs, Stefaan Fiers, Mark Jones, André Kaiser, Michael Keating, David McCrone, James Mitchell, Niels Lange, Werner Patzelt, Fabiano Santos, Roland Sturm and Bernhard Weßels. That the following text is a lot more readable and contains fewer mistakes than in its earlier versions is mainly due to the efforts of Jens Borchert, André Kaiser and Alan Lawson. Jens has not only inspired much of the conceptual thinking that set me on the way, he has also commented on many drafts in his innate constructive manner. André read through the whole text providing invaluable advice and criticism, always reminding me to bring the project to an end. He was a source of constant support. Alan has not only brushed up my English, but has also served as canny typesetter and handyman for lastminute questions. Further technical help was provided by Felix Lüther and Ute Kalbitzer. I am grateful to all of them, for giving their time and enthusiasm to this project. However, any remaining faults are of course my own responsibility. I dedicate this book to two little persons whose arrival on this earth has most certainly prolonged this project, but who have enriched my life: to Anna and Oscar. Cologne Klaus Stolz

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd xi

20/8/09 11:45:40

Abbreviations

ACM AMS AP CC CCRTV CDC CDS CFPC CiU CMB CoSLA CpC CSA CSG DETR ERC EUiA FMC FPTP HC HL ICPS ICV IU Lib–Dem LOAPA MCP MEP MNP MP

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd xii

Associació Catalana de Municipis Additional Member System Allianza Popular Centristes de Catalunya Corporació Catalana de Ràdio i Televisió Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya Centro Democrático y Social Consell de Forces Polítiques de Catalunya Convergència i Unió Corporación Metropolitana de Barcelona Convention of Scottish Local Authorities Cuitadans pel Canvi Campaign for a Scottish Assembly Constitutional Steering Group Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya Esquerra Unida i Alternativa Federació de Municipis de Catalunya first-past-the-post House of Commons House of Lords Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds Izquierda Unida Liberal Democrat Ley Orgánica por la Armonización del proceso Autonómico Member of Catalan Parliament Member of European Parliament Member of National Parliament Member of Parliament

20/8/09 11:45:40

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

MSP NDPD OMOV PP PPC PR PSA PSC PSUC PSOE RTVE SCC SEC SLARC SLD SNP SO SoS SPCB SPICe SPOR SSP SSRB STUC STV UCD UDC UK

xiii

Member of Scottish Parliament Non-Departmental Public Body one-member-one-vote Partido Popular Partit Popular de Catalunya proportional representation Partido Socialista de Andalucía Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya Partido Socialista Obrero Español Radiotelevisión Española Scottish Constitutional Convention Scottish Executive Committee Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee Scottish Liberal Democrat Scottish National Party Scottish Office Secretary of State for Scotland Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body Scottish Parliament Information Centre Scottish Parliament Official Report Scottish Socialist Party Senior Salaries Review Body Scottish Trades Union Congress single transferable vote Unió de Centro Democrático Unió Democràtica de Catalunya United Kingdom

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd xiii

20/8/09 11:45:40

M1870 - STOLZ PRELIMS.indd xiv

20/8/09 11:45:40

1 The quest for a regional political class

When regionalisation meets political professionalisation: object of analysis and objectives of the study

Those who fought for Catalan self-government and democracy against the Franco dictatorship didn’t do so with a view to a professional political career: indeed, it was a very risky business, threatening their lives and livelihoods. In the more than thirty years since Franco’s death, though, Jordi Pujol and Pasqual Maragall have not only continued to live for Catalan politics, they have also been living off their political vocation, drawing their salary and pension from serving in the most prestigious positions of Catalan politics. Furthermore, in regionalising the Spanish state and establishing Catalan regional democracy, they, together with their colleagues in this profession, have been shaping an institutional structure that provides many more Catalans with the opportunity to combine their strong feelings for Catalonia with a professional political career. In May 1999, nineteen years after the inauguration of the Catalan Parliament, another long-awaited regional parliament was opened in Scotland. Again, this regionalisation process had not been initiated by professional politicians desperate to create new job opportunities for themselves, but by a broad self-government movement determined to resolve what they perceived as a severe democratic deficit. In addition to providing additional means of representation and participation, the establishment of the Scottish Parliament was heralded as a radical break with the Westminster tradition of democracy. It was to be inspired by a ‘new politics’. Significantly though, the parliament was opened by a long-standing parliamentarian of the UK and the European Parliament, Winnie Ewing, and the first Scottish administration was headed by a former UK minister, Donald Dewar. The new regional body had thus attracted experienced professional career politicians. It also provided the opportunity for those who had not been able to live off politics before to embark on such a career.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 1

20/8/09 11:50:54

2

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

In both these cases newly established institutions of regional democracy were to be populated by professional politicians. This collision of regionalisation and political professionalisation poses two sets of questions. First, to what extent have these particular processes of regionalisation – the particular hopes and expectations in each regionalist movement and their respective institutional manifestations – affected the way these politicians conduct their profession and pursue their careers.1 Second, to what extent has the emergence of professional politics and professional politicians, in turn, affected or compromised the regional democracy as envisaged by those who had helped to bring it about. This tension between regionalisation and political professionalisation in a regionalist context is at the centre of this study. Political professionalisation, no doubt, can be seen as one of the most prolonged macro-trends in politics. Famously discerned by Max Weber in his lecture in 1919, this process has been unfolding ever since. Today it has not only reached all modern democracies, but has also invaded all areas of the political system. Whether as member of the national parliament, city mayor, party official or government adviser, politics has become a profession. This process has not by-passed the regional level: in many traditional federal systems, salaries, time-demands, staff, and infrastructural support of state legislators have increased considerably over the last decades. Germany and the US are among the most pronounced examples of this development (Friedrich 1977; Rosenthal 1996, 1998; Gress and Huth 1998). By contrast, regionalisation is a more recent trend. Since the 1970s, many unitary nation-states – especially in western Europe (i.e. France, Italy, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom) – have undergone a process of regionalisation, culminating in the erection of directly elected authorities 1

The definition of region, regionalism and regionalisation is notoriously complex and contested. In this study, these terms are used as rather broad concepts of comparative territorial politics. Here, the term ‘region’ refers to any territorially defined unit between the local and the central state level with some kind of political or administrative identity, regardless of its constitutional status or its selfascription. Such a definition includes individual states of federal systems as well as mere administrative units of unitary states, including recent political subdivisions as well as those with long historic ancestries. Thus, despite their claims to nationhood, both Catalonia and Scotland are treated as regions. Regionalism refers to the deliberate politicisation of the regional frame of reference, no matter whether the ultimate aim of this politicisation is the transformation of the region into an independent nation-state or merely the strengthening of its political distinctiveness within a given institutional set-up; thus the term also encompasses Catalan and Scottish nationalism. Finally, regionalisation refers to the process by which political status, power, competencies, etc., is transferred from the central state to the regions.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 2

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

3

between the central-state and the municipal level. While the level of professionalisation of these newly created regional institutions and offices varies considerably, generally remaining below that of their national counterparts, there is no doubt that professional politics and professional politicians have entered them from the very start. If we are to believe Weber’s dictum that political professionalisation has changed democracy for ever, this change should thus also be visible in regional politics. In turn, it seems also safe to assume that the regionalisation of political systems, especially if induced by regionalism, does affect the respective patterns of political professionalisation. Thus, there is a dual relationship between political professionalisation and regionalisation to be analysed: (1) the professionalisation of regional politics and (2) the regionalisation of professional politics. Surprisingly, the strands of social research that have been concerned with one of the two processes – regional and federal studies on the one hand and legislative and career studies on the other – have hardly ever taken account of each other and have thus missed out on the analysis of their interrelation. One possible explanation for such an astonishing case of professional blinkers can be seen in the fact that the two processes refer to opposite dimensions of social organisation – the territorial and the functional – which have long wrongly been treated as being rivals rather than complementing each other (Keating 1998: 3ff.). In this study, the seemingly disparate research strands will be brought together to analyse the empirical coincidence of the two processes in a comparative case study. Looking at Catalonia and Scotland, it will be asked how regional political institutions (together with other regional characteristics) are affecting professional political careers, and how, in turn, the professional self-interest of these politicians is influencing the institutionalisation of regional politics. In revealing the causal mechanisms of the dynamic interrelation between regionalisation and political professionalisation in a regionalist context, the object of this endeavour is a multiple one: first, it is meant to contribute to the development of each of these strands of research, to the study of political professionalisation and to regional studies, by extending their focus to the other field. As this study shows, both research strands would do well to recognise the territorial embeddedness of politics as well as its functional differentiation. Second, it is meant to enhance our conceptual grasp and theoretical understanding of the dynamic interrelation between political professionalisaton and political institutions on the regional level. As a major instrument in this process, the concept of political class (see below) is introduced and adapted to the regional level. Doing so, in turn, is meant to demonstrate its analytical validity and to further sharpen it as an analytical tool. Last but not least, the study is meant to considerably

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 3

20/8/09 11:50:55

4

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

deepen our understanding of the political and institutional development in two of the most widely discussed (politically as well as academically) cases of regionalism.

Political professionalisation, regionalisation and the political class: theoretical deliberations, conceptual framework and a double research question

The theoretical starting point of this study is Max Weber’s central insight that political professionalisation entails an irreversible, qualitative change in democracy. For Weber this qualitative change was closely connected with the emergence of the professional politician, who is not living merely for politics but also off politics, and who strives ‘to make politics a permanent source of income’ (Weber 1958: 84). The present study is thus emphasising the material aspect of political professionalisation – i.e. the fact that politics has become a profession on its own, rather than that politicians are increasingly showing an occupational background in the so-called ‘professions’ or an educational background resembling those of ‘professionals’.2 If we are to believe Max Weber, the historical process by which politics has turned into a profession is closely related to two other political macrotrends. In fact, political professionalisation may be seen as a direct result of the expansion of the modern state in conjunction with its democratisation (Weber 1958; Cotta and Best 2000: 493–526; Borchert 2003a: 29). The erection of a rational and differentiated central state bureaucracy, its ever-increasing activity in areas such as transport, infrastructure or social policy, and the subsequent growth of public expenditure has raised the demands on politics and politicians since the middle of the nineteenth century in all industrialised countries. The increasing scope and complexity of public policies have multiplied the legislative time required to formulate and debate them as well as to control their implementation. Thus, politics has become a full-time activity, less and less compatible with any other paid occupation. At the same time, in many of these countries the struggle for democracy saw the electoral franchise extended to the lower strata of society, and consequently the election of representatives from the working classes to the national parliaments. Unlike many of their counterparts from conservative and liberal parties, these new parliamentarians were not financially independent. In the context of increasing legislative time-demands, they became obliged to make 2

For such an understanding of political professionalisation see among others Eliassen and Pedersen (1978).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 4

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

5

a living out of politics. In the beginning their endowment was often left to the trade unions or their respective political parties. In the long run, though, these new social forces created the pressure that finally won the first parliamentary salaries and thus public funding of professional politics. While this historical process of political professionalisation can be detected in almost all industrial democracies, it has neither unfolded in a uniform way, nor has it produced uniform patterns of professional politics. Following Borchert (2003b: 8–10) we may distinguish four empirically linked yet analytically distinct dimensions of political professionalisation: the individual level, the office level, the institutional level, and finally the system level. On the individual level, political professionalisation refers to the recurrent process that turns the political amateur into a professional. This process entails a dissociation from the old profession and a socialisation into the new, political trade. Usually it takes place by following a more or less defined model career path where some kind of apprenticeship positions lead into the professional realm. The stage as a political professional is reached when the politician draws a salary he or she can live on from a political occupation that demands most of their working time, and when he or she strives to keep it that way. It is thus best analysed in an ex-post analysis of individual political careers. Office professionalisation is the historical process by which a particular political position is endowed with specific resources that allow the office holder to ‘live off’ the position in question. This process is usually also accompanied by the emergence of specific demands that compel the officeholder also to live for this office. Resources and demands are both linked to the office independent from the individual who holds this office. Once they reach a certain level, the office can be considered professionalised. While the logic of political professionalisation makes it very hard to retreat from this point, individual holders of the office may well strive to expand their resource endowment, while functional necessities may add further demands. Office professionalisation is best indicated by salaries, infrastructural and staff support, and time demands. The professionalisation of a political institution can be seen as a quite similar process, yet one that has to be distinguished from office professionalisation. For an institution to be professionalised, not all offices within its boundaries have to meet this criteria. On the other hand, professionalised offices may exist in an otherwise non-professional institution. Borchert illustrates this with reference to a legislature: here, the professionalisation may start with certain leadership positions (in party groups, in committees) or particular constituent parts (a party group, a state delegation) before it expands to the parliamentary mandate in general. In order to establish the degree of institutional professionalisation, we would have to look at the resources

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 5

20/8/09 11:50:55

6

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

directly attached to the institution (e.g. parliamentary staff and infrastructure) in conjunction with the varying degrees of professionalisation of its different offices. The study of the professionalisation of the political system requires a synoptical view of all its political institutions and offices. For a quantitative measure we may simply count the number of professionalised positions (in relation to the population at large). Yet a much more interesting question relates to the pattern of professionalisation that has emerged in the political system. Which institutions and offices are professionalised, which are not? In what way do individual careers of professional politicians link these offices and institutions, by cumulation or succession? The obvious differences between the US and any continental European party democracy in these respects may illustrate the potential of such questions to differentiate between political systems with similar overall levels of professionalisation. But what are the consequences of this complex, multi-dimensional process? Again it was Weber who convincingly argued that political professionalisation had, in turn, irreversibly changed representative democracy and the modern state. And indeed, the emergence of professional politicians and their material dependence on a political career has introduced an additional interest into the system of representation: the self-interest of professional politicians. No matter what social background they come from and which social or territorial constituency they are elected to represent, once they enter into the sphere of professional politics, politicians constitute a social group of their own. This has rather significant effects. On the one hand their relative detachment from the particularistic interests of voters and voter groups and their common socialisation in the political process is highly functional; professional communication skills, a collective consciousness as a professional group and a collective interest in the functioning of ‘their’ institutions might facilitate public policy-making and stabilise democracy by bridging social gaps and pacifying ideological conflict (for such a view see Herzog 1992). At the same time, however, politicians’ interest in long-term professional careers runs contrary to the central democratic claim that they are elected on a temporary basis and may be voted out at citizens’ will. Their self-referentiality and potential exclusiveness leaves ordinary citizens increasingly alienated from the political process. Historically inevitable, functionally indispensable, yet with a high potential for pathological consequences, political professionalisation has thus been aptly termed a ‘necessary nuisance’ (Borchert 2003a). It has provided the ground for the emergence of professional politicians as a class in and for itself. The notion of political class had first been coined by Gaetano Mosca in the 1880s as a central element in his foundation of political science (Stolz

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 6

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

7

2002a). While Mosca did not distinguish between the ruling class and the political class, he already recognised that this newly emerging group of political leaders was not only interested in ruling but also in providing itself with the ‘material means of subsistence’ (Mosca 1939: 50) by doing so. In the middle of the next century, the concept was considerably sharpened by the French sociologist Burdeau who explicitly stripped it of its connection with political power, emphasising instead the social and material conditions which unite professional politicians. For him the political class ‘consists of those persons or groups who – apart from the goals they pursue – share in the privileges linked to political authority’ (Burdeau 1975 [1958]: 263). This strand of thought has subsequently been taken up by Klaus von Beyme (1993, 1996) in his attempt to re-introduce the concept into political science as an analytical category. His main conceptual innovation lies in the proposed distinction between a political elite and the political class (Stolz 2002b). According to Beyme ‘a political elite acts on behalf of a third party, the public’: it is concerned with policy-making and ‘maintaining steering capacity. The political class, on the other hand, is self-referential: it develops interests only on behalf of itself’ (von Beyme 1996: 71). Of course there is a considerable personal overlap between the two groups, yet they are not identical. As Borchert (2003b: 4) points out: ‘not everybody involved in political steering is a professional politician and not every professional politician has a say when it comes to important decisions’. Decoupling the concept from the very specific institutional configuration to which it had been connected by von Beyme – i.e. the western European party state – Borchert finally laid the ground to use the political class as a broadly applicable analytical tool in historical and comparative social research. According to him, this class is constituted by ‘the collective interest in a reliable income from politics and in a reasonable chance for career maintenance and advancement’ (Borchert 2003b: 3), and is inextricably connected with modern parliamentarianism that is not only publicly funded but is also providing its members with the competencies to regulate the structures that are shaping their career opportunities. From a neo-institutionalist perspective, the political class and the structure of political institutions can be seen to be linked by an interdependent relationship, which allows us to conceptualise the political class as a dependent as well as an independent variable (Borchert 2003b: 13; and figure 1.2). On the one hand professional politicians (as a dependent variable) are embedded in an institutional context which constitutes the central part of their ‘structure of opportunities’ (Schlesinger 1966). Access to professional political positions, for example, can be seen to be defined by legal provisions, the electoral system, the party system and the rules and procedures of the recruitment process (Norris 1997a:11). Career maintenance and advancement prospects

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 7

20/8/09 11:50:55

8

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

are dependent on, among other factors, the sheer number of professionalised positions, formal or electoral tenure restrictions, the patronage power of political parties, etc. Thus, in general, professional political careers are no accident. Who gets into professional politics and what kind of opportunities do arise in the pursuit of such a career is largely contingent on an institutional structure, ‘providing both selective incentives and imposing restrictions’ (Borchert 2003b: 15). This structural embeddedness is the reason that individual career paths are reproduced and finally consolidated into collective career patterns. Their common stake in the privileges of ‘government, parliament and a politically orientated civil service’ (von Beyme 1993: 34, my translation) corresponds to what Marx once called ‘the sameness of revenues and sources of revenues’ (Marx 1972 [1894]: 893) which were to demarcate a social class. This common stake may be seen to objectively unify professional politicians across the party divide and put them in competition with non-professional challengers, especially from within their own party. Socialised in the same institutional context, professional politicians not only develop common interests, but also become increasingly conscious of them. It is this process that finally transforms the Marxian ‘class in itself’ into a ‘class for itself’ (von Beyme 1993: 156; Borchert 2003b: 3–4). Provided with such a common consciousness, the political class is developing into a collective actor that is now, in turn, capable of acting upon its own institutional context. After all, as general law-makers politicians are able to shape the institutional context in which they pursue their professional career like no other professional group. Once individual career interests are seen to coincide with a collective class interest, the capability of this class to shape and reshape political institutions is formally unlimited, while reforms against their collective interest are almost impossible. It is thus no surprise that professional politicians have been seen to successfully mould their institutional context according to their career interests. This phenomenon goes far beyond the frequently lamented self-awarded parliamentary pay rises. Much more serious for the democratic process are strategies of immunisation against the threat of electorally induced career termination – in the form of a closed list system (as in many European states) or via a system of campaign finance that effectively leaves challengers without a chance (as in the US) (Borchert 2003a) – and the colonisation of state and society by the use of partisan patronage (von Beyme 1993). Like many other concepts in social theory the concept of political class has been developed in order to analyse politics at the national level. However, as stated above, politics has also become a profession on the regional level. This has happened by incremental processes of professionalisation of state politics in federal systems, yet also by the regionalisation of unitary systems based on

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 8

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

9

professional politics. Intriguingly, processes of regionalisation can be linked to the very processes that have been stated to be instrumental in bringing about political professionalisation: state modernisation and democratisation. Viewed from above, regionalisation might be seen as a response of the central state to its functional deficiencies in the context of rapid social, technological and economic change.3 According to Hesse and Benz (1990: 14–15) such a devolution of tasks, competencies and resources to regional authorities represents an ‘organisational modernisation of the state’ complementing (and partly replacing) the state’s traditional sectoral penetration of society with a territorial differentiation of public policy-making. From below, regionalisation might be seen to improve the democratic deficiencies of a unitary state by introducing an additional level of political representation closer to the citizen and by improving opportunities for political participation. Empirically we may find that in most regionalisation processes both aspects – democratisation and state modernisation – are present, though not always in the same chronological order and with the same causal impact. A very particular situation exists where regionalisation processes are caused by regionalism. Following its definition as ‘the politicisation of a subnational territorial frame of reference’ (Gerdes 1985: 42, my translation), regionalism is a social force pushing for regional institutions neither merely as a functional necessity nor following an abstract democratic imperative. Instead, regionalist mobilisation of territorial differences is first and foremost an expression of regional identity that may or may not be linked to state modernisation and democratisation, depending on the ideological orientation and the strategic considerations within the regionalist movement. As a consequence, institutions of regional self-government resulting from regionalist pressure are in general symbolically charged much beyond their formal constitutional or democratic significance. This emphasis on territorial distinctiveness, though, does not preclude political professionalisation. Instead, in many of these newly established regions, politics and politicians have been professionalised from the very start. It is in these extreme cases where regionalism has triggered off concurrent processes of regionalisation and political professionalisation that we can best study the interaction of territorial and functional differentiation.4 In order to do so, however, we have to adapt the conceptual framework reproduced above by introducing an explicit territorial dimension (Figure 1.1). 3

4

According to Hesse and Benz (1990: 14–15) the devolution of tasks, competencies and resources to regional authorities represents an ‘organisational modernisation of the state’, complementing (and partly replacing) the state’s traditional sectoral penetration of society with a territorial differentiation of public policy-making. For the advantages of extreme-case analysis with regard to the revelation of causal mechanisms, see Gerring (2001: 217).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 9

20/8/09 11:50:55

10

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Figure 1.1 Politicians at the regional level Territorial differentiation

+

+

–

(1)

(2)

Regional political class

Regional part of national political class

(3)

(4)

Regional politicians as regional citizens

Regional politicians as national citizens

Functional differentiation

–

While Borchert rightly notes that the social coherence of professional politicians and thus their development into a political class is empirically contingent (Borchert 2003b: 7), regionalism points to the fact that the homogeneity of a political class might also be harmed by territorial differences. In general, we might thus understand the existence and structure of a political class on the regional level as determined by two analytically distinct dimensions (Stolz 2001): 1

2

politicians’ degree of functional differentiation, internal homogeneity and autonomy (as a professional class in itself and for itself) in relation to the public and other strata of society; the degree of territorial differentiation, homogeneity and autonomy of regional politicians in relation to their national counterparts and those from other regions.

The first dimension contains the general criteria governing the process of class formation as set above. It has two different aspects: first, whether political professionalisation on the regional level has reached the point where it produces professional politicians who meet the material criteria to form part of a class in itself (i.e. making a living from regional politics). And, second, whether the regional level provides the context that allows for the formation of a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 10

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

11

distinctive collective consciousness as professional politicians with common interests and for their collective action in pursuit of these interests. The second dimension reflects the territorial embeddedness of politicians. Even if the social distinctiveness of regional politicians merits their definition as a class, we still do not know whether they form part of a unified national class or whether they form a regional class of itself. While neither a completely self-contained regional political class nor a completely homogenous national one is empirically conceivable, they represent the end points on a scale of territorial differentiation. There may be a nation-wide pattern of political careers or considerable regional variations. Careers of regional politicians may be more or less defined by regional institutions; they may be directed to a regional or a national apex. The less that regional politicians are socialised in nation-wide institutions and the more their career interest remain shaped and directed to the regional arena, the less do we find a unified national political class. What kind of outcome would we expect in a situation where regionalism has triggered concurrent processes of regionalisation and political professionalisation? From the prevailing theoretical perspectives in the two divided research communities discussed above, only two mutually exclusive scenarios are conceivable. 1

Following the logic of functionalism and modernisation theory – hitherto implicitly adopted in career studies and studies of political professionalisation – functional cleavages are seen to erode territorial cleavages (Durkheim 1964; Deutsch 1966). Following ‘an inherent tendency for professional knowledge to promote governmental centralization’ (Beer 1977: 10), the professionalisation of politics and politicians is itself bound to counteract any regionalist emphasis on territorial differences. As professional interests are replacing territorial bonds, the centripetal bias of opportunity structures is increasingly directing political careers towards the national centre, where power and resources tend to be concentrated. Regionalisation is seen simply to expand this structure of opportunity into the regional arena. As a consequence, potential confrontations between regionalist activists or regionally embedded amateur politicians and the professional politicians on the national level are superseded (or at least watered down) by a common bond of professionalism that unites politicians from the centre to the periphery. Politicians develop a common consciousness and class interest, no matter where they pursue their new professional careers. Regional politicians will thus form an integral part of the national political class (box 2 in figure 1.1). Their professional self-interest may even turn into a driving force in the further erosion and de-politicisation of territorial differences. Political professionalisation

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 11

20/8/09 11:50:55

12

2

5

6

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

may thus be seen as the true antidote to regionalism and as an agent of national integration. In contrast, the conventional perspective of regional studies is focused on the territorial differentiation of politics. Thus, such a perspective emphasises the regional embeddedness of politicians, no matter whether they are pursuing politics professionally or not. In general regional politicians are often seen as much less likely than their national counterparts to disentangle themselves from their fellow citizens and to pursue their own self-interest. On the one hand this can be a function of a lower degree of political professionalisation. However, following many ‘classics’ of political theory (from Plato to Rousseau and Montesquieu) it may also be the result of the democratic benefits of smaller size, automatically enhancing opportunities for citizen participation and diminishing the spatial distance between representative and represented.5 In a regional society characterised by regionalism the scope of regional politicians to develop a distinct class consciousness as professional politicians and to pursue their self-interest at the expense of that of their constituents is further restricted by the importance of ‘identity politics’. In an idealist version of this argument, regional politicians by themselves might be seen to be strongly adherent to the principle of the common (regional) good. A more rational version would point to an elevated public demand to legitimise political decisions by reference to such a principle. Historical institutionalists could point to the fact that regionalism is often (at least partly) a direct reaction to the democratic deficits of and the public disenchantment with the professionalised system of representative democracy practised on the national level (Schultze and Sturm 1992: 407). Hence, regionalist ideals of self-government are often not only directed against ‘foreign rule’ by the national centre but may also be driven by ‘progressive forms of self-rule’ encapsulated in notions of popular sovereignty, participatory democracy or, perhaps even more common, in visions of a self-governing civil society.6 Regional political institutions established as a consequence of regionalist pressure may thus contain elements that limit the role and the autonomy of the professional politician. Yet, it is not only the democratic ideal propagated by regionalists that may undermine the formation of a collective professional consciousness For a more comprehensive account of this argument see Dahl and Tufte (1973: 4–16), though in their empirical study they dismiss this claim. As Keating (1998: 54), and others, have pointed out, regionalism does not represent any coherent ideology. However, while traditionally it had been associated with the political right (Ruge 2003), it has since ‘shifted to the progressive side, seen as a form of democratic maturation’ (Keating 1998: 109).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 12

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

13

of regional politicians. Regionalism may also introduce an enduring cleavage between supporters and opponents of enhanced forms of regional self-government (with separation as the potential ultimate aim). Such a deep-seated conflict among regional politicians over the territorial organisation of politics may indeed prevent them from acknowledging any common interest – in a way that ideological conflict over social issues had done in the early days of democracy. Taken together, these arguments suggest that regional politics (especially under regionalist conditions) is an arena which restricts the potential for professional politicians to become aware of and to pursue their collective self-interest, thus hindering the formation of a political class (box 3). In this study, both these accounts are rejected for their one-dimensional outlook. Instead, functional differentiation and territorial differentiation are understood as processes that are inextricably linked (Keating 1998: 3), and that may even be mutually reinforcing (Tarrow 1978: 23). Starting from the preposition that it matters both where politics is pursued and whether this is done in a professional capacity regionalism may be seen to affect the process and the resulting patterns of political professionalisation as well as, in turn, political professionalisation is affecting regionalisation processes and resulting regional institutions. On an actor level, it is assumed that for politicians an affective attachment to the region is not necessarily excluding the pursuit of professional interests and vice versa. Nor do the two form the basis of a zero-sum game. Instead if they come together in a critical mass of regional politicians their fusion may eventually even lead towards the formation of a regional political class (box 1). To use Weber’s terminology: if living for politics was informed by a predominantely regional frame of reference, and political professionalisation has suddenly turned the region into an arena that now allows to live off politics, this may result in politicians striving to live off regional politics. The ideal type regional political class would be characterised by professional political careers predominantly shaped by regional structures of opportunity, pursued mainly within the regional arena, and directed to a regional apex. Based on this structural congruence of their careers, members of a regional political class would develop a common consciousness that reflects both their regional attachment and the professional nature of their political commitment. Their collective action as a class for itself would be expressed in an institutional politics that is directed towards bringing their career opportunities in line with their ambition to pursue a professional political career at the regional level. Starting from this alternative theoretical perspective does not presuppose that we will actually find a regional political class. On the contrary,

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 13

20/8/09 11:50:55

14

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

acknowledging the concurrent existence of both tendencies (functional and territorial differentiation) without proclaiming any predetermined form of subordination of one below the other is, rather, accepting their interaction to be empirically contingent. By substantiating the theoretical validity of a third ideal type the analytical map is advanced from a simple one-dimensional dichotomy to a more complex, yet also more realistic two-dimensional spectrum (as shown in figure 1.1).7 Yet the objective of this study is not simply to locate empirical cases on this map, nor to demonstrate a causal relationship between isolated variables (regionalism + professionalisation → regional political class), but to reveal causal mechanisms. Introducing the analytical tool of the political class (as adapted above), the study of two interrelated macro processes – political professionalisation and regionalisation – is linked to the micro level. Translated into the quest for the regional political class, the question how these two processes interact and whether they can reinforce each other is operationalised in an empirical research programme analysing the interrelation between regional politicians and their institutional structure of opportunities (for a visualisation of the theoretical model and the research programme, see figure 1.2). Adapting Borchert’s model (see above) to the regional level, the analysis can be divided into two main sets of questions. The first part concentrates on the formation of a political class in itself. Here, the political class is treated as a dependent variable, operationalised by looking at the predominant career patterns of regional politicians. In an attempt to establish the respective functional and territorial distinctiveness of regional politicians vis-à-vis regional citizens and national politicians, it is asked to what extent these careers are professionalised, where they are being pursued and to where they are being directed. Most importantly, however, the study analyses how institutional opportunity structures in conjunction with case-specific features of regionalism are shaping these career patterns. The second part is concerned with the collective action of regional politicians as a class for itself. Here, the political class is conceptualised as an 7

In this model professionalisation is seen as driving force for a functional differentiation and regionalism/regionalisation is seen to increase territorial differentiation. When occurring together at the same time one tendency may dominate over the other, pointing either to box 2 (hypothesis 1) or to box 3 (hypothesis 2), or they may reinforce each other, pointing towards box 1, a regional political class, as hypothesised in this study. While the fourth option, the existence of ‘regional politicians as national citizens’ (box 4) in general is a perfectly valid scenario for a scarcely professionalised, highly centralised system, there is no theoretical reason why concurrent processes of political professionalisation and regionalisation should produce such a group of regional politicians.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 14

20/8/09 11:50:55

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 15

Figure 1.2 Causal model of the formation and role of a regional political class Analytical status

Macro-process Democratisation

Causal sequence

Micro-process

Political professionalisation

Macro-process Political professionalisation

Regional democracy

Regionalisation

Regionalised state

Black Box State modernisation

Chapter

Regionalisation 2

3/4

5

Display detail

Structure Analytical status

Causal sequence

Chapter

Institutions as structure of opportunities

Micro-process Pursuit of careers Career patterns Class formation as a class in itself

Professionalised political institutions on the regional level 2

Actor Individual Collective

Micro-process

Structure

Self-interested collective Action as a class for itself

Institutions as object of reform

Regional institutions adapted to career interests of regional political class

Regional political class

3

4

5

20/8/09 11:50:55

16

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

independent variable. It is asked whether and how professional politicians on the regional level are collectively forming and reforming institutions according to their collective self-interest. First of all, such an analysis will focus on processes of institutional reform and adaptation. In search for explanations, it will revert to the structure of the political class in itself (i.e. the career patterns as established in part one), the specific regionalist context, as well as to the institutional framework that – despite being the object of reform – is, nevertheless, also structuring (i.e. limiting and enabling) any reform efforts of political actors.

How and where to study a regional political class: methodological deliberations, case selection and outline of the study

This study is concerned with the emergence of a regional political class in Catalonia and in Scotland. By looking at two cases in detail, the study makes use of the generic virtue of case-study approaches – i.e. ‘their ability to elucidate mechanisms’ (Gerring 2001: 215). As stated above, the central aim of this study is not to look for isolated independent variables that may explain a defined outcome, but to gain insights into a complex causal mechanism that would otherwise remain within the ‘black box’. In other words, the study is not meant to demonstrate that regionalism in conjunction with political professionalisation will lead to a regional political class, but to reveal how institutional structures of opportunity under the conditions of regionalism and political professionalisation affect regional politicians, and how they, in turn, affect the institutional context in which they pursue their careers. Looking at Catalonia and Scotland from a comparative perspective yields at least two major advantages. The first one is derived from the structure of the research field. Catalonia and Scotland belong to a small repertoire of regionalist cases which are taken up again and again in the field of regional studies. They are perceived as politically important, ‘strong’ regions (Keating 1998: 109–11) as well as representing the ‘good’, civic face of regionalism. Hence, they have become central points of reference in the academic as well as in the political debate about regionalism. In this sense Catalonia and Scotland truly represent ‘crucial cases’ (Gerring 2001: 215) that may fulfil a ‘hothouse’ function of accumulating knowledge.8 Thus, if we want to expand our common understanding of regionalism with regard to a hitherto neglected factor – i.e. 8

According to Gerring (2001: 193) ‘theoretical advance (progress) may be most readily achieved when scholars are focused on the same objective of study’, as long as this object has at least a minimal claim to representativeness.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 16

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

17

political professionalisation – it makes sense to do so analysing these cases, rather than cases that have hardly ever been looked at. While this argument – based on an understanding of social research as a cumulative process – supports the study of each of the two cases, methodological considerations with regard to the study itself point to a comparison of the two. In fact, Catalonia and Scotland fulfil almost exactly the pattern of similarities and differences required by the research questions posed above. As rather large, populous, politically and economically important regions of their respective countries they exhibit strong similarities with regard to broad context factors, providing for a general comparability of the cases (already demonstrated in a high number of studies, e.g. Keating 1996; Greer 2006, etc.). This similarity includes the two basic processes under consideration in this study. In both cases a strong regionalism has been the driving force behind concurrent processes of regionalisation and political professionalisation, resulting in strong regional institutions which have enabled professional politics from the very start. They differ, though, with regard to many other institutional structures that shape professional political careers and thus govern the potential formation of a regional political class (for details see chapter 2). By selecting Catalonia and Scotland we are thus on the one hand ‘controlling’ for form and strength of regionalism and regionalisation and for the relative degree of political professionalisation (vis-à-vis the central state). In both cases we are looking at concurring processes of territorial and functional differentiation at their maximum strength. On the other hand, the institutional structure in which these processes meet and which shape the way they affect professional politicians and their careers show an almost maximal degree of variance. A case-sensitive analysis of the causal mechanisms at work will reveal just how the two processes interact in each institutional configuration and whether they produce something like a regional political class. They will show different mechanisms and perhaps even different outcomes. Contrasting the two cases will highlight the institutional differences and thus help to explain the effect of different institutional structures with regard to the formation of a political class, as well as the extent to which those structures can be formed by the collective efforts of this political class. Finally, the Scottish case – where the regional parliament was established in 1999 – provided the unique opportunity to analyse the processes in question ‘live’, as they unfold. This temporal proximity is an invaluable advantage. Directly attending the formation of a political class, a range of methodological approaches and techniques become available that would otherwise remain foreclosed or at least restricted. This relates in particular to the interview situation, where the perception of individual politicians (e.g. with regard to

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 17

20/8/09 11:50:55

18

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the influence of opportunity structure, the emergence of a collective professional consciousness, etc.) was retrieved much more directly without losses of memory or other retrospective distortions. Furthermore, this arrangement also allowed for a fruitful realisation of participant-observation methods. This study is based on two different types of sources. Information with regard to the structural level – reflecting institutional structures in both regions, their changes over time, as well the actual course political careers have taken – is mainly compiled from primary sources such as official documents and newspaper reports, as well as from a secondary analysis of the academic literature. Data regarding the actor level – reflecting the actual impact of these institutions on politicians’ ambitions, self-consciousness and interests as well as their motivation and capacity to act on behalf of these interests – had to be generated and analysed by a combination of survey, interview and participant-observation techniques. Drawing on both objective structural data and subjective data on actors’ perceptions, the causal interrelation between regional institutions and professional politicians is viewed from two different perspectives. Information with regard to political careers is mainly drawn from parliamentary handbooks and the respective parliamentary web-pages, complemented by biographical data published in a number of other reference works.9 This information has been compiled into datasets on the political careers of all Catalan (1977–2008) and Scottish (1999–2008) parliamentarians serving in either the regional or the national parliament. These datasets cover their entire parliamentary careers (including European mandates), adding complementary information on public positions held on the local level, in party organisations and in the respective regional and national governments as available. Thus, the identification of career patterns is based on the totality of parliamentary careers and career movements not on a specific sample or a particular cohort. These data are compared to and complemented with existing career studies in both cases. For Scotland these include early candidate studies revealing the mechanisms of intra-party selection and nomination processes at the first Scottish election (Bradbury et al. 2000a, 2000b) as well as studies 9

For Catalonia the main sources were the printed handbooks of the Catalan Parliament (Parlament de Catalunya 1986, 1988, 1993, 1996), the biographical references given for the members of the Catalan Parliament, and the Catalan members in the Spanish Congress, the Senate and the European Parliament on the respective web-pages, as well as a political encyclopaedia (Heras 1997). Data on ministers in the Catalan government is provided in Matas (2001b). For Scotland data was compiled from the web-pages of the Scottish Parliament and the House of Commons as well as from reference works on Scottish politics (Hassan and Lynch 2001; Hassan and Fraser 2004; Spicer 2004).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 18

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

19

on Scottish MPs, MSPs and senior civil servants dealing with their social, occupational, political, ethnic and gender background. For Catalonia excellent studies exist on party members (Sánchez 1999; Baras 2004), city mayors (Magre 1999), and officials and ministers in the regional executive as well as on the careers and backgrounds of several cohorts of members of the Catalan Parliament (Pitarch and Subirats 1982; Morata 1992; Argelaguet 1999; Calvet 1999). While these studies on Scottish and Catalan politicians provide invaluable and quite detailed information on various sections of the respective political classes, they remain generally wedded to political and social background analysis and a single-institution recruitment perspective. They are concerned neither with a cross-institutional picture of political careers and political professionalisation nor with the theoretical concept of political class (although some authors actually use this term).10 The analysis of the processes of class formation and the collective action of this class is based on data generated specifically for this study in a postal survey, a series of personal interviews, and observations as participant-observer. Due to pragmatic as well as theoretical considerations, the postal survey is restricted to regional parliamentarians. Regional parliaments may be seen as the focal point or even as the executive committee of a potential regional class. However, even if empirical analysis revealed such strategic functions to be located in other organisations (party executives, regional government) it is hard to conceive of any one institution which contains such a large number and a broad mix (party, hierarchy etc.) of potential members of this class. To counter any potential bias, personal interviews were conducted with representatives from all walks of professional politics – including local politicians, party staff and officials as well as national parliamentarians. The survey covers various aspects of the professional life of parliamentarians. The first one concerns political careers. Here, posing specific questions 10

In their very insightful article on the new Scottish elite Keating and Cairney, for example, have already referred to the emergence of a ‘distinct Scottish political class’ (2006: 56). However, ignoring the work on the political class as an analytical concept in general (von Beyme 1996; Borchert 1999a, 2003b) as well as its adaptation to the regional level (Stolz 2001), they neither define this notion nor is their empirical research really geared towards identifying such a class. Like many others, they have not acknowledged that political professionalisation and the very formation of a political class renders the social background of politicians less relevant for their political conduct than their status as professional politicians. By contrast, Peter Oborne’s (2007) shrewd account of the British political class does start from such a vantage point, yet as a journalist by training he provides a thrilling but highly subjective narrative rather than systematic empirical analysis. Moreover, he presents professional politicians all over Britain as a coherent British political class, with no distinct Scottish dimension to it.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 19

20/8/09 11:50:55

20

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

on the sequence and accumulation of political positions allows a more detailed analysis of career patterns (though from a smaller sample) than relying on hand-book data. The closer look at the sample of regional parliamentarians is thus complementing the more comprehensive yet less detailed account provided by the dataset described above. In an attempt to analytically disentangle the (empirically strongly linked) effects of individual motivations from that of the institutional opportunity structure, the questionnaire also asks about preferences and future ambitions. Other sets of questions deal with the disengagement of parliamentarians from their social and occupational background, and with the demands and working conditions of their new political profession. These questions are supplemented by those asking parliamentarians about their self-perception as professional politicians and about the existence of a collective consciousness among parliamentarians based on such a perception. Finally, the focus is directed towards their attitudes to central features of the institutional set-up (from salary levels to candidate selection procedures and on to questions about legislative competencies of the regional parliament) and (in Catalonia) towards their perception of institutional change. Both surveys show a considerable return rate and ample degrees of representativeness with regard to the most important differentiating variables (party, gender, political experience, etc.). Most questions were of a closed type, allowing answers to be electronically processed and subjected to quantitative analysis. A more detailed description of the technical details is to be found in appendix 1.11 In contrast to the postal survey, personal interviews were conducted with a wide range of politicians holding different positions and featuring varying career backgrounds. Attempts were made to vary systematically according to party, prior experience on different territorial levels (local, regional, national) and in different institutions (parliament, government, party, interest group), and with respect to concurrently held offices. Apart from active frontline politicians (e.g. Catalan president Jordi Pujol, and Scottish deputy first minister Jim Wallace), interviewees also consisted of research assistants, party staff, government advisers, senior members of the parliamentary services, civil servants and academic and journalistic observers. In part, the questions in the interview guidelines cover the same ground as the survey questionnaire. By asking different sets of people, by allowing open answers and by going into more detail, interviews were meant to put the survey results in perspective. In fact, interview partners were confronted with the results of the statistical 11

It should be noted, that, following a research-question-oriented rather than a datadriven approach, this study does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the full survey data but, rather, makes selective use of its most meaningful results in the course of the argument.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 20

20/8/09 11:50:55

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

21

analysis in order to comment on their general plausibility and their representativeness for a wider population, as well as to provide explanations. In addition, a different set of interview questions asked for the motivations, considerations and calculations behind specific individual career moves and behind concrete processes of institutional reform, thus disclosing an actor perspective on the interrelation between professional politicians and political institutions. As a final source of information my observations as a participant in a number of official and informal gatherings of Scottish and Catalan politicians are meant to complement all other methodological approaches. I have thus attended party conferences, constituency surgeries, plenary and committee meetings of the regional parliament and other political events in order to discover common habits, norms and attitudes of regional politicians that may be unconsciously reflected in their daily conduct, especially in their behaviour towards each other. An even better view of politicians as ‘social animals’ was achieved by frequenting their own ‘watering holes’ – i.e. the parliamentary canteen and the pubs around the parliament building, as well as by speaking informally to their staff. In its structure the present study largely follows the causal sequence in the process of the formation of a regional political class. This first chapter is meant to provide the theoretical, conceptual and methodological basis of the empirical analysis. Political professionalisation and regionalisation are delineated as two macro-processes of functional and territorial differentiation closely related to democratisation and state modernisation. It is shown that the interrelation of these processes has not yet been studied, neither by scholars of regional and federal studies, nor by those concerned with political professionalisation. Their empirical concurrence, it is argued, is best analysed in a comparative case study of Catalonia and Scotland. The concept of political class is introduced as a major analytical tool to break the analysis down to the micro-level, allowing for a detailed study of structure–actor interrelations according to Coleman’s famous bath-tub model (Coleman 1990: 9). Hence, a dual research programme – epitomised in the quest for a regional political – is set out (see figure 1.2). A more elaborate discussion of the two main research questions and the specific theoretical perspective applied to them is left for chapters 3 and 4 respectively. Before the formation and activities of a regional political class can be analysed in any detail, chapter 2 outlines the main processes and structures of the functional and territorial differentiation of Catalan and Scottish politics that are setting the stage for a regional political class. This short chapter does not provide any detailed historical account of regionalisation and political professionalisation in the two cases. Instead, its purpose is to sketch out the major framework of ideas, interests and institutions from which a regional political

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 21

20/8/09 11:50:56

22

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

class might emerge and in which it has to operate. It reveals notions of democracy, the modern state and professional politics that have informed regional mobilisation. It delineates the cleavages and organisational structures which have shaped the territorial conflict in the two regions. And finally, it presents the newly established regional institutions as structures of opportunities for professional politicians. The central part of this study is concerned with the empirical analysis of the causal mechanisms that link regional political institutions with the careers of the professional politicians who populate them. This analysis is divided into two parts, each directed at one side of the relationship. In chapter 3 the formation of a regional political class in itself is treated as the dependent variable. As the functional and territorial distinctiveness that is constitutive for such a class is operationalised in terms of evolving career patterns, the chapter sets out by specifying the theoretical model with regard to the question, how institutional opportunity structures are generally affecting political careers. Following from that, the dominant career patterns in both regions are identified, using all the available sources and methods as described above. Contrasting similarities and differences between the cases, in conjunction with exploring the within-case explanations provided by survey and interview data, illuminates the microprocesses by which Catalan and Scottish careers are being shaped and the extent to which a regional political class in itself is being formed. Chapter 4 focuses on the inverse relationship. Conceptualising the regional political class for itself as independent variable, processes of institutionalisation and institutional reform are analysed in order to identify and explain the capacity of regional politicians to act collectively in pursuit of their collective self-interest. Again, the chapter sets out with a specification of the theoretical model with regard to the side of the relationship under investigation – i.e. with regard to the general potential of a regional political class to influence the process of institution-building. This institutional analysis is based on objective, structural data on institutional reform as well as on subjective, actor-centred sources. Contrasting processes and results in Catalonia and Scotland, the collective action of regional politicians as a class for itself is related back to the institutional structure enabling and restricting their behaviour (revealing strong tendencies of path dependency) but also to the established career patterns and to the internal structure of the political class in itself that are conditioning its territorial and functional cohesion. After analysing the interrelation between professional politicians and political institutions in both cases in detail, these two micro-processes are reconnected to the macro-level. Chapter 5 reprises the double role of the Catalan and the Scottish political classes as products and agents of regionalisation and professionalisation as depicted in the two previous chapters. Based

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 22

20/8/09 11:50:56

THE QUEST FOR A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS

23

on the main findings of the analysis, it spells out their wider implications for regional democracy in Catalonia and Scotland and for the modern state in Spain and the United Kingdom. This is followed by a deliberation about the theoretical insights that have been gained with regard to the study of regions and regionalisation, the study of political careers and political professionalisation, as well as with regard to the interrelation of regionalisation and political professionalisation. Finally, the utility of the concept of political class as an analytical tool is reassessed.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 23

20/8/09 11:50:56

2 Regionalism, regionalisation and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland: setting the stage for a regional political class This chapter sets out to delineate the broad historical developments and the main structural features that condition the potential emergence and scope of a regional political class in Catalonia and Scotland. This is of course a vast and difficult task, as it touches upon the macro-processes of democratisation, state modernisation, regionalisation and political professionalisation and the complex ways they have impacted on each other in each case. In the following I will thus concentrate on (1) those particular features that are necessary to understand the context of the empirical analysis contained in the following two chapters, and on (2) those general developments that are most likely to affect the future of regional democracy and the modern state in the two cases (as will be discussed in chapter 5). The two main sections of this chapter discuss the two cases using a common five-part structure. In each case, the basic conditions under which the two regions have been integrated into their ‘host’ states and the conflicts that have recently given rise to the mobilisation of regional identity in Catalonia and Scotland are outlined. This is followed by a part dealing with the regionalist mobilisation itself – i.e. with its organisational forms, normative ideals, strategies and concrete political projects. Thirdly, the actual process of regionalisation in Spain and in the United Kingdom is examined: how have the two regionalist movements achieved their main political aims, how much have regional actors influenced this process, and to what extent have regional projects defined its results? Fourthly, the main institutional structures of the newly created regional democracy, including its political professionalisation, are described. The final part deals with the major political developments and the general perception of regional democracy since its establishment. The third section of the chapter provides a brief comparison of the two cases.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 24

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

25

Catalonia: from Francoism to regional party democracy

Since its integration into the Spanish Kingdom in 1516, Catalonia has experienced different forms of territorial management, ranging from elite co-option at the centre coupled with autonomous competencies at the regional level, to systems of outright assimilationist oppression. Under the Franco dictatorship Catalonia had suffered from the abolition of its traditional system of regional self-government, the Generalitat, that had been re-established during the Spanish second republic. In addition, Catalans had to endure a harsh suppression of their cultural identity, most notably with regard to their separate Catalan language. All this, however, failed to extinguish Catalan national identity and demands for political self-government. Instead, the movement to rebuild the Generalitat had begun long before the end of the Franco regime. Resistance to the regime came from different directions and in various organisational forms. While the leading party of Catalanism during the second republic – the republican left Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) – remained confined to sporadic initiatives from exile, cultural and political catalanism on the ground was concentrated in the organisations of a christian democratic bourgeoisie and those of the political left. The former had its organisational base in Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC) – the only significant party of the second republic that had not been destroyed by the regime – and numerous newly created cultural, academic and religious groups (most notably Ómnium Cultural, an organisation set up by a group of Catalan bankers and industrialists to promote and fund the Catalan language and culture). The active fight against the regime, however, remained largely a domain of the political left, with the separate Catalan communist party, the Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC), as the major organisational force (Caminal 1998: 47). After the 1970s, co-operation between these different strands of Catalan resistance became more pronounced, resulting in the creation of the Assamblea de Catalunya, an annual assembly of almost all the civil and political organisations of the Catalan self-government movement, from the far left to the centre, under the banner of ‘freedom, amnesty and statute of autonomy’. This body succeeded in mobilising Catalan people over and above those already organised in clandestine parties and other circles of resistance, also taking the movement beyond its centre in Barcelona (Balcells 1996: 164–5). Yet at the very moment when self-government became ever more likely – i.e. after the death of Franco in 1975 – this united front increasingly gave way to a more partisan outlook. In the Consell de Forces Polítiques de Catalunya (CFPC), founded in 1975, eleven political organisations came together in another attempt to collectively demand democratic rights and Catalan

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 25

20/8/09 11:50:56

26

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

self-government. However, by this time clandestine parties had been successfully consolidating their organisations, while new political associations had also been founded. The CFPC provided a platform for these organisations to individually position themselves in the social and electoral space, creating the political map for the envisaged pluralist party democracy to come (Caminal 1998: 49). Thus, when in 1976 the dying regime once again permitted political parties, Catalonia – in contrast to the rest of Spain – already had a strong and differentiated party system. As described above, in Catalonia the fight for democracy and the fight for autonomy had been inextricably linked. Despite rivalling social and political projects, Catalan parties and civil organisations and associations – from the christian-democrats to the communist party – were united in these two demands. Mainly due to this strong and separate political mobilisation of Catalonia (in conjunction with the regionalist aspirations in the Basque country and Galicia), the causes of democratisation and regionalisation also came to combine in the rest of Spain. Thus, in the Spanish transition to democracy, Catalan parties and Catalan politicians were heavily involved both in reforming the Spanish state – most notably its territorial order – and in negotiating the concrete terms of a new system of Catalan self-government.1 The first step in this direction was made in autumn 1977 just after the first democratic elections to the re-formed Spanish Parliament, the Cortes, had been held. In Catalonia, autonomist parties had won more than 75 per cent of the vote, leaving the reformist Spanish prime minister Suarez, a reconstructed Francoist, with no other choice but to grant Catalonia some form of autonomy. Setting up a provisional Catalan government, he postponed the final settlement of the regional question in Spain and Catalonia, successfully diffusing autonomist demands for the time being (Aja 2001: 231). Yet, instead of handing over power to the elected Catalan parliamentarians led by a socialist majority, he preferred to authorise the staunchly anti-socialist Josep Tarradellas – a minister of the Generalitat during the second republic who had been designated its president in his Mexican exile – with this task. For lack of any proper competencies and resources Tarradellas’ all-party government remained little more than an ‘empty shell’ (Carr and Fusi-Aizpurua 1979: 234). However, the institutional and personal continuity from the Generalitat of the Second Republic has rooted modern Catalan autonomy within a pre-dictatorial tradition of self-government. As a direct reversal of Franco’s 1

Catalans had been prominent in Suarez’ committee of nine that negotiated the concrete parameters of regime change (Canyellas, Pujol and later Molins) and later in the committee of seven that drafted the Spanish constitution (Roca and Solé Tura). It was even a Catalan socialist who drafted the section on autonomy (Martí Toval).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 26

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

27

abolition of the Generalitat, this reformist decision can thus ironically be seen as the only ‘total break with the established regime that was to occur during Spain’s transition to democracy’ (McRoberts 2001: 48). In the following process of constitution-building, however, it was Catalonia’s parliamentarians rather than the members of the provisional Generalitat who represented Catalonia’s strong regionalist aspirations. In fact, Catalans were instrumental in negotiating the historic compromise of the Spanish state, eventually encapsulated in the constitutional formula that emphasises ‘the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation’ while recognising ‘the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions’ (Article 2).2 This formulation included rather different regional entities – from the historic nations of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia to single-province regions such as La Rioja – all of which were entitled to form autonomous communities of the new Spanish state. However, the constitution also provided for different pathways to this status and for rather different levels of autonomy to be set in bilaterally negotiated statutes of autonomy (Article 143 and 152). Despite the failure to enshrine any explicit recognition of Catalan sovereignty distinct from weaker forms of autonomy (as Catalan nationalists demanded), 90 per cent of Catalan voters approved the constitution in the subsequent referendum of 1978 – even more than in the rest of Spain. Catalonia was also the first region that took up its right to establish its own statute of autonomy. The statute that emerged from a lengthy process of negotiations between Catalan and central state parliamentarians was finally approved by a majority of nearly 90 per cent of Catalan voters in a referendum and ratified in both chambers of the Cortes (Congress and Senate) in late 1979. In line with the Spanish Constitution, it takes great effort to portray Catalan identity and Catalan self-government as compatible with integration into the Spanish state. A complex and sometimes ambiguous system of exclusive and shared competencies transfers a wide range of tasks and responsibilities to the Generalitat, yet very few of them are to be realised without reference to central state legislation or central state institutions. On the whole, this statute was seen even by a majority of Catalan nationalists as an immense achievement, although it clearly fell short of their desired level of autonomy. In Catalonia, the regional question was settled – at least for the time being. On the Spanish level, though, the regionalisation process had just begun. There, the rather ambiguous provisions of the constitution – in conjunction with the precedent set by Catalonia – set a development in motion that 2

This compromise wording of Article 2 had finally been agreed in negotiations between Suarez, Carillo (leader of the Spanish communists) and Pujol (McRoberts 2001: 51–2).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 27

20/8/09 11:50:56

28

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

transformed the unitary and highly centralist Spanish state into a regionalised state of 17 autonomous communities. The bilateral foundation of its territorial order not only made for a highly asymmetric structure – differentiated far beyond the main cleavage between the three historic nationalities (Catalonia, Basque Country and Galicia) and the rest – but also for a highly dynamic one. (For a detailed analysis of the Spanish territorial order see among others Agranoff 1996, Colomer 1999.) The latest expression of this dynamic nature of the Spanish territorial order has come with the current process of revisiting and reforming the original statutes of autonomy. Again, it had been Catalonia who started off the process. Concurrent processes of democratisation and regionalisation have thus established a regionalised and a democratic Spanish state. But what kind of democracy has been established in Spain and in Catalonia? In the absence of any strong tradition of democracy, the major points of reference with regard to the democratic ideal have come from the contemporary political systems in western Europe (most notably from Germany). Apart from constitutionalism, liberal and social rights of citizens, a parliamentary system based on universal suffrage, and a broadly proportional electoral system, this notion of democracy placed a particular emphasis on a pluralist party system with strong party organisations to function as intermediaries between citizens and the political system. This strong party orientation within both the concrete transformation process and its normative base allowed the Spanish democracy to develop into ‘a textbook case of partitocracy’ (Matuschek 2003), with the ‘omnipotence of political parties’ (ibid.: 341) reflected in their position in the electoral system, the selection of parliamentary candidates, the parliamentary system itself, as well as in the partisan allocation of positions within public administration (Colomer 1996; van Biezen 2003). Another, much less analysed, aspect of the Spanish transition to democracy has been the profound professionalisation of politics caused by regime change. With the transformation from an unelected state based on a corporative elite of notables into a system of representative democracy, the new political personnel had necessarily become reliant on politics to provide them with their major source of income. In Catalonia, the newly created autonomous political institutions provided those citizens who had been risking their freedom and their careers fighting against the Franco regime with the opportunity to live off politics, thus turning their once dangerous political vocation into a professional career. Catalan democracy is formally based on the Generalitat, restored in the Statute of Autonomy as consisting of parliament, president and government (executive council) (Article 29). However, even a brief look at the working of these institutions shows that the political process and the political careers

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 28

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

29

within these institutions are heavily dependent on political parties. The parliament consists of 135 deputies elected from closed party lists in 4 constituencies (the 4 provinces – Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona) using a proportional method of allocating seats (d’Hondt). Only parties are allowed to put up lists. Despite a variety of formal rules, in practice the process of candidate selection and nomination in all major Catalan parties is highly centralised within the inner circle of the party leadership. Parliamentary life itself is regulated by the presiding board (Mesa) – a collective organ of deputies consisting of the parliamentary president, two vice-presidents and four secretaries. However, the parliament is effectively run by the party groups, which, in turn, are largely directed by the respective party executives (Pau 1998). The president of the Generalitat is elected by the parliament and, as head of a parliamentary government, remains dependent on its confidence. However, his strong position is marked out by the fact that he (or she) can be removed from office only if there is a successor who commands a parliamentary majority (a constructive censure motion along the German model). The president is free to choose cabinet ministers from inside and outside the parliament without parliamentary approval and thus clearly dominates his government. Commanding a resourceful administration, including a politicised layer of higher civil servants, this government is, in turn, dominating the policy process (Matas 2001a). Due to majoritarian devices within the parliament’s internal structure this domination also includes the parliamentary process.3 On the whole this executive- and party-dominated parliamentary system closely resembles the system of government established on the Spanish level (apart from its unicameral structure). There, Catalonia is represented by 57 deputies in the first chamber, the Congress (Congreso), and 23 senators in the second, much weaker, territorial chamber, the Senate (Senado). Again representation is based on the four provinces. In fact, the election of Congress deputies and the inner-party system of candidate selection follow the same rules as that of their colleagues in the regional parliament.4 Catalonia’s contingent in the senate comprises of 16 directly elected senators (4 from each province) and 7 senators designated by the Catalan Parliament. The third level of Catalan democracy consists of a highly dense and complex structure of local government containing 946 municipalities 3

4

Power over the parliamentary process rests largely in the so-called Junta de Portaveus (the board of party spokespersons). There, party spokespersons carry as many votes as their group has seats – a device effectively handing over the parliamentary agenda to the majority party or parties. Though with a different number of deputies. Catalonia’s Congress contingent currently consists of 31 deputies from the province of Barcelona, 4 from Lleida, and 6 each from Girona and Tarragona.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 29

20/8/09 11:50:56

30

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

(ajuntaments), 41 county councils (consells comarcals) and 4 provincial authorities (diputacions) plus various other forms of public organisations in the local arena (for an overview of Catalan local government see MartinezAlonso 1998). The system is based on almost 9,000 local councillors (regidors), who are directly elected via closed party lists, and who, once elected, in turn elect the town mayor (who also functions as council leader) from among themselves. County councillors (consellers comarcals) and province deputies (diputats provincials) are indirectly elected in a system taking account of the number of votes and the number of seats won by each party in the municipal elections. Even on the local level, candidate selection and the election of executive office bearers are highly partisan affairs, often strongly influenced not only by the respective territorial party unit but by the party centre in Barcelona. Political professionalisation has entered all three levels of Catalan democracy, yet to a rather different degree. In general, Spanish parliamentarians are among the worst paid politicians in Europe. Currently Catalan Congress deputies and senators are earning an annual salary of €42,291 plus an accommodation allowance of €24,671 with considerable complementary payments for holders of parliamentary offices such as members of the presiding board, committee chairpersons, party group spokespersons, etc. Salary levels in the Catalan Parliament are almost identical.5 For a Catalan politician a parliamentary mandate is thus a position he or she can live on, yet salary levels have remained rather modest compared with those of other professions, in particular in the private sector (Botella 1997: 146). Parliamentary salaries also come without any social security in terms of contributions to unemployment benefit or pension schemes. In contrast to Congress members, deputies in the Catalan Parliament do not even receive severance payments after losing their mandate. There are no additional allowances for individual deputies to cover costs for staff or technical support, but only collective assignments to parliamentary groups. Staff support in the Congress runs at about one assistant for three deputies (Congreso de los Diputados 2007); in the Catalan Parliament it has even been below this figure. By comparison, pay levels and endowments for positions in the executive and the higher administration are significantly more comfortable. In 2008 the 5

Congress remunerations were calculated using monthly figures from Congreso de los Diputados 2007. The basic annual salary for deputies in the Catalan Parliament is currently at €43,698 plus a travel and accommodation allowance of between €21,605 and €30,412. Complementary payments for holders of parliamentary offices range between €8,765 (party spokesperson in parliamentary committee) and €10,956 (party group president). Members of the board (mesa) earn considerably more (€152,954 for the Parliament’s president) (Parlament de Catalunya 2008).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 30

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

31

Catalan president was entitled to an annual salary of €169,446, his cabinet ministers to €127,737 and the highest administrators (the secretari general) were paid €93,420. It is interesting to note that, since the re-establishment of the Generalitat, the Catalan president has been receiving a higher salary than any other head of government in Spain, including the president of the central government (Peñate 1999a, 1999b). While the vast majority of Catalonia’s numerous councillors still fulfil their task in a part-time, non-professional capacity, Catalan local government, too, has been strongly affected by the process of political professionalisation. Most town mayors in communities of more than 10,000 inhabitants are full-time politicians (Magre 1999: 22): they earn more than deputies in the Congress or the Catalan Parliament. In the larger cities of Catalonia even councillors are able to live off politics, especially if their mandate is combined with a function in their councilgroup, or with an additional mandate in a provincial diputacion or the comarca councils, or with a function in one of the semi-public local service organisations.6 An exceptional status is granted to the city of Barcelona, where the mayor currently receives more than some presidents of autonomous communities and most of its councillors still receive more than any back-bench deputy in the Catalan Parliament or the Spanish Congress.7 Arguably the most important element of the opportunity structure for Catalan politicians (apart from the formal institutions of the political system described above) is the Catalan party system and its individual components (see figure 2.1). In contrast to the Spanish party system of bipolar pluralism in which a left of centre (PSOE) and a conservative (PP) party compete to form the Spanish government (often supported by smaller, usually regionally based parties), the Catalan system is one of moderate pluralism (six parties is the most that have achieved parliamentary representation at the same election) structured by two distinct cleavages, the traditional socio-economic cleavage and a regionalist one. The system is dominated by two major forces: the nationalist, centre-right coalition Convergència i Unió (CiU) and the social-democratic Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC). Since the first Catalan election in 1980 CiU has always been the strongest party group in 6

7

According to a local government agreement, mayors of municipalities between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants should receive a monthly salary between €5,043 and €5,181. For municipalities between 20,000 and 30,000 this range is between €5,418 and €6,034; 30,000–40,000 inhabitants: €6,218–€6592; 75,000–300,000: €6,789. Deputy mayors may earn up to 85 per cent, and full-time councillors with an additional function up to 75 per cent of a mayor’s salary (Solà i Cabanas 2007: 17). See website of Barcelona City Council.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 31

20/8/09 11:50:56

32

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the Catalan Parliament, while the PSC has always been the strongest party group of the Catalan contingent in the Spanish Congress, establishing a mechanism of ‘pseudo-alternation’ (Colomé 1993: 53). Compared to these two forces the rest of the parties that currently make up the Catalan party system – the conservative Partido Popular (PP), the post-communist/green alliance Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV), and the republican nationalists Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) – remain rather small in terms of electoral support and parliamentary representation. Convergència i Unió was established as an electoral coalition of the nationalist Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) and the historic, christian democratic party Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC). Since the first Catalan election it has fought every election as a combined force. In 2001 the relationship of the mass party CDC and the much smaller cadre party UDC was formalised by creating a federation, though one that kept the organisational structure of both its component parties intact. Under its charismatic leader president Jordi Pujol, (CDC) CiU was in government continuously between 1980 and 2003. In addition to its almost hegemonial position in Catalonia, it repeatedly functioned as the pivotal party at the Spanish level, supporting both socialist (1993–96) and conservative (1996–2000) minority governments. In terms of its ideological position the CDC and thus CiU has moved from a left-of-centre to a right-of-centre party. Its main project, however, as a nonseparatist nationalist party, has been to rebuild Catalonia as a nation via the Generalitat and to advance its autonomy vis-à-vis the central state by making pacts with the Spanish government. CiU entered into a new phase in 2003 when its predominant figure Pujol retired and was succeeded in his role as CiU leader (but not in the presidency) by his crown-prince Artur Mas. The PSC had been founded in 1978 from various socialist groups including the Catalan federation of the Spanish socialist party PSOE. Legally the PSC is a completely separate organisation that has not been incorporated into the PSOE structure, yet remains loosely federated to it. Since 1979 the PSC has maintained its position as the strongest electoral force in Catalonia in Spanish elections. There, its deputies have been integrated into the PSOE group (since the second legislature), forming either part of the parliamentary government (1982–96, 2004–) or the major opposition group (1996–2004). In the Catalan Parliament, the PSC had long been confined to the latter role. It was not until 2003 that the PSC, together with its coalition partners from ERC and ICV, took over the Generalitat from CiU. During all that time, the PSC has held an almost hegemonial status at the local level, consecutively governing Barcelona and most other major Catalan cities since the transition. While the PSC is highly autonomous in terms of its organisation and personnel, with regard to its political positions there is a clear tension between loyalty

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 32

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

33

to its Spanish sister party and its own moderate regionalism – a tension that reflects the existence of different strands within the party, yet can also be interpreted as a deliberate strategy to appeal to different electoral segments.8 While the two main parties represent different sectors of the political centre, the three other parties are located closer towards the poles of the twodimensional spectrum of the party system: The traditional Catalanist party, ERC, which had supported the CiU government during the first years, has since not only moved to the left but has also become more separatist, at least in its rhetoric. As a result of a profound renovation, the party’s internal structure has become much more activist based, and its electoral fortunes have improved.

ICV has developed out of the former Catalan communist party PSUC. It represents the far left of the electoral spectrum, yet has also maintained a distinct Catalan orientation, being only loosely connected with the Spanish Izquierda Unida (IU). The party has lost the organisational and electoral strength the PSUC had until the early 1980s, yet has remained part of the Catalan political establishment through its parliamentary representation and through its traditionally strong position within the executive of some major cities. Especially via its fringe groups and smaller coalitions partners (currently the Esquerra Unida i Alternativa, EUiA) the party is also reaching into sectors of the Catalan electorate that are most disenchanted with conventional politics. The most right-wing, and at the same time the most centralist, party in Catalonia is the PP: it succeeded parts of the Catalan centrists (Centristes de Catalunya-UCD and Centro Democrática y Social) and the short-lived Allianza Popular (AP) at the beginning of the 1990s. Despite its complete integration into the party organisation of one of the two major Spanish forces and despite an electoral support that has been usually greater than that of the other two smaller parties, the PPC has remained largely at the sidelines of Catalan politics (with the exception of their support of the CiU minority government in 1999). The Catalan party system is thus clearly dominated by Catalan parties, with two of them being classic non-state-wide parties (ERC, CiU), two others still qualifying for a wider interpretation of this type (ICV, PSC), and only the PP clearly representing a state-wide party (Marcet 1984). Since its establishment in 1980, Catalan democracy has continuously expanded its autonomy. This dynamic is partly due to the constitutional arrangements, which had explicitly provided for such an on-going transfer of competencies from the centre to the autonomous community. On the other 8

For a more detailed analysis of this tension see Roller and von Houten (2003), though their agreed assessment of the PSC as ‘regional branch of a national party’ (Roller and van Houten 2003: 9) may be questioned.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 33

20/8/09 11:50:56

34

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Figure 2.1 The Catalan party system Regionalist

ERC CiU

ICV Left

PSC

Right

PP

Centralist

Source: Author’s own evaluation.

hand, it is a direct result of the strong bargaining position of CiU as a party of government in Catalonia and as a pivotal party at centre stage, plus the capacity of its leadership – especially its president Jordi Pujol – to play such two-level games. It was only after the PP and Aznar had won an absolute majority in the Spanish general elections of 2000 that this mutually beneficial relationship between the Spanish and the Catalan government began to show considerable cracks (Vasquéz Montalbán 2004). With regard to internal democracy in Catalonia, the established system of representative democracy based on strong and centralised party organisations was considerably consolidated during the first two decades. This consolidation, however, also entailed a disillusionment with conventional politics – as represented by representative democracy, political parties and professional politicians – that can be recognised in almost all advanced democracies. Intellectuals from left and right have denounced a certain detachment of the political class (though this term is not always used) from ordinary citizens and their interests.9 9

For this kind of criticism see for example the newspaper columns of Jordi Sánchez in El País or those of Francesc De Carreras in La Vanguardia.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 34

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

35

The most profound change in Catalan democracy thus far occurred in 2003 when, after 23 years of consecutive government, Jordi Pujol and his CiU had to make way for a three-party coalition (known as ‘el tripartito’) of PSC, ICV and ERC led by the new president Pasqual Maragall (PSC), a former mayor of Barcelona and long-time adversary of Pujol. With its first government change, Catalonia has entered a new phase – one that has even been hailed as its second transition. Making use of the window of opportunity that opened when the Spanish socialists won the 2004 general elections, the new government immediately embarked on a course of institutional reform resulting in a new Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia. While the coalition broke up over the ratification of the statute, the premature regional elections in 2006 brought a similar result and a renewal of the tripartite – this time though under the leadership of PSC general secretary José Montilla. CiU has finally lost its status as the natural party of government in Catalonia.

Scotland: inserting a regional parliamentary system in a unitary state

Since the Scottish–English Union of Parliaments in 1707 Scotland’s integration into the United Kingdom has been based on a complex and dynamic ‘balance of assimilation and autonomy’ (Harvie 1994: 3). The traditional management of this balance rests on the capacity of the British state to accommodate territorial demands of its component nations by way of pragmatic, bilateral negotiations and compromise in the form of a union state (Urwin 1982), while formally adhering to the unitary principle – i.e. the constitutional doctrine of absolute parliamentary sovereignty. In this system Scotland’s territorial distinctiveness has been preserved on the one hand by maintaining its major civil society institutions – such as the Church of Scotland and its distinct legal and educational system – and by establishing a specific government department for Scotland, the Scottish Office (1885), provided with discretionary powers to adjust central government policy to Scottish conditions. On the other hand, Scottish representation at the political centre has taken its own privileged forms, ranging from a numerical over-representation in the House of Commons to specific Scottish committees and most importantly its own cabinet minister, the Secretary of State for Scotland (SoS). The Scottish history of independent statehood before the Union in conjunction plus the maintenance of high levels of institutional autonomy since then has preserved – or more precisely, has constantly reproduced – a distinct Scottish identity as a stateless nation (McCrone 1992). While there had been various attempts to mobilise this identity politically, it took until the late 1960s for regionalism in the form of a separatist nationalism to become a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 35

20/8/09 11:50:56

36

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

strong and lasting political force in Scotland. Since then, the Scottish National Party (SNP), founded in 1934, has begun to seriously challenge not only the sovereignty of the British state but also the electoral fortune of the Labour Party in Scotland. A first, ill-founded, attempt to counter this dual threat by offering Scotland a devolved system of government failed dramatically in the first devolution referendum of 1979. Ironically, the main impetus for the actual regionalisation of the British state had come from the most centralist of all UK governments, that of Margaret Thatcher. In the name of a radical liberal individualism she strengthened central government and market forces at the expense of all forms of intermediate bodies, including local authorities, trade unions, self-regulating bodies of civil society and any form of quasi-corporatist structures around government departments. While this strategy had been denounced throughout the UK as highly anti-social, in Scotland, over and above, it was perceived as an attack on national institutions and national identity itself (Mitchell 1990: 131; McCrone 1992: 172). Forcing radical, unpopular and centralising policies on Scotland without even consulting with its elites, Margaret Thatcher had broken the unwritten conventions of British territorial politics and thus the historic compromise of the British state with Scottish society (for this interpretation see Stolz 1999). The fact that she was free to do so, on the basis of less than half of the total vote in the UK and less than a quarter in Scotland, was seen as further evidence of the fundamental representational deficits of the Westminster model of democracy, and of its potential to degenerate into an ‘elective dictatorship’. As one academic commentator remarked at the time: ‘the territorial issue is coming to correspond with the major fault line in British politics’ (Keating 1988: 192). As a consequence, regionalist mobilisation in Scotland remained no longer exclusively concerned with the issue of Scottish identity and autonomy. Instead, it widened its focus towards the question of democracy, with notions of Scottish popular sovereignty gaining considerable support much beyond the separatist SNP: ‘Faced with near exclusion from even a peripheral access to sovereignty, the Scottish institutions have found that their legitimacy can no longer derive from above: they must trust the people or die’ (Paterson 1991: 113). In its fundamental critique of the Westminster model, which was perceived as anachronistic, unrepresentative and detached, the Scottish selfgovernment movement tied in with reform efforts in the rest of the UK, these being mainly concerned with the issues of electoral reform and a bill of rights. The demand for Scottish autonomy was thus inextricably linked to demands for fairer representation (especially in terms of gender), more opportunities for direct participation, as well as for a political process marked by consensus orientation rather than by the adversarial style practised at Westminster.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 36

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

37

The struggle to implement these demands against an intransigent Conservative government in London was left to two different yet rivalling organisational forces. In addition to the SNP – which did not want to compromise its independence policy – a new body, the Scottish Constitutional Convention, was formed in 1989 to bring together the various devolutionist forces in Scotland. It was led by the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats yet contained a wide range of groups including smaller parties, local authorities, trade unions, churches and other organisations of Scottish civil society. While the scheme developed by the Convention did not contain many new elements compared to earlier devolution blueprints, it was a significant breakthrough in at least two respects. First, it was the first time the Labour Party in its different institutional guises had taken part in such a cross-party homerule organisation. Pushed by the more radical groups and individuals, the Convention was able to forge a strong elite consensus that firmly committed the Labour Party to action, once it was re-elected into government. Secondly, this consensus contained the rejection of the traditional British first-past-thepost pluralist electoral system – a central pillar of the majoritarian model of democracy.10 The regionalisation process in the United Kingdom finally began when, at the general election of 1997, the Labour Party regained political power. Having fought its electoral campaign mainly on the issue of constitutional reform and state modernisation, Tony Blair’s incoming government started immediately to implement its ‘rolling programme of devolution’ (Hazell 1999). Within one year it had legislated for – and successfully held referenda for – the establishment of regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales, a new institutional settlement for Northern Ireland as well as for a new Greater London Authority with a directly elected mayor. In the rest of England the government erected regional development agencies, with regional parliaments to follow, ‘where there is demand for it’ (DETR 1997: 1). However, what was made to look like a coherent programme of decentralisation, was in fact a typically British, pragmatic and piecemeal answer to very different territorial demands and problems. The overall structure thus consists of very different arrangements for each of the four constituent parts of the UK, both in terms of the internal structure of the newly created parliamentary systems as well as with regard to legislative competencies devolved to them. 10

In the founding document of the Convention, its members (including all Scottish Labour MPs but one) had even rejected the British doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty by acknowledging ‘the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs’ (Scottish Constitutional Convention 1990: 1). However, this has remained a radical gesture rather than a policy commitment.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 37

20/8/09 11:50:56

38

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Its highly asymmetric nature is most obvious with regard to the complete absence of legislative devolution to the largest part of the UK, England. This hole at the centre creates a number of constitutional anomalies, most notably the so-called West Lothian Question, which depicts the fact that after devolution, Scottish MPs are still able to vote on domestic English matters (such as health or education), while English and Welsh MPs are no longer able to vote on the same matters in Scotland.11 The situation leads on to the very real prospect of purely English legislation being dependent on the votes of Scottish MPs whose constituents are not even affected by it. The new territorial order of the UK also lacks any strong institutional representation of the distinct territorial units that make up the British state other than the rather weakly formalised inter-governmental structure headed by a so-called Joint Ministerial Committee. While the UK government has only recently legislated for the establishment of a Supreme Court (separate from the House of Lords), the fact remains that there are no constitutionally entrenched rights for the regions. Thus, the successful accommodation of regional interests at the centre still depends on the traditional mode of territorial politics, i.e. the convention of moderation and the government of the day’s capacity to forge a compromise. The Scottish path to self-government started with a White Paper setting out the broad principles of Scottish devolution, followed by a referendum on the establishment of a Scottish Parliament and also on the devolution of some limited ‘tax-varying powers’ to this body. In the run-up to the referendum, the two rivalling forces of the home rule camp, the SNP on the one side and the devolutionist parties (Labour and Liberal Democrats) on the other, got their act together to organise a common Yes-campaign, leaving the Conservatives as the only major force to reject the proposal. A fairly conclusive yes vote in both questions paved the way for Westminster to put the proposals into legislation. In 1998 the Scotland Act was finally passed. While the Scotland Act determined the basic structure of the Scottish Parliament, the government was also busy providing the about-to-beestablished body with a set of provisional rules and norms governing its daily business. To this purpose a Constitutional Steering Group (CSG) was established – consisting of Scottish politicians from all parties plus representatives from various organisations of civil society (local authorities, church, trade unions, etc.) plus some academics – which was to draft a set of provisional standing orders for the Parliament. At the same time the major planks of its 11

This problem, which had first been recognised during the Home Rule debates at the end of the nineteenth century, has been named after the constituency of Tam Dalyell, the Scottish MP who raised and pursued this question in the 1970s.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 38

20/8/09 11:50:56

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

39

internal economic regime were filled out by government orders following the recommendations of the UK Review Body on Senior Salaries. With regard to its physical shape and location the UK government, namely its SoS Donald Dewar, decided to commission a new parliament building in the historic centre of Edinburgh, near the royal Holyrood palace. Despite all the troubles and criticisms that resulted from this controversial choice,12 ‘Holyrood’ has become the trade mark for the Scottish Parliament in the same way as ‘Westminster’ is used for the UK Parliament. On the whole, the concrete institutional structures established in this regionalisation process closely reflect the agreements and proposals elaborated by the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Thus, the devolved Scottish polity clearly bears the mark of the Scottish self-government movement. This goes in particular for the mixed electoral system and also for the wide range of policy competencies that fall to the Scottish Parliament as a result of not being designated as matters reserved to Westminster.13 The anti-Westminster impetus is most notable in the four key principles that were to guide the CSG deliberations on the operational basis of the parliament, namely power sharing (between citizens, parliament and executive), accountability, accessibility and participation, and equal opportunities. However, despite all that, the fact remains that the Scotland Act is a unilateral act of Westminster legislation that fully conforms to the unitary principle on which the UK territorial order still rests. The Scottish Parliament is not established as an expression of Scottish popular sovereignty nor is it based on an agreement between equal partners. Instead it is a body devolved from and subordinate to the sovereign Westminster Parliament; it is a concession by the sovereign parliament without any legal entrenchment, such that it can, at least theoretically, be taken back at any time. While this scenario is most likely to remain a purely theoretical possibility, the unitary construction of the devolution settlement, nevertheless, 12

13

A first set of criticisms was directed at the causes for this far from obvious choice, as it has been said that Dewar had decided against the favoured option in the selfgovernment movement (the Royal High School Building at Calton Hill) because he saw it as a ‘nationalist shibboleth’. Since then, the criticism, and indeed a public inquiry, has moved on to the consequences of this decision, since the completion of the building was long delayed and the project ran hugely over budget (SPCB 2004). Contrary to the aborted devolution legislation of 1979 the Scotland Act of 1998 does not define the powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament but those reserved to Westminster, leaving every matter not defined as reserved to the Scottish legislature. Among other things, the Scottish Parliament is responsible for primary legislation in the areas of health, education, transport, environment, local government and many more.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 39

20/8/09 11:50:57

40

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

has important practical implications. After all, Westminster has not only devolved legislative competencies to the Holyrood Parliament, it has also defined the very rules of Scottish democracy. Stipulations in this regard range from the electoral system and questions of government formation to the very details of the parliament’s internal organisation and its relationship with the executive. Many of these stipulations rather unwittingly reproduce the institutional model of the Westminster Parliament. Others, like the somewhat awkward terminology for Scottish office bearers,14 were consciously chosen to reflect the very subordination of this body to Westminster. Furthermore, any change in these matters requires Westminster legislation. The Scottish polity, thus, has remained highly dependent on central state decision-making. The central element of the devolved Scottish system of democracy established by the Scotland Act is the parliament. Its 129 members are elected according to the so-called additional member system (AMS), a system designed after the German model, yet with some important differences. Seventy-three of these deputies are directly elected in one-member constituencies according to the traditional first-past-the-post plurality system. Apart from Orkney and Shetland, which have been split into two separate constituencies, constituency boundaries were to be the same as for Westminster elections. The 56 ‘additional members’ are elected in 8 regions from closed lists. List seats are allocated so as to ensure maximal proportionality between second votes (regional list votes) cast for a party and the overall number of seats this party gets in each region (including directly won constituency seats). This mixed electoral system allows for a high level of proportionality, enhancing the representation of small and minor parties and decreasing the possibility of a single-party majority government. However, the numerical prevalence of constituency seats and the small district magnitude (with only 7 seats to be distributed in each region) make for an effective threshold (Taagepera and Shugart 1989) that has produced a distinct (though comparatively modest) effect of disproportionality at the Scottish level. With regard to candidate selection and nomination, the localised character of the British recruitment system (Norris and Lovenduski 1997) is largely sustained, supplemented by a regional dimension. The degree of central party influence (from Scottish and/or UK headquarters) varies considerably between the respective parties (Bradbury et al. 2000a). With regard to its internal structure, the Scottish Parliament features some important deviations from the Westminster model. Arguably the most 14

The Scotland Act speaks of the Scottish First Minister rather than the Scottish Prime Minister and of the Scottish Executive rather than the Scottish Government.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 40

20/8/09 11:50:57

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

41

notable one has been the Scottish committee system, which is based on allpurpose subject committees instead of the Westminster dualism which has different committees fulfilling a legislative function (standing committees) and a scrutiny function (select committees). This gives committees more clout and its members a more pro-active role.15 Another area where there are major deviations is the much greater accessibility and transparency of the Scottish Parliament. However – despite all intentions to strengthen opposition, back-benchers, and the general public in general – the institutional rules that govern parliamentary life make for a relationship between parliament and the executive that strongly resembles the executive-dominated model of Westminster (Winetrobe and Seaton 2000).16 In contrast to the UK Prime Minister, the head of the Scottish Executive – the Scottish First Minister – is elected in parliament (with an absolute majority of votes) before he/she is appointed by the Crown. Also in contrast to Westminster, ministers nominated by the First Minister need the approval of parliament (in practice this means the First Minister has to negotiate with his coalition partner). In line with the conventions of the British parliamentary system, the Scotland Act demands that government ministers are recruited exclusively from the ranks of the parliament. While the responsibility for local government has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, its structure in Scotland has not been directly affected by the Scotland Act. Since the merger of regional and district councils in the reform of 1995, local government in Scotland has been based on a single tier of 32 local authorities. With just 1,222 local councillors Scotland has the lowest number of councillors per head in Europe (The Herald, 11 July 2003). Scottish local authorities differ widely in terms of territorial extent, population size, economic structure, etc., yet follow the same institutional model. The council is run by a council leader elected from among the councillors, and by a varying number of councillors with special responsibilities. Provosts (Lord Provosts in Glasgow and Edinburgh), also elected in the council, mainly fulfil a ceremonial role. Scottish local government has undergone a profound party politicisation since the 1970s. The Labour Party came out as the main beneficiary of this 15

16

The overall verdict of the most extensive study on the Scottish committee system is that it has created a new dimension in Scottish politics, yet has so far not led to a new politics (Arter 2004: 133–4). While the day-to-day management of the Scottish Parliament is formally removed from the government and given to a Parliamentary Bureau (consisting of one representative of each parliamentary group with more than five MSPs), voting rights in this body are weighted in accordance with the overall number of seats of each group, leaving the government with an inbuilt majority.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 41

20/8/09 11:50:57

42

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

process, gaining control in a majority of Scottish councils, some of them, especially in the west of Scotland, with a majority strongly exaggerated by the first-past-the-post electoral system. Labour had therefore also been dominating the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA). In 2007 a new electoral system was introduced, the single transferable vote (STV) system. Its much more proportional effects has ended the Labour dominance in Scottish local government. Establishing a Scottish Parliament has not only introduced a new democratically accountable institution at the heart of the Scottish polity, it has also triggered off a significant process of political professionalisation in this polity. For the first time ever, it became possible to live off Scottish politics. Before that, any Scottish politician with ambitions to pursue a professional career had to follow the UK pattern directed at the Westminster Parliament. Stepping up from a non- or semi-professional position in the local council, the local party or a trade union branch, they could then not only draw a considerable salary, but were also set on a long-term career. However, even at Westminster, Scottish MPs remained highly distinctive. According to a rarely cited study by Michael Keating, a majority of Scottish MPs remained wedded to a ‘distinctive set of concerns centred on Scotland’ (Keating 1977: 31). Furthermore, according to Keating (ibid.) it had been their career interests that made for an increasing institutional differentiation of Scottish affairs at Westminster (in the form of Scottish committees and a strengthened Scottish Office) rather than the other way round. From a political class perspective this finding suggests that even before devolution there had been cracks in the territorial homogeneity of the British political class, with an embryonic Scottish political class at work. Since devolution, the opportunity structure for professional politicians from Scotland has changed completely. Following the Westminster model, the Scottish Parliament has been set up as a professionalised institution for full-time, fully paid deputies. In terms of salary levels, allowances and other endowments, Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) do not lag far behind their Westminster colleagues. In 2007 MSPs received an annual salary of £53,091 – only about £7,500 less than their Westminster counterparts (£60,675 annually). Those with parliamentary or government offices earn considerably more.17 Furthermore, basic salaries are complemented by a wide range of generous allowances for travelling, accommodation, staff support, etc., as well as by a specific pensions scheme. All in all, Scottish MSPs are 17

In 2007 the Scottish First Minister received £129,998, cabinet ministers and the parliament’s presiding officer received £92,988, the deputy presiding officer and junior ministers still got £78,080 (Earle 2007).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 42

20/8/09 11:50:57

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

43

among the best paid regional deputies in Europe, with the highest levels of infrastructural and staff support.18 Compared to the regional and national parliament, Scottish local councils are far less professionalised. Up to 2007, the remuneration of local councillors was based on a fairly low general allowance (£6,000 to £7,300), topped up by special responsibility allowances granted to almost two-thirds of all councillors. The average annual income of Scottish councillors in 2005 has been said to be about £14,000 (Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee 2006: 3.1). Although only very few councillors earn anything like a full-time salary,19 studies have revealed an increasing tendency for councillors to dedicate themselves exclusively to their council work (Denver and Denver 1998: 39), with just over a third in 2006 claiming to be full-time councillors (Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee 2006: 3.23). Councillor remuneration underwent a major reform in 2007 (see chapter 4). Even before devolution, the party system in Scotland had long been distinct from the traditional two-party system operating at the UK level. Structured by two main cleavages – class and nation – rather than one, it had found room for four parties: in addition to the two main UK parties – Labour and the Conservatives – a considerable share of the Scottish vote used to be taken up by Liberal Democrats and the SNP (the only exclusively Scottish party). Since the 1980s the national and the class cleavages have increasingly come to complement each other (Bennie et al. 1997: 21). A dichotomously split electorate divided its electoral support between three mainstream leftof-centre, Scottish-oriented parties – Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP – on one side, and the staunchly unionist, right-wing Conservative Party on the other. In this situation the increasingly isolated Conservative party has declined steadily, while the Labour Party became the dominant force in Scottish electoral politics. Since devolution, though, the goal-posts regarding the national question have been moved, with only the SNP remaining – in the early stages – to propagate further constitutional change. Even more importantly, by introducing proportionality into the electoral system, it has also fundamentally altered the electoral opportunities of all parties. As expected, the first election to the Scottish Parliament in May 1999 produced a situation where none of 18

19

German state legislators for example earn considerably less. Higher nominal salaries are only paid to legislators in two states (North-Rhine Westphalia and Hesse) that have largely subsumed salaries and allowance payments under a single form of remuneration payments (Borchert and Stolz 2004). In 2003 the highest paid Scottish councillor, Glasgow City Council leader Charlie Gordon, was said to receive an annual allowance of £28,000 (The Herald, 11 July 2003).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 43

20/8/09 11:50:57

44

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Figure 2.2 The Scottish party system

Regionalist SNP SSP

Greens

Lib–Dems Labour Right

Left

Cons

Centralist Source: Author’s own evaluation.

the parties held an overall majority. As a consequence, the Labour Party, the strongest group in the parliament, had to strike a coalition deal with their partners from the Constitutional Convention, the Liberal Democrats. The SNP became the main opposition party. Ironically, the party that benefited most from the electoral system was the party that had most strongly opposed it: the Conservatives. Just like two years before at the Westminster election, they could not win one single constituency in Scotland, and thus had to rely on list members for their sole parliamentary representation in Scotland. In addition to MSPs from the four main parties, the Scottish electorate also returned one deputy from the Green Party, one deputy from the left-wing Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), and an independent candidate (former Labour MP Dennis Canavan: see figure 2.2). The second Scottish election of 2003 saw the recurrence of the Labour– Liberal coalition. The most striking development, though, was the increased representation of minor parties and independents. Seven Green MSPs, six from the SSP, one from the Senior Citizens’ Party and three non-aligned MSPs had widely been seen as evidence for a pluralisation or even fragmentation of the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 44

20/8/09 11:50:57

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

45

Scottish party system. However, the 2007 elections saw a clear reversal of this trend. Apart from deputies from the four main parties, only two Green and one independent MSP were returned. The most important result, though, was the victory of the SNP, which for the first time ever became the strongest party in Scotland. Since the election the SNP is leading a minority government. Since its inauguration in 1999 the Scottish Parliament and the system of devolved government in Scotland has clearly settled in. Filling in the representational void at the regional level, the new system has effectively resolved the legitimacy crisis that had been looming over the political system in Scotland since the 1980s (Mitchell 2003: 137). As the electoral results show, it has also managed to achieve a much wider and more proportional representation of the political positions held in Scottish society than Scotland’s Westminster contingent. Despite coalitions, minority governments and a high turnover of First Ministers in its initial term,20 the Scottish Government has proved to be quite stable. Intergovernmental relations have occasionally been frictional, yet even between a Labour (London) and an SNP (Edinburgh) administration they have never deteriorated into open warfare. In terms of its policy output, the devolved system of government has produced some remarkable instances of divergence, most notably with regard to the abolition of university tuition fees and the introduction of free elderly care (Trench 2004). However, in spite of these achievements, the verdict on the devolved system in Scotland is far from unanimous. Criticism is mainly directed at the input side – i.e. the democratic quality of the political process. From the very start, MSPs have been under close surveillance. Initial introspective debates concerning MSPs’ own salaries and allowances, questionable reimbursement claims of a few individual MSPs in conjunction with various minor financial scandals involving high-ranking politicians (McLeish, McLetchie, Wendy Alexander, etc.) have nourished the perception that even the newly elected representatives of the Scottish people are nothing more than self-interested politicians. Other popular reproaches concerned the apparently poor debating skills of MSPs, their tight control by the group whips and the failure to introduce the envisaged ‘consensus-style’ politics. Similarly, efforts to introduce a stronger participatory element in the representative system have received a rather mixed reaction (Bonney 2003). Altogether, evidence from opinion polls suggests a considerable degree of disappointment with devolution and the regional parliament in Scotland (McEwan 2003; Curtice 2005). However, given the high – and quite unrealistic – expectations postulated 20

The first First Minister, Donald Dewar, died in 2000. His successor, Henry McLeish, was forced to resign over irregularities concerning the subletting of his Westminster constituency office in 2002. He was followed by Jack McConnell.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 45

20/8/09 11:50:57

46

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

in the run-up to devolution, such a disappointment is hardly surprising. It remains important to note, though, that there is no evidence that the at least partly disappointing political practice has undermined devolution as a political project.

Two cases, similar pattern and yet considerable differences

These brief introductory remarks have shown a quite similar pattern: We have two so-called ‘stateless nations’ characterised by a past history of independent statehood that have since been integrated as regions into their respective ‘host’ states. Both of them had to endure a period of centralisation and a central government out of touch with attitudes and interests in the region.21 As a result, regional identity was increasingly politicised and mobilised into a strong movement for self-government. This identity has an explicit territorial base in the respective regional civil society and is not based on any ethnic definition. Both regionalist movements have remained rather peaceful. In both cases the demand for regionalisation was closely linked to calls for an expansion of political participation (though obviously on a different scale). Subsequently, both host states have undergone considerable processes of modernisation, turning them from highly centralised unitary states into states characterised by asymmetric regionalisation. After mainly bilateral negotiations these states conceded the creation of highly autonomous systems of representative democracy in Catalonia and Scotland. And just as, historically, state modernisation and democratisation have been triggering off processes of political professionalisation at the central state level, this sudden arrival of a system of representative democracy at the regional level caused a new form of professional politics to emerge. In fact, the strong regionalism in both cases seems to have made for a degree of political professionalisation that is only slightly below that of the central state level. No doubt, in Catalonia and Scotland the territorial and the functional differentiation of politics have come together in their most pronounced form. However, despite these similarities with regard to the general pattern, the concrete concurrence of these processes in Catalonia and Scotland also differs in many respects. The first major difference regards the basis of regional identity. While both cases are confined to the civic, territorially based variety of regionalism rather than employing any ethnic criteria to define their commonality, Catalan regional identity and Catalan regionalism are much more 21

This is not to equate Thatcherism with Francoism (see below), but to state that they have fulfilled a similar catalyst function for the self-government movement.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 46

20/8/09 11:50:57

REGIONALISM IN CATALONIA AND SCOTLAND

47

culturally charged (in particular via the Catalan language), whereas Scottish identity is more strongly shaped by the autonomous institutions of Scottish civil society and public administration (both those preserved by the Act of Union and those newly created since). Secondly, while Francoism and Thatcherism can both be seen as centralist attacks on regional identity and regional autonomy, they remain fundamentally different with regard to their democratic quality and have thus provided highly distinctive contexts for the mobilisation of regionalist demands. The severe and persistent repression of democratic rights and Catalan identity under the Franco regime forced democratic and regionalist demands into clandestine organisational forms, yet it also forged strong ties among those fighting for regional self-government. By contrast, the various sectors of the Scottish self-government movement had been free to articulate themselves, yet they had to pursue their cause in the highly competitive arena of the majoritarian Westminster system. Thus, despite a wide consensus for Scottish home rule, the constitutional question remained a divisive issue among the Scottish political elite. The different character of the central state regime against which the regional self-government movements mobilised also had important consequences for the specific interrelation between regionalisation and democracy in each case. With regard to regionalisation, Catalan and Scottish regionalism fulfilled a similar function at the forefront of the movements for constitutional change in Spain and the United Kingdom, both as a driving force and a major reference point for other regions. Similarly both regional movements were instrumental in installing a new form of democracy in their respective regions. However, the establishment of a democratically elected regional parliament in Catalonia was an integral part of a state-wide process of democratisation, while the establishment of a democratically elected regional parliament in Scotland was caused by the perceived deficits of the majoritarian Westminster democracy. Thus, in the Spanish transition, regionalisation and democratisation had been highly interrelated processes pointing in the same direction. The new territorial order of the state and the new democratic institutions were established at the same time, installing the same model of democracy at each territorial level. Regionalisation in the UK, by contrast, has produced new forms of democracy at the regional level, yet it has left the structure of the Westminster democracy largely unaffected. In fact, the new democratic institutions in Scotland (and even more so those in Northern Ireland) have, at least partly, been deliberately designed as an antithesis to the Westminster model of democracy. The final difference between the two cases regards the actual institutions that have been established in Catalonia and Scotland during the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 47

20/8/09 11:50:57

48

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

regionalisation process. While both systems show high levels of autonomy and political professionalisation (relative to the central state level), the concrete opportunity structures for professional politicians in Catalonia and Scotland could hardly differ more widely. This starts with a completely different state tradition in their respective ‘host’ states. While Spain has been following an etatist napoleonic tradition that puts the state above society, the UK represents the quintessential liberal tradition, where the state as a concept separate from society and its (parliamentary) self-government does not exist (Loughlin and Peters 1997). This has significance for the territorial organisation of the state, but even more so for the relations between the different branches of government, and between public and private organisations. As a consequence Catalonia and Scotland differ vastly with regard to the politicisation of its public administration, the role of political parties, and the centrality of parliament as the locus of politics. Together with a different system for elections to the regional parliament, different parliamentary traditions and different systems of inner-party candidate selection, the pursuit of political careers in Catalonia and Scotland seems to be governed by a completely diverse set of institutions.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 48

20/8/09 11:50:57

3 Political careers: the making of a regional political class in itself

In the first part of the empirical analysis the focus is on the political class as a dependent variable and remains restricted to its structural dimension as a class ‘in itself’. It is asked whether the concurrent processes of regionalisation and political professionalisation in Catalonia and Scotland have led to the emergence of a regional political class as constituted by the existence of professional politicians (functional differentiation) with a common regional career orientation (territorial differentiation). However, the study is not concerned only with whether such a regional political class actually exists; further, it attempts to show how opportunity structures in Catalonia and Scotland affect regional politicians’ attempts to reconcile regional attachments and regional ties with professional career ambitions, and thus their living for politics with living off politics. Hence, the empirical analysis in this part is aimed at the identification and explanation of political career patterns that have been emerging in Catalonia and Scotland since the founding of regional political institutions. As stated in chapter 1, political careers are neither accidental, nor do they simply follow personal preferences. Concrete career ambitions do not reflect any primary preference formed in a vacuum, but are shaped in a specific institutional setting that favours specific choices and impedes others. In the words of Joseph Schlesinger we may state that, though ‘ambition lies at the heart of politics’ (1966: 1) this ambition is dependent on the ‘structure of political opportunities’ that is on offer (1966: 11ff.). This structure of opportunity may be understood as defined by the availability, accessibility and attractiveness of political positions in a given political system (for a discussion of the ‘triple As’ see Borchert and Stolz 2003: 151). The rules and norms that underpin this structure are the same for all, yet they do affect individuals in different ways. Thus, not every position that is generally available in a political system is equally accessible to all potential candidates. The chances of access are dependent upon a whole range of formal institutional rules and informal practices that increase or restrict individual chances for persons with specific characteristics (e.g. party membership,

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 49

20/8/09 11:50:57

50

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

political experience, place of birth, gender, etc.). In the literature on parliamentary recruitment, this dimension is captured in demand-side explanations that emphasise the role of selector demands for the recruitment of candidates and leaders (Norris 1997a: 12–13). The attractiveness of specific positions is dependent upon criteria such as power, status, salary, chances of career maintenance and advancement, etc. that are attached to the office in question. While these properties do not change much subject to the potential office-holder, not all possible contenders have the same set of priorities. Thus, this dimension can be seen to vaguely correspond to the supply side explanations of recruitment theory (Norris 1997a: 13–14). However, as argued above, stable collective career patterns often hint at inter-subjective estimations of the attractiveness of certain positions. Once such patterns are established, they also function as a model for future politicians to follow the same path, and they thus tend to be self-reinforcing. But what are the central institutions that constitute the structure of opportunities in a political system? In an attempt to provide an analytical framework, Borchert (2003a: 47–9) has divided the opportunity structure of professional politicians into four basic elements: state structure, representational structure, organisational structure and institutional structure. This framework comprises the most important institutional features that affect the chance to pursue professional political careers, as well as the form these careers may take. However, as it is conceptualised for the analysis and comparison of national politicians it is of limited utility for this study. In the following, its main features have been adapted to the purpose of analysing the opportunities for regional political careers. The regionalisation of a unitary state represents a major change of the state structure –fundamentally altering the opportunity structure for politicians. For the first time, regional political positions and regional political careers become available. How attractive and accessible they are, and to whom they are most attractive and most accessible, depends to a large extent on a set of institutional features (both formal political institutions as well as informal yet institutionalised processes) of the political system at the regional level. This includes the sheer number of available regional political positions (parliament and executive), their respective professionalisation, and the distribution of powers, competencies and status to them. The internal structure of regional institutions (e.g. the regional parliament), the role of parliamentary parties, the committee structure, etc., and the relations between them (e.g. between regional parliament and executive) determine to a large degree the daily working life of parliamentarians as well as their chances of career advancement. The central plank of access to a regional political career is the electoral system for the regional parliament in conjunction with the system of

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 50

20/8/09 11:50:57

POLITICAL CAREERS

51

recruitment and candidate nomination practised by the relevant intermediate organisations – i.e. political parties and interest groups. Indeed, the chances to acquire an elected public office are often determined to a lesser extent by the electoral system than by the question, which group of party or interestgroup selectors (members, activists, office-holders, leaders), on which organisational level (local, regional, national) apply what kind of criteria to select candidates for regional mandates and offices. Parties and other intermediate organisations further affect the opportunity structure at the regional level by providing paid positions within their own regional organisation, as well as through the patronage power they may hold over positions within the public administration, or even in organisations of civil society. However, a region is by definition part of a state-wide political system. Its opportunity structures are therefore also strongly affected by central state institutions and regulations, such as general provisions for public party finance. Furthermore, as regional political positions are usually part of a statewide career arena, it is their relative availability, accessibility and attractiveness vis-à-vis positions at the central state and even the local level that matters most for the political careers that will be pursued. Significant differences in terms of rewards (salary, prestige) or resources (legal competencies, staff, finance) could easily weigh the balance in favour of one or the other level. Furthermore, if recruitment and electoral systems are based on a completely different electorate and/or selectorate, or if the internal ‘rules of the game’ and the criteria for promotion differ widely between arenas, then this could represent a crucial advantage for contenders from within and create serious obstacles for any cross-over and level-hopping. Yet it is not regionalisation and the structure of the new regionalised state alone that are influencing the new career patterns that are being pursued, it is also its regionalist context. On the one hand, regionalism has effected the particular institutions that have been established in the regionalisation process. No doubt, without regionalist pressure regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland would not be as strong and resourceful as they actually are today. Yet regionalism has not only pushed for strong institutions: in both cases regionalism has also been strongly connected with democratisation. The specific democratic norms and values that have developed in the regionalist conflict with the central state are finding their way into the new regional polity as the ‘central animating ideas’ (Goodin 1996: 26) of the new regional institutions. And, as the previous chapter has shown, the normative conception of democracy in Catalonia and Scotland is not necessarily the same as that held at the central level of their respective ‘host states’. Regional institutions, their regulative rules, and also their animating ideas may thus restrict and enable access to regional mandates and political offices in

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 51

20/8/09 11:50:57

52

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

a very specific way. Representational ideals developed and postulated during a phase of regional mobilisation influence recruitment processes as well as electoral choices and may hamper or facilitate the careers of individuals within the newly established institutional structures, depending upon specific features (gender, origin, political experience, etc.). Yet these ideals might not only discriminate for or against specific individuals, they may also work against the pursuit of long-term professional political careers in general. As stated in chapter 1, the politics of ‘identity’ – often crucial to regionalist movements – may be actively contravening the functional differentiation of politics into a separate sphere and a distinct profession. As stated above, regionalism is often the cause for a relatively strong formal resource endowment of regional institutions (legal competencies, material provisions, etc.). However, in terms of the attractiveness of regional political positions and a regional political career, its impact goes well beyond these formal resources: in regions with a strong regionalism, it is often the region and not the central state that represents the most meaningful political frame of reference for its citizens and politicians. Holding a regional mandate thus allows politicians to bring the territorial boundaries of their constituency (in a wider sense) in line with the territorial focus of their notion of the collective good. As the newly established regional parliaments and government are symbols of a reawakened political identity and democracy, its members carry a high status with the general public and a high publicity with the regional media. Furthermore, the stronger the social and cultural dimension of the regional identity, the more attractive it is for regional politicians to be able to stay in the region rather than move to the national capital, which is perceived as ‘foreign’ territory. In the following analysis I will show how the regionalised institutional opportunity structures in conjunction with the non-institutional effects of regionalism are shaping professional political careers in Catalonia and Scotland, and how close these professional politicians have got to forming a homogeneous regional political class. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section looks at the aspect of functional differentiation of regional politicians vis-à-vis regional citizens – the existence and prevalence of professional political careers at the regional level. Focusing on the recruitment and careers of regional parliamentarians – yet adding complementary information on careers in other institutions whenever possible – political biographies of regional parliamentarians are analysed for features of political professionalisation in their pre-parliamentary activities, for the intensity of their professional dedication during their parliamentary mandate and for the longitudinal extension of their professional political activities inside and outside the parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 52

20/8/09 11:50:57

POLITICAL CAREERS

53

The second section deals with the territorial differentiation of regional politicians vis-à-vis national politicians – the existence and prevalence of career patterns that are orientated towards the regional level of government. A close analysis of career movements between the regional and the national level, supplemented by survey data on attitudes towards careers on both levels, tells us something about the prevailing career interests of politicians from Catalonia and Scotland and how they link or separate the regional and national career arena in a specific way. In the third and final section, the analytically separated results of the first two sections will be taken together to present a more generic view of the overall career patterns that have been emerging in Catalonia and in Scotland. How do political careers develop, what political positions are typically held concurrently, what positions are held after each other? Is there a common career pattern that is followed by most politicians from these regions? What are the most important differences between Catalan and Scottish careers? The answers to these questions are finally taken as a basis to delineate the objective structural features of the political classes in Catalonia and Scotland. Looking at their internal homogeneity and external boundaries enables an evaluation of how close both cases get to the ideal type of a regional political class and also what form of collective action can be expected from such a political class.

Functional differentiation: the professionalisation of regional politicians

In this first section political careers in Catalonia and Scotland will be analysed in order to find out in how far regional politics has become a profession. The focus of the empirical analysis is on the careers of regional parliamentarians, that is Members of the Catalan Parliament (MCPs) and Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). This is an almost self-evident choice as the regional parliaments can be expected to be the central institutional base of a regional political class. However, even if the institution in itself is not as important as expected, core members of a regional political class will almost certainly have passed through this institution at one time or other, and thus their careers will be object of the investigation. Further information on political careers that have remained outside the regional parliament will be added where available and relevant. The analysis proceeds in three steps as follows. First, I will look at political recruitment to the regional parliaments, or, in other words, who gets in and where do they come from? As argued in chapter 1, personal, social and political background in itself provide only a very vague

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 53

20/8/09 11:50:57

54

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

indication of the individual professionalisation of regional parliamentarians and no indication at all about the professionalisation of the regional mandate. However, some important personal and social characteristics of regional parliamentarians are briefly discussed in order to explore whether specific ‘regionalist demands’ for a particular type of regional politician or a particular form of representation are influencing access to a regional political career, or whether the two regionalist cases exhibit the same recruitment filters (and thus the same modes of exclusion from political office) as other professionalised advanced democracies. The analysis of prior political offices, including non- or semi-professionalised positions, is meant to provide some insight into the early stage of individual professionalisation. Such a political experience can be seen as a functional equivalent to the apprenticeship that is generally needed to enter any of the traditional professions. Furthermore, entering ‘a fairly autonomous field of political action with specific rules for access and reward’ (Cotta and Best 2000: 523) may indicate a certain decoupling from a non-political social and occupational background and a re-orientation of commitments and loyalties towards the political career. However, such a career can only be called professionalised if it transforms into a full-time (fully paid) and long-term career. Secondly, the study looks at the amount of time members of parliament dedicate to their parliamentary mandate, to other political activities and to non-political occupations. The argument behind this decision is that once the level of parliamentary remuneration is sufficient to live on, the degree of professionalisation is better measured in terms of the exclusivity of this occupation than in terms of overall salaries. After all, there are low- and high-paid professions. The existence of part-timers, though, indicates that politics has not (yet) become a full-time job. Maintaining a non-political occupation even on a part-time or completely notional basis, also suggests that this former occupation might still be a viable career option in future and that politics may prove to have been only a temporary occupation. By looking at the various other political offices and positions held concurrently with the regional mandate, we can distinguish between the professionalisation of the parliamentary mandate and the individual political professionalisation of those who hold this mandate. Finally, the notions of profession and professional career also entail some form of continuity. The third step therefore deals with the duration of political careers as a full-time occupation. A measure often taken as the sole indicator is the average parliamentary tenure. However, this indicator is only part of the picture, as it only measures the professionalisation of a particular office, namely that of regional parliamentarian. Any measurement of the individual professionalisation of parliamentarians has to take account

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 54

20/8/09 11:50:57

POLITICAL CAREERS

55

of all full-time, fully paid positions they have held during their whole political career. This directs the perspective on a whole range of other institutions and organisations which provide politicians with the means to make regional politics their living. Personal, occupational and political background: who gets in and where do they come from? Catalonia: from opposition to Franco to experience in the new democratic institutions

When in March 1980 the first Catalan Parliament since the second republic was elected, this election symbolised not only another step towards a regionalised democratic Spanish state, but also the end of a long period of suppression of Catalan identity and Catalanism as a cultural as well as a political force. As Catalonia (perhaps along with the Basque country) had been the Spanish region most at odds with the Franco regime, it may come as little surprise that it was the region that turned away from the Francoist past more radically than all the other regions when it had the chance. As a consequence, one of the most striking features of the Catalan political personnel in the transition period – in contrast to the political personnel in many other parts of Spain – is its complete rupture with the Franco regime (Pitarch and Subirats 1982: 159). This concerns both national and regional parliamentarians. While as many as 61 members (13 per cent) of the first democratically elected Spanish Cortes of 1977 had already been Cortes members during the Franco regime, the Catalan contingent was nearly free of politicians with such a past: there was none in 1977 and just one (1.6 per cent) in 1979. In the first Catalan Parliament of 1980 there was only one former member of the Franco Cortes (0.7 per cent) (Pitarch and Subirats 1982: 160). In turn, and again contrary to the situation in other Spanish regions,1 the number of parliamentarians that had been imprisoned, exiled or had been actively involved in the clandestine resistance against the Franco regime is remarkably high in the Catalan Parliament. This applies in particular, but not exclusively, to MCPs from the parties of the left. According to Pitarch and Subirats (1982: 155) two-fifths of the PSUC, one-third of ERC and less than a third of PSC members report that they had been persecuted and repressed for political reasons during the Franco regime. Among the MCPs 1

By contrast, in his study of transformational political elites in Andalucia Genieys did not encounter any parliamentarian that had openly engaged in political action against the Franco regime (Genieys 1997: 248).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 55

20/8/09 11:50:57

56

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

of the nationalist coalition CiU there are also some who had been exiled and imprisoned (including its leader Jordi Pujol). Only the MCPs from the centrist UCD–CC had not been in conflict with the regime (see Parlament de Catalunya 1986). The importance of such an experience in the fight against dictatorship can hardly be overstated. In a survey realised as late as 1992/93, more than 80 per cent of the respondents from among Catalan parliamentarians still named the fight against Francoism as their way of entry into politics (Genieys 1997: 264 and 247, footnote 3). No doubt, experience in the political struggle against the Franco regime gave legitimacy to those involved and thus facilitated their move onto the party lists at the first democratic elections. Yet in addition to party selectors’ demands for political integrity, this recruitment bias has also a supply side explanation: taking up a full-time public office in those times of rapid political and social change contained a strong element of risk. Private careers were put on hold, although remuneration of political offices was not yet decided and political careers looked very insecure.2 In these circumstances, those who had been risking their lives and livelihoods for democracy and Catalan autonomy were among those most willing to continue their political commitment in order to shape the new Catalan democracy. After all, for them conditions of political life had improved considerably. Despite this rupture with the old regime, not all members of the first Catalan Parliament had been complete newcomers to public office. In fact, a surprisingly high 44 per cent did have prior experience in some public office. Apart from three members with a past in the Franco regime and one who had been a member of the 1932–39 parliament of Catalonia (Andreu i Abelló), these MCPs had already served brief spells in the newly established democratic institutions: they had been members in the provisional Generalitat (1977–80) appointed by president Tarradellas (10 per cent), elected members of the Spanish Congress of 1977 (12 per cent) and 1979 (10 per cent), or representatives in the first democratically elected local councils (1979) (22 per cent) (Pitarch and Subirats 1982: 160). If we move from public offices to elected positions in political parties, the political experience of the first elected MCPs becomes even more apparent. More than 70 per cent had held a party office at the Catalan, province, county or municipal level. This phenomenon is particularly strong for the parties of the left (84 per cent PSUC and 82 per cent PSC), decreases slightly for the two nationalist formations (71 per cent ERC and 68 per cent CiU), and nearly 2

According to leading member of the CDC at that time, their party had difficulties recruiting candidates because of the material insecurity such a move would have entailed (interview Vidal).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 56

20/8/09 11:50:57

POLITICAL CAREERS

57

vanishes for the centrists (38 per cent) (Pitarch and Subirats 1982: 167). A clear majority of those from the left parties had even been party members (or members of a precursory party formation) before 1975 (death of Franco) (ibid.: 168). Altogether, only 6 MCPs (4.4 per cent) were not affiliated to a political party at the time of their election in 1980, having been integrated into the party lists as civil or political ‘notables’. In general, members of the Catalan Parliament of 1980 were mostly male, born in Catalonia, relatively young, well educated and with an occupational background in the service sector. In contrast to the situation in other Spanish regions (such as Andalucía – see Genieys 1997, 1998a) their ‘political career’, especially their party militancy has started long before their election to the parliament and even goes back to the times of the Franco dictatorship. Mobilised against the Franco regime in clandestine parties, trade unions, religious or cultural organisations and universities they have been following what Genieys calls ‘trajectoires fondatrices’ (Genieys 1997) – career pathways in which they have been participating in the founding of the new democratic institutions. If we look at recruitment patterns since 1980, we can see some differences yet also a strong continuation of the general trends. The most important difference in terms of personal features is clearly the continuous move towards gender equality. During the 1980s the share of female MCPs had been below 10 per cent; during the 1990s it remained still below 25 per cent; at the latest election (2006) it produced almost 39 per cent (author’s data). As is to be expected, pre-legislative political experience of MCPs has also increased considerably since the 1980 legislature. While hitherto studies are not free of inconsistencies, they do all point to very high levels of prior local government experience (as mayor, local councillor, county councillor, provincial deputy or posts in the provincial executive) (Magre 1999: 115, Argelaguet 1999: 126–7). My own study (utilising two different data sources) produced the following result: in their parliamentary biographies half of all the members of the 2004 Catalan Parliament (68 MCPs/50 per cent) declared local government experience as mayor (25 MCPs/19 per cent), deputy mayor (7 MCPs/5 per cent) or councillor. As this form of self-declaration of offices is often incomplete, with a strong tendency to leave out the oldest and the least important offices, we have to consider these figures as a minimum. My own survey of MCPs produced considerably higher results. Here, 32 per cent claimed experience as either mayor or deputy mayor and 53 per cent as a local councillor. Altogether, more than two-thirds of all MCPs (68 per cent) declared one type of local office. Given the high level of representativeness for my Catalan survey (see appendix 1) the real figure is probably closer to the survey result than to the web-count. With regard to party political and interest group offices, the official biographies are generally even less reliable. I have thus restricted the analysis to

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 57

20/8/09 11:50:57

58

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

my own survey. The results of the survey clearly indicate that party militancy and prior party office have not lost their paramount quality with regard to the recruitment into a parliamentary mandate. Nearly 70 per cent (68 per cent) of the respondents have held some form of elected party office before being elected to the Catalan Parliament: 58 per cent at the local level, 32 per cent at the Catalan level and 9 per cent at the Spanish level. This is despite the fact that the socialist list of 1999 – and thus their parliamentary group – contained members from the non-party formation, Ciutadans pel Canvi. Thus, the survey has shown quite high scores for parliamentarians with prior experience in local government and party politics (both at 68 per cent), suggesting some overlap between the two groups. And indeed, nearly half of all MCPs (49 per cent) have prior experience in both types of office. On the other hand, only 14 per cent of all MCPs have reached their mandate with no experience in either of the two. Prior offices in interest groups are less frequent, though hardly uncommon. Some 36 per cent of respondents have held such offices (22 per cent on the local level, 17 per cent on the Catalan and 2 per cent at the Spanish level). For both party and interest-group offices the local and Catalan level are clearly more important than the Spanish. Finally, if we combine all the offices analysed above that are held on these two levels (mayor, councillor, party and interest group), there are only 5 MCPs (8.5 per cent) left who have not held any such office. In other words, more than 90 per cent of MCPs have held a public, party, or interest-group office at the local or Catalan level before entering the Catalan Parliament. Many years after the first election we may thus state that political experience seems to have been the most important prerequisite for achieving a seat in the Catalan Parliament. The form of this experience has changed though. While the founding generation drew their credibility largely from their various clandestine activities against the Franco regime and only to a much lesser extent from their experience in the newly formed democratic institutions, today a mandate in the Catalan Parliament is contingent with a more classical form of political ‘apprenticeship’ in local government and party office (and to a lesser extent also in interest groups). The findings thus clearly indicate a strong careerism of MCPs. Whether this is combined with a professionalisation remains to be seen in the next sections of this chapter. Scotland: new institutions, new personnel?

Unlike the establishment of the Catalan Parliament, the Scottish Parliament is not the consequence of a regime change. Nevertheless, the establishment of a Scottish Parliament has raised high expectations of a ‘new politics’

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 58

20/8/09 11:50:57

POLITICAL CAREERS

59

(Hassan and Warhurst 2000; Mitchell 2000; Paterson et al. 2001). Apart from the institutional innovations from the Westminster model (see chapter 2), these expectations were tied to the hope that Scottish politics would attract ‘a “new breed” of politician’ (Shepard et al. 2001: 79). However, the various notions as to what this new breed should look like were rather vague, even contradictory. Inserted by a radical democratic strand in the Scottish self-government movement, Scottish society had developed a profound scepticism if not antagonism vis-à-vis established politicians (Mitchell 1999: 32), perhaps best encapsulated in the dictum of the executive chair of the Scottish Constitutional Convention: ‘politics is too important to be left to the politicians’ (Wright 1997: 20). Yet while the Westminster system and its protagonists were rejected, it was rather less clear with whom they should be replaced. There were those who, appalled by the lack of descriptive representation in the Westminster system, hoped for increased representation of women, ethnic minorities and the lower social and educational strata. Others were closer to the old liberal model of democracy, hoping for individuals of high stature and independent mind, and thus for the ‘great and the good’ of Scottish society to represent the nation – reflecting a tendency to trust the unelected civic leader more than the elected party politician.3 And finally there were those who hoped the new parliament would be the natural home of all those home-rule activists who had helped to bring it about. Amalgamating some of these notions, one commentator summarised Scottish expectations as follows: ‘MSPs would be less likely to be party hacks, there would be more independents or independently minded MSPs, they would come from a broad spectrum of life, with more women, less councillors and be substantially younger’ (Hassan and Warhurst 2000: 4). But how were these rather diverse expectations met by the political personnel who actually filled the seats of the new parliament? In part, this question has been answered by some early studies on the new Scottish parliamentarians (Henderson and Sloat 1999; Shepard et al. 2001; Burnside et al. 2003; Keating and Cairney 2006). Comparing background and career variables of the Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) with their Scottish counterparts at Westminster (MPs) and the general Scottish public, the authors were generally little impressed with the progress made by MSPs in terms of broadening the descriptive representativeness of elected politicians. The most dramatic difference in terms of personal characteristics – and indeed, one might argue in terms of all characteristics – is the gender balance. 3

As Paterson (1999: 38) has put it: ‘civic Scotland is trusted – far more so than any politician’.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 59

20/8/09 11:50:58

60

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Due to a successful affirmative-action policy – especially within the Scottish Labour Party – the Scottish Parliament of 1999 had an outstandingly high 37 per cent share of female MSPs – a share that was even increased to 40 per cent in 2003 (contrasting with only 17 per cent of female Scottish MPs at that time), yet slumped to 33 per cent in 2007. Another striking difference, though, is the almost complete exclusion of members with a blue-collar/ industrial background from among MSPs (1.6 per cent) as against a share of roughly one-fifth (19.4 per cent) among Scottish MPs (Keating and Cairney 2006). Thus, devolution has been widening but also narrowing political representation in Scotland depending on which group you are focusing on. But how ‘new’ are MSPs in terms of their political career? Do they consist of the grassroots activists and civic leaders that struggled for a Scottish Parliament or just the typical career politicians we would also find at Westminster? The data to be shown in the following clearly point to the latter. Indeed, 24 MSPs (19 per cent) have actually come to the Scottish Parliament with experience from Westminster – 15 (12 per cent) as sitting MPs and 9 (7 per cent) who had already left the House of Commons.4 The collective political experience these politicians bring to the Scottish Parliament is quite considerable. Four of them had each served more than 20 years in the House of Commons5 and 5 had achieved government office. One of the former MPs had moved to the European Parliament before she became an MSP, and three others came as current members of the House of Lords. If we stretch the notion of Westminster experience to its limits, to include all those who have contested a seat at a general election, it becomes even more apparent that political activity at the central state level is indeed a positive aspect in the competition for nomination to the Scottish parliament: as many as 40 per cent of MSPs had already stood for election to the UK Parliament before entering the Scottish legislature (Henderson and Sloat 1999: 245). The most commonly used indicator for the political experience of parliamentarians (and sometimes even for the professionalisation) is the share of those who previously held a local government office. For Scottish MSPs 4

5

These figures are based on my own data set (see chapter 1). It is surprising how inconsistent and even faulty these basic fi gures are as compiled in the fi rst studies on Scottish MSPs. Both Shepard et al. (2001) and Burnside et al. (2003) in their respective tables on the political background of MSPs present only those 15 MPs who moved directly from a current mandate to the Scottish Parliament. Somebody like Lord James Douglas Hamilton, a former UK minister and Conservative MP for 23 years would thus not count as an MSP with an MP’s background. Henderson and Sloat (1999) counted 16 instead of 15 current MPs directly moving to the Scottish Parliament. David Steel (Lib–Dem), the first Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, had even served 32 years in the House of Commons.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 60

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

61

this share (40 per cent in my survey, Shepard et al. 2001 have 39 per cent) is lower than for Scottish MPs (46 per cent) (Shepard et al. 2001: 93–94) yet this difference is hardly major in terms of the respective recruitment base. Despite some reservations within the Scottish self-government movement with regard to the Scottish local councillors (see above), the council mandate has been a springboard to the Scottish Parliament for almost half of all MSPs. By contrast, experience in interest groups is generally rather low. Only 13 per cent stated that they had held any prior interest-group office (Shepard et al. have counted 12 per cent). MSPs’ embarking upon a political career prior to their membership in the Scottish Parliament is most clearly demonstrated though by looking at their prior party offices. In my survey an astonishing 80 per cent of MSPs reported that they had held an elected office in their party prior to their election. The great bulk of those had held a party office at the local level (71 per cent of all MSPs). Quite surprisingly though, half of all MSPs had been holding a party office at the Scottish level before their election, with 41 per cent having held offices at both levels. In contrast the share of MSPs with experience on the UK party level (6 per cent) is rather low. Thus, party office is clearly the most important attribute for recruitment to the Scottish Parliament. However, 45 per cent of all MSPs have combined this party office with either an elected public office at the local or UK level or an interest-group office. Only 10 per cent (!) have not held any political office prior to their election. This evidence clearly shows that any hopes for the emergence of the non-career, non-partisan legislator had been at best premature. Having said that, MSPs do differ considerably from Westminster MPs with regard to their party political affiliation. The new electoral system in Scotland has not only produced a different distribution of seats among the Scottish Westminster parties, but has also allowed for the election of parliamentarians who do not belong to any of them. This was demonstrated most starkly in the second legislature (2003–7), when the Scottish Greens secured seven seats, the SSP six, the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party one, and when the number of non-affiliated MSPs rose to three.6 However, with only two Greens and one independent returned, the 2007 election brought a clear move back towards the major Scottish parties. Further evidence of the importance of party political careers for recruitment to the Scottish Parliament is provided by a search for home-rule activists 6

However, a closer look shows that two of them (Dennis Canavan and Margo MacDonald) were actually disgruntled party politicians, and only the ‘Save Our Hospital’ candidate Dr Jean Turner is a real outsider with no party political background.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 61

20/8/09 11:50:58

62

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

and civic leaders among the first cohort of MSPs. Not surprisingly, all three pro-devolution Westminster parties (SNP, Labour, Lib–Dems) featured many long-standing home rule supporters, among them some of the leading politicians of the Scottish self-government movement.7 Yet these were mainly long-standing well-established party politicians, rather than activists of a social movement finding party support for their candidacy. Indeed, within the Labour Party there were strong allegations that well-known party figures with ‘nationalist-left’ leanings had been deliberately blocked in the recruitment process (Bradbury et al. 2000b: 157–8). In general, the more prominent figures of a wider civil movement who had never been part of the party establishment either did not intend to stand, failed to secure a (promising) party nomination or lost out at the election as independent candidates.8 Taken together, these data show that the high expectations for a ‘new breed’ of politician have not been fulfilled. Apart from the high level of female representation, most personal, social background and political career characteristics of MSPs are very similar to Westminster MPs, and a considerable minority even came from there. The establishment of the new parliament has not led to a notable broadening of the recruitment base of political parties. 7

8

Of course, SNP politicians are by definition home-rule activists. The Liberals, too, have a long tradition of home-rule sympathy, and had been represented in the Scottish Parliament by their ex-leader David Steel (one of the two presidents of the Scottish Constitutional Convention) and their then party leader Jim Wallace. Within the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament John McAllion (an MP since 1987) and Jack McConnell (former general secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland) had been among the most outspoken campaigners for self-government. The Labour politicians ‘blocked’ by the establishment included Dennis Canavan MP (who ran successfully for MSP on his own), former Labour Party chairman Mark Lazarowicz (later to become an MP) and a former deputy general secretary of the party, Tommy Sheppard. The most prominent civic leaders who did not stand were probably Campbell Christie, long-time general secretary of The Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) and his successor Bill Speirs. Isobel Lindsay – former SNP, later Labour member, and long-time leading activist in the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly – failed to get on the Labour list of eligible candidates, long-time Scottish Labour Action activist Bob McLean fell victim to Labour’s gender-twinning arrangement, and Stephen Maxwell (left-wing nationalist intellectual) refused to sign the statement of party loyalty required by the SNP. The most prominent home-rule activist who ran on his own was Canon Kenyon Wright, the Executive Chair of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. He stood for his own list in the west of Scotland region yet received less than 1 per cent of the vote. One of the few examples of a civic leader (though not exactly a leading homerule activist) successfully making the transition into the Scottish Parliament was George Lyon, Lib–Dem MSP (1999–2007), a former president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 62

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

63

Neither the grassroots home-rule activists nor the figures of civil society who had dominated Scottish public discourse in the absence of a regional parliament have found their way into the parliament in significant numbers. Instead, recruitment analyses show a strong social and educational background and a very high level of political experience (especially within the party organisation) typical of professional politicians in most advanced democracies. There are few hints that regionalism, in the form of a regional society with high levels of political identity and in its form as a social movement, did have any pronounced effect on the selection of Scotland’s new parliamentarians. Comparison

As this rather brief analysis has shown, the basic personal and social background characteristics of regional politicians from Catalonia and Scotland clearly resemble each other. Furthermore, they also resemble figures found in many other national parliaments in western Europe. This applies in particular to the high levels of education and low levels of blue collar workers and businessmen/managers (Cotta and Best 2000). As the two regionalist cases provide no exception they may be explained with arguments from general recruitment and professionalisation theory (King 1981; Norris and Lovenduski 1993; Stolz 2006: 83–4). The most obvious divergence from average figures in other western democracies relates to the share of female parliamentarians. With 33 per cent in Scotland and an astonishing 39 per cent in Catalonia, both regional parliaments today show extremely high shares of female representation. Nevertheless, these rather similar figures have to be explained in slightly different ways. In Catalonia, the slow yet constant increase of female MCPs from a very low level (5 per cent in 1980) to exceptionally high figures seems to reflect a broad process of modernisation and change in political culture that has not left party selectors unaffected. In the Scottish case, though, the sudden leap in terms of female representation at the first election to the regional parliament can hardly be explained culturally. After all, shares of female representation at Westminster have been rather low before and after. Instead they have to be seen as the result of a very specific arrangement in the Labour Party’s system of candidate nomination for the first Scottish Parliament.9 This political redirection of representational values cannot be understood without the specific ideological content of regionalism in Scotland and the opportunities offered by the regionalisation process. In contrast to Catalonia during the transition period, when gender aspects were clearly not at the 9

For a description of this process see Bradbury et al. (2000a, 2000b).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 63

20/8/09 11:50:58

64

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

heart of a movement concerned first and foremost with replacing a dictatorial regime with democracy, the women’s movement in Scotland was an integral part of the Scottish self-government movement. Both movements thrived on the perceived representational deficits of Westminster democracy and postulated modernisation by installing a new representational relationship. Furthermore, there was a huge personal overlap between the two social movements and many of these activists also worked within their respective parties. Those double activists (from academics like Isobel Lindsay or Alice Brown to trade unionists like Yvonne Strachan) were thus not only installing the gender question into the general debate on self-government, they were also instrumental in using this momentum to change internal party rules (cf. Brown 1998). In terms of their pre-legislative political experience, regional parliamentarians from Scotland and Catalonia show similar high levels of prior offices (see table 3.1). Around 90 per cent of parliamentarians in both regions have held a local government, party or interest group office before entering the regional parliament. Some differences exist as to which types of offices constitute the main stepping-stone towards the parliament. In Scotland party politics is clearly the dominant route, while Catalan parliamentarians show the same extremely high ratios for party politics and local government with more than a third having held an interest-group office. This long and intensive pre-legislative political experience of parliamentarians might be explained functionally with the need for politically experienced members in a legislature that has to deal with a wide range of political issues and perform ever more complex political tasks. Yet while it certainly is functional to have experienced politicians sitting in parliaments, this is hardly the (sole) reason why they were put there. A more institutional explanation would look at the main gatekeepers in the recruitment process. As depicted in chapter 2, in both cases parties fulfil this function. Party office-bearers as well as mayors and local councillors are usually either part of the party selectorate or are at least well known to or well acquainted with such a selectorate (whether it consists of party members, party activists or the party leadership) and thus stand better chances of getting nominated. Local politicians have the added advantage of being known to local citizens and thus their selection can be justified also by their appeal to the broader electorate. The main advantage of both groups, however, may well be that they have already successfully passed the test of party loyalty and commitment in their previous positions and thus are seen to make reliable candidates and parliamentarians. Refuting some of the theoretical deliberations depicted in chapter 1, this party loyalty test has not been replaced or complemented by other regionalist credentials acquired in non-party-organised political or social activities, either in Catalonia or in

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 64

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

65

Table 3.1. Prior offices of MCPs and MSPs (%) MCPs 2003 n = 59

MSPs 2002 n = 48

MNPs E 2000

Local councillor Mayor or deputy mayor County councillor Province councillor Local government office

52.5 32.2 22.0 11.9 67.8

39.6

39.6

~ 60 (40 – 80)

Local party office Regional party office National party office Party office (local or reg. or nat.)

57.6 32.2 8.5 67.8

70.8 50.0 6.3 79.2

~ 40 (25 – 65)

Local interest group office Regional interest group office National interest group office Interest group office (loc. or reg. or nat.)

22.0 16.9 1.7 35.6

10.4 6.3 4.2 12.8

Local govt or party or int. group office

93.2

87.5

Sources: The first two columns show the data of my survey. The last column gives a reference value of Members of National Parliaments in Europe (MNPs E) taken from Cotta and Best 2000. The first figure shows an average over seven European countries, the figures in brackets indicate the range.

Scotland. On the contrary, at least in Scotland some of the most outspoken ‘nationalists’ within the Labour movement have been successfully blocked from the regional parliament. The huge difference between MSPs and MCPs concerning prior local government offices might be explained by the vastly different structure of local government in the two regions. As has been depicted in chapter 2, Catalonia contains one of the most overcrowded areas of local government, while Scotland has very few local authorities, some covering rather large areas. With only just over a thousand local councillors, compared to almost nine thousand in Catalonia, the lower share of former local councillors in the Scottish Parliament may thus be largely explained by a lower supply. The high availability of council seats in Catalonia leaves very few politically active citizens and even fewer party politicians without such an office, while in Scotland parties may pick their regional candidates from a much wider choice of respectable non-councillors. However, taken on its own, the Scottish figure is not that low. After all, 40 per cent of MSPs do have local government experience: this is still within the range of prior local or regional experience found for national parliamentarians around Europe (though at the lower end).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 65

20/8/09 11:50:58

66

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

While the extremely high number of party office-holders in both cases can be explained by the strong position of parties in the recruitment and electoral process, this is nevertheless not exactly the same phenomenon in both cases. In Spain this position is a direct result of the formal role political parties have gained during the transition to democracy, as the list-based Spanish electoral system endows parties with a legal monopoly on candidate nomination. British parties have effectively played the same gatekeeper role from a much weaker institutional base. While theoretically the plurality electoral system allows for all sorts of candidates, it is the continuing party-voter alignment and the continuing capacity of British parties (especially the major two) to aggregate successfully a wide range of interests – in conjunction with the high electoral threshold of such an electoral system (as any candidate has to win a majority in the constituency) – that has made them into de-facto monopolists. Similarly, Scottish non-party parliamentarians differ clearly from their Catalan counterparts, especially with regard to the structures that have produced them. Catalonia’s non-affiliated ‘notables’ of 1980 and the current non-affiliated MCPs from Ciutadans pel Canvi were mainly recruited to broaden the electoral appeal of the parties involved. Elected via a party list and usually also integrated into the respective parliamentary party group, they are hardly independent. This is in clear contrast to non-party members in the Scottish Parliament. Making use of the extensive institutional opportunities that the Scottish electoral system provides for individual candidates,10 they have stood against party candidates and can thus more accurately been seen as anti-party candidates (despite having a party background). Taken together, these data on the personal, social and political background of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland put both cases in line with general trends in advanced European democracies often associated with political professionalisation (Cotta and Best 2000). Regionalism has neither produced a more accurate descriptive representation, nor a parliament of regional civic leaders, nor has it facilitated the election of ordinary citizens as political representatives. Instead, recruitment to a regional political career (just like that to the national parliament) is dependent on a political 10

The traditional single-member, first-past-the-post system (FTPT) used for constituency elections has traditionally returned party candidates in Britain, yet this is hardly an inherent quality of the system. On the contrary, the same system produces highly personalised contests in the US. In Scotland, two independent candidates (Jean Turner and Dennis Canavan) have already successfully used the personalised voter–candidate relationship inherent in the system. Furthermore, as the third independent MSP (Margo MacDonald) has shown, even the regional list element (often quite wrongly referred to as party list) can be successfully used by individual, non-party candidates.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 66

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

67

‘apprenticeship’. While there are different agencies (local councils, interest groups, party organisations) for this kind of ‘vocational training’ and different routes into parliament, political parties are at the centre of this training system. With regard to their occupational background, many aspirants for elected political office are already employed in a political occupation (party staff, parliamentary assistants, political consultants, interest group officials), while others pursue occupational careers that can easily be combined with political activities and may even produce synergy effects (PR, media). Those who do not fall into either category are forced to curtail or compromise their non-political occupational career in order to accomplish their political apprenticeship, and are thus forced to disentangle themselves step-by-step from their non-political social background. The process of functional and social differentiation of regional politicians as a distinct group thus begins before they even enter parliament and a fully professional political career. Occupational status, concurrent political positions and time expenditure: what do they do, how much time do they spend?

As shown in chapter 2, both MCPs and MSPs receive parliamentary salaries that make it possible to live off their mandate (though on a rather different scale). But does that mean that regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland are fully professionalised? Do they live exclusively for and off their mandate? Catalonia: Full-time politicians in a semi-professionalised office

In their study of members of the 1980 Catalan Parliament, Pitarch and Subirats already touch upon the subject of political professionalisation. While at that time it was too early to tell what kind of model would emerge, they nevertheless saw some indication of a growing professionalisation that was expected to continue, eventually ‘approximating the model of French and Italian parliamentarians’ (Pitarch and Subirats 1982: 161, footnote 18). Two elections later, in a survey of regional parliamentarians from four Spanish Autonomous Communities conducted in 1988/89, Morata (1992) found Catalan parliamentarians to be the most professional. Some 65.2 per cent of members of the Catalan Parliament stated that they would dedicate themselves exclusively to politics, as against 48 per cent in Andalucía and only 36.3 and 31.4 per cent in Valencia and Galicia. While 35 per cent of MCPs stated a concurrent private activity, only 2.9 per cent dedicated more time to such an activity than to their political activities. As is to be expected, the degree of professionalisation decreases from left to right, with all PSUC

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 67

20/8/09 11:50:58

68

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Table 3.2 Occupational situation of MCPs (%) MCPs 1988/89 a Regional parliamentarian only With concurrent political occupation With concurrent non-political occupation Politics as secondary occupation

65.2 0 31.9 2.9

MCPs 2003 b (n = 43) 55.9 23.7 20.3 0

Notes: a Figures taken from Morata (1992: 271). b Figures from author’s survey.

members fully professionalised and all PP members in the semi-professional category. The only party group with non-professional MCPs (though only 7.7 per cent) is CDC (Morata 1992: 270–1). Thus, early research suggests that MCPs have reached relatively high levels of political professionalisation fairly early in the life of the Catalan Parliament. In the following, I will present recent data providing evidence that the degree of individual professionalisation has increased even further. With regard to the occupational situation of members of the Catalan MCPs, my own survey of 2003 shows 56 per cent to be exclusively dedicated to their mandate (with 44 per cent holding some other occupation concurrently). At first sight, this figure might look quite low, indicating some kind of standstill or even de-professionalisation since Morata’s findings in the late 1980s. However, if we look more closely at the type of additional occupations stated, we see that more than half of them are actually political occupations, mostly as mayors or councillors. As Morata has not distinguished between ‘office’ and ‘individual’ professionalisation (asking about an exclusive dedication to politics rather than to the mandate, Morata 1992: 270) we have to aggregate the first two rows of my survey for any direct comparison with Morata’s findings (table 3.2). Now the figures show a clear professionalisation since the late 1980s. The share of full-time politicians has increased from nearly two-thirds to four out of five. Only one-fifth are acknowledging a concurrent non-political occupation, yet in no case is this occupation taking up more time than the political activities. A look at the time-budget of MCPs shows a similar picture. According to my respondents their average weekly working time is 52.5 hours. A total of 28.6 hours are dedicated to the parliamentary mandate, 21.3 hours to other political activities, and only 2.6 hours to non-political activities. With less than 30 hours per week spent on parliamentary business on average, it again becomes quite clear that hardly any MCPs practise their mandate as a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 68

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

69

Table 3.3 Political positions of MCPs (% n = 59) Held at time of survey Mayor or deputy mayor Local councillor (municipis) County president (comarques) County councillor (comarques) Province president Province deputy Local government office

23.7 20.3 0 5.1 1.7

Local party office Catalan party office Spanish party office Party office

27.6 32.8

Local interest group office Catalan interest group office Spanish interest group office Interest group office

6.8 10.2

Senate seat Any office (local or party or interest group or Senate seat )

Held concurrently with mandate at any time before

Held before entering parliament

32.2 37.3 6.8 11.9 1.7 3.4 62.7

32.2 52.5 0 0

39.7 43.1 1.7 65.5

57.6 32.2 8.5 67.8

11.9

6.8 11.9 1.7 15.3

22.0 16.9 1.7 35.6

5.1

8.5

3.4

79.7

91.5

93.2

33.9

50.0

67.8

full-time job. On the other hand, the time dedicated to non-political activities is rather small. Thus, MCPs are full-time politicians – yet a considerable part of their time is not spent on their mandate but on other political activities. Table 3.3 shows just what kind of political positions MCPs are holding concurrently with their parliamentary mandate. Even at first sight, the number of parliamentarians holding concurrent offices to their mandate – and, indeed, the amount of offices they hold – is astonishing. There are a few MCPs (less than 10 per cent) who have never held a local government, party or interestgroup office concurrently to their mandate. About 80 per cent were holding at least one of these offices at the time of the survey. Nearly half of all MCPs (48.3) were holding two types of offices (mostly local government and party office) since they entered parliament – and nearly a quarter (22.4 per cent) currently did so.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 69

20/8/09 11:50:58

70

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

The type of office most often held concurrently is the party office. Nearly three quarters have held a party office while serving as regional parliamentarian – only a few per cent less than those who had held such an office prior to their election. Half of all MCPs still held such an office at the time of the survey. It is interesting to note that while offices at the local and the Spanish level are abandoned after entering parliament (though from a rather different base), party offices at the Catalan level are held or even newly acquired. The share of MCPs who have held a local government office concurrently to their mandate is only slightly lower than that of party office-holders and again hardly much lower than the share of those with prior local government experience. Local government offices are more often abandoned during the parliamentary mandate than party offices yet, with a third of all MCPs still active in local government, the local level has quite a high presence in the regional parliament. Here it is interesting to note that this presence is not restricted to ordinary councillors: on the contrary, mayors and deputy mayors are as prominent as ordinary councillors. Despite their high timecommitments in their respective town halls, the mayors of the four provincial capitals have quite regularly been members of the Catalan Parliament.11 Furthermore, while ordinary councillor positions may be given up after entering the parliament, this is only rarely the case for mayors.12 Compared to the high shares of party and local government office-bearers, the presence of interest group representatives seems negligible. Taken together, this plethora of concurrent political positions and the time spent on them suggests a pattern of professionalisation in which MCPs are professionalised not as parliamentarians, but as professional politicians more generally. Rather than holding just the parliamentary mandate, MCPs accumulate a multitude of offices on different political levels (mostly on the local and the Catalan) and in different political institutions (councils and parliaments, party, local government executive, interest-groups). Time, commitment and loyalties invested in these positions set these politicians even further apart from any non-political social background they might have come from. 11

12

Recent examples are: Pasqual Maragall (PSC), simultaneously mayor of Barcelona and MCP between 1988 and 1995; Joaquim Nadal (PSC), mayor of Girona/MCP 1984–2002; Antoni Siurana i Zaragoza (PSC), mayor of Lleida/MCP 1984–87 and 1989–99; and Joan Miquel Nadal i Malé (CDC), mayor of Tarragona/MCP since 1989. The percentage of MCPs with a prior mayor position is exactly the same as those who have held a mayor position during their mandate. And even towards the end of the legislature (the survey was conducted more than three years after the election), we find nearly three times as many current mayors as those who have given up their position after entering the parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 70

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

71

Table 3.4 Types of politicians in the Catalan Parliament (% n = 56) Type of politician Professional parliamentarian Professional politician Professional local politician Semi-professional parliamentarian

Share of MCPs 37.5 25.0 19.6 17.9

But is it really appropriate to speak of MCPs collectively, when their individual occupational situation as well as the type and number of concurrent positions they hold is actually quite diverse? In order to bridge the gap between aggregate level analysis and individual biographies it might be helpful to identify different types of MCPs. In the following I have distinguished parliamentarians according to their central occupational focus, operationalised by combining their occupational situation and the working time they acknowledge dedicating to the respective tasks and occupations (see table 3.4). In general, the central focus of parliamentarians could lie either on their mandate, on other political activities or on a non-political occupation. Of course, these are ideal types, and empirical cases do not always fall clearly into one of them, nor do all of them always occur in every parliament. In the Catalan Parliament we can identify only the first two of them, as there are no MCPs who see politics as their secondary occupation. However, both these ideal types might be meaningfully subdivided, leading to the following four real types. Parliamentarians who spend more time on their mandate than on all their other political and occupational tasks can be seen to concentrate on their parliamentary role. However, this group may be further divided into professional parliamentarians, those who do not have a simultaneous non-political occupation (more precisely, none that exceeds 10 per cent of their overall working time), and semi-professional parliamentarians, those that do follow such a secondary non-political occupation. Among those who concentrate on other political activities we may distinguish between professional politicians, who spend more (or the same) time with unspecified other political activities (usually including party and local politics) than with their mandate, and professional local politicians, who stated a particular local office (all mayors except for one councillor) as a concurrent occupation to which they dedicate more (or the same) time as to their mandate.13 13

MCPs who did not break up their estimated time commitment between the parliamentary mandate and other political activities (as asked in the survey) obviously do not see their parliamentary activity as a distinct occupation to be separated from politics in general, and were thus coded as professional politicians. Three MCPs did not give enough information to be coded.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 71

20/8/09 11:50:58

72

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

The most striking result of this analysis is diversity of professionalised politicians and the low share of professional parliamentarians to be found among MCPs. A more detailed look at the time commitment of different types of politicians supports this picture (for a full table of the results see appendix 3). Only a little over a third of all MCPs fully concentrate on their mandate, and this is even lower than the occupational analysis would have suggested. A look at their time commitments also shows that even in this group the average (34.8) and median (32.5) working hours per week on parliamentary business is below the norm of a conventional full-time occupation. Only 40 per cent of these MCPs work 40 hours and more for their mandate. However, all their political activities together take up 50 hours on average, clearly a sign of fullblown political professionalisation. Surprisingly, the overall political working time of MCPs termed semiprofessional parliamentarians is not that much lower. Indeed with nearly 40 hours a week on political business the term might even seem to be overstretched. More than half of them work for only 10 extra hours in their nonpolitical occupation, which makes this clearly secondary to their political job. However, the fact that they do keep this occupation is nevertheless significant with regard to their individual professionalisation. To work these extra hours after a full working week in politics and still to forgo political career prospects (because others are politically even more active) is hardly done for reasons of personal fulfilment. Instead, it seems, rather, to be a career strategy that keeps in contact with the former occupation as a potential fall-back position or expands into a new professional field as a second career option for a potential cross-over. Thus, their political professionalisation is less than complete, despite long working hours. Some 80 per cent of this group were still in their first legislative term, suggesting that individually this form of double commitment might be a temporary phenomenon. Come next election many will give up their mandate or their concurrent occupation. However, there will be new recruits following their strategy. The share of the two groups of parliamentarians who spend only half or less than half of their political time working for their mandate is surprisingly high. One-fifth of MCPs are actually professional local politicians who sit in the Catalan Parliament, despite holding a time-consuming local government office as mayor or even as councillor. MCPs of this group are politically the busiest of all. Apart from the two political ‘jobs’ they hold, they also need to actively engage in party politics. No wonder they end up with an average working week of 60 hours. With less than 20 hours (in one case just 8 hours) this group – understandably – spends the least time on parliamentary business. A quarter of all MCPs do not record such a concurrent political occupation in local government, yet still concentrate on their various other political

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 72

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

73

Table 3.5 Occupational situation of MSPs (%)

Regional parliamentarian only With concurrent political occupation With concurrent non-political occupation Politics as secondary occupation

MSPs 2002 a

MSPs 2004 b

87.5 0 12.5 0

87 2 10 1

Notes a based on author’s survey data. b based on the Scottish Parliament’s register of interests (www.scottish.parliament.uk).

activities rather than their parliamentary mandate. These professional politicians in the broadest sense spend only little more than 20 hours per week on parliamentary business yet 30 hours for party, interest-group and local government activities. Taken together, the relatively low number of hours spent on parliamentary business indicates that the mandate in the Catalan Parliament is still no fully professionalised political office. However, individual members are almost all full-time, fully paid, and thus most possibly also professional, politicians. A more conclusive assessment of their level of professionalisation will have to wait for the analysis of their long-term prospects in such a career (see next section). Scotland: professionalised regional mandate, full-time parliamentarians

The occupational situation of Scottish regional parliamentarians, their concurrent political positions and their acknowledged time-commitments all point towards a regional parliament packed with full-time professional parliamentarians. As table 3.5 shows, nearly 90 per cent of MSPs in the first legislature did not hold any other occupation simultaneously to their mandate. Four out of the six MSPs who did acknowledge a secondary occupation in the survey mentioned some form of writing or journalistic activity, and thus an occupation that could be seen as complementary rather than rivalling. To what extent the full-time capacity of MSPs has become a respected convention is shown by the fate of the one high-profile exception to this rule, Gordon Jackson MSP (1999–2007). As a high-profile lawyer, he was under constant attack for his double-act from within and outside his own party, and eventually had to renounce his outside work.14 14

Jackson, a Queen’s Counsel, continuously registered a six-figure annual income from his activities as a lawyer while showing one of the worst attendance rates in parliament. His commitment to his mandate had been frequently questioned

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 73

20/8/09 11:50:58

74

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Table 3.6 Political positions of MSPs (n = 47) Hold concurrently

Have been holding concurrently

Held before

2.1

2.1

39.6

2.1 12.8 0 14.9

4.3 21.3 0 25.5

70.8 50.0 6.3 79.2

Local interest group office Regional interest group office National interest group office Interest group office

0 0 0 0

2.1 2.1 0 4.3

10.4 6.3 4.2 12.8

House of Lords

4.3

4.3

4.3

19.1

34.0

89.6

Local government office Local party office Regional party office National party office Party office

Any concurrent office (of above)

Thus, MSPs see their mandate as generally incompatible with any other concurrent occupation. This incompatibility, however, seems not to be restricted to occupational activities. In table 3.6 I have summarised the responses with regard to all political offices MSPs are holding or have held concurrently to their mandate. This table shows clearly that most MSPs give up other political offices once they enter parliament. While 90 per cent held a local government, party or interest group office or a seat in the House of Lords before they entered parliament, only about a third have done so concurrently with their mandate. Almost all councillors have abandoned their office as have almost all elected local party officials The only type of office that is concurrently held by a notable share of MSPs is a party office at the Scottish level. Yet again, of the 50 per cent who previously held such an office, less than half kept it for some time after their election. At that time only 15 per cent of MSPs held an office at the Scottish level of their party. Footnote 14 cont. (Thomson 2004; Scotland on Sunday, 24 April 2005). In July 2006 the Scottish Executive of the Labour Party threatened Jackson with de-selection should he maintain his legal work. In a direct response to this ruling, he provided the party with a written assurance that he would quit his work as a QC (The Sunday Herald, 9 July 2006). Nevertheless, he lost his seat at the 2007 Scottish election.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 74

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

75

Table 3.7 Occupational status, concurrent political positions and time commitments of MCPs and MSPs

Occupational status (% at time of survey) 1 Regional parliamentarian only 2 With concurrent other political occupation 3 Political occupation (parliamentarian or other) only (1 + 2) 4 with concurrent non-political occupation Political positions concurrently held (% at time of survey) 5 Local government office (councillor. mayor etc.) 6 Party office 7 Interest group office 8 Second chamber of national parliament 9 Any office (5, 6, 7or 8) Average Time Commitments (in weekly hours) 10 Mandate 11 Other political activities 12 Political activities (10 + 11) 13 Non-political occupation

MCPs 2003

MSPs 2002

55.9 23.7 79.6

87.5 0 87.5

20.3

12.5

33.9

2.1

50.0 11.9 5.1 79.7

14.9 0 4.3 19.1

28.6 21.4 50 2.6

59.0 6.8 65.8 0.6

The attempt to group MSPs into the four types identified in the Catalan Parliament produces a rather straightforward result. As MSPs do work long hours for their mandate and do not hold many concurrent political offices and hardly any concurrent occupation (neither political nor non-political), they all fall into the professional parliamentarian category. No single respondent had to be grouped into a different type. A look at MSPs’ time-commitments vividly illustrates this finding (see table 3.7). In the Scottish Parliament there is no single MSP who claims to work less than 40 hours a week on his or her mandate. The median hours worked on parliamentary business stands at 60 hours a week (and one MSP even claims to work 112 hours carrying out his mandate). As the low number of concurrently held political offices suggests, other political activities take up only a little time. The average MSP spends about 5 hours (median) a week on other political (mainly party) business. The low number of MSPs with a concurrent occupation outside politics results in an even lower average time spent on non-political business. With an average of just about half an hour per week and a maximum of just 10 hours, we can safely state that the non-political occupations of MSPs are negligible.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 75

20/8/09 11:50:58

76

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS? Comparison

For reasons of clarity the most striking features of MSPs and MCPs in terms of occupational status, concurrent political activities and time-commitments are re-stated in table 3.7. A look at table 3.7 shows a basic similarity, yet also tremendous differences between the two groups of regional parliamentarians. The similarity concerns the central subject of this section, namely the full-time commitment of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland to their political vocation. This can be seen in the high percentage of parliamentarians dedicated to politics only (row 3) and the high number of weekly hours they spend on that (row 12). Thus, in both cases the twin forces of regionalisation and professionalisation have produced regional full-time politicians. Differences exist as to what particular form this full-time commitment takes. The figures suggest that there are two rather different modes of professionalisation operating in the regions. In the Scottish case, it is the political office – i.e. the regional mandate – that is fully professionalised and that is automatically turning its office-holders into full-time professional parliamentarians. In Catalonia too, almost all regional parliamentarians are full-time, fully paid politicians, while the regional mandate itself is not (yet) fully professionalised. The regional mandate does not necessarily trigger off individual professionalisation, nor is it necessarily at the centre of the professional political activities of its members. With less than 30 hours weekly, the average time commitment on parliamentary business is not only just half that of Scottish parliamentarians (table 3.7, row 10) but also below the normal weekly working time in a conventional, non-political occupation. Instead, regional parliamentarians concentrate on various political offices and tasks, including the realm of local government, party politics and indeed the regional parliament. The common full-time political commitment of regional parliamentarians may be explained by the general demands and opportunities the new regional institutions provide. The first and most important pre-requisite is certainly the payment of a full salary. And indeed, in both the Catalan and the Scottish Parliaments, members are paid a salary that allows them to live off politics (although on a quite different scale, see chapter 2). Politicians thus have the opportunity to go full-time. But why should they want to or what makes them do it anyway? And what explains the differences of the way they use their time? Full-time political commitment of parliamentarians is generally explained by the heavy workload of a parliamentary mandate in a complex and busy institution. However, this explanation does not hold for both cases, or at least not for all parliamentarians. In the Scottish case, though, these institutional demands are the central part of the explanation. A normal parliamentary week

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 76

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

77

in Scotland starts on Monday afternoon and lasts until Friday noon. Following the Westminster tradition of extensive plenary debates – though on a lower scale than the UK House of Commons – the Scottish Parliament usually holds two plenary sessions a week, one on Wednesday afternoons and one on Thursdays. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are reserved for committee business. Other parliamentary activities such as parliamentary group meetings or meetings of the many cross-party groups that exist have to be squeezed in on one of these days or they are held on Monday afternoons or Friday mornings. However, Monday and Friday are also seen as constituency days, when MSPs have individual meetings in their constituency or hold their public surgery (open to all citizens) in their constituency office. Together with TV and press interviews, other representational events (often over the weekend), and the considerable time most MSPs spend travelling between constituency and parliament,15 this constitutes quite a heavy working schedule. Until 2004 the Catalan Parliament used to meet roughly every second week for a two-day plenary session.16 While committee meetings may also have been held during the week in between, they tended to take place around the plenaries as this guaranteed higher participation. Thus, while the plenary days of the Catalan Parliament were pretty busy events, the rest of the parliamentary time was rather quiet. In that time the scarce office space inside the parliament building (about one office for three members) was largely used by the members of the hard core of professional parliamentarians. Local politicians and party officials were to be found in their town halls and party headquarters. Since 2004 plenary meetings have been held on a weekly basis. This will clearly increase time-demands and will add considerably to the professionalisation of the MCP mandate. The differences with respect to reported time demands of Catalan and Scottish parliamentarians may be explained by two fundamental differences in their daily work. First, party groups in the Scottish Parliament are the programmatic and strategic centre of the party, while in the Catalan case the extra-parliamentary party organisation carries much more weight. This means also that in Catalonia many discussions are held in party organisations (obviously with many of the MCPs also present) rather than in the parliamentary group, and this directs working time of parliamentarians away from the parliament to the party. 15

16

Most constituencies are situated further than two hours from the parliament in Edinburgh, many much further. Although MSPs can claim expenses for an overnight stay in Edinburgh, many choose to drive home every night. The new presidency has increased the working cycle of the parliament. Since January 2004 plenaries are held each week. Parliament has also voted to skip the usual January holiday (La Vanguardia, 12 December 2003).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 77

20/8/09 11:50:58

78

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

The second – and probably even more important difference – concerns the traditional British idea of constituency work. Direct contacts with ordinary constituents (in the form of public surgeries, but also via mail) and dealing with their complaints as well as contact with important political and economic actors within the constituency (representatives of the constituency party, important employers, interest groups, local councils, etc.) is seen as an essential part of the representational role of Westminster MPs. Despite some institutional differences (e.g. the regional list element) in the pursuit of their representational duties, Scottish MSPs are largely adhering to the same normative ideal.17 Supported by two staff (usually one in Edinburgh, one in the constituency) paid for by the parliament yet directly employed by the MSPs, MSPs also need to develop management skills. Some have even likened their job to running a small business (interviews McNeil and Hughes). Of course, if we look behind the veil of public duty rhetoric, one central aim of this business is getting re-elected. No doubt, and no matter whether it holds up to systematic scrutiny, constituency work is seen as important, both in mobilising a personal vote but also in securing the support of (or in most cases preventing the possible discontent of) the party selectors.18 In Spanish and indeed in Catalan politics, there is no such notion of constituency service. Parliamentarians (elected from one of four provincial lists) are hardly seen as ‘territorial’ representatives of a certain area (with the exception of mayors) and certainly not meant to deal with individual problems of their constituents. The closest thing to constituency work in the sense of 17

18

While in my interviews many MSPs stressed the importance of their constituency work, one former Westminster MP made it clear that adherence to this norm is not always voluntary, portraying constituency work as an unavoidable nuisance in the game of political survival, rather than an expression of an inner conviction: ‘the thing that takes up your time is this stupid constituency work as a second rate social worker. You go to meetings, visit places . . . you’ve got to pretend . . . be there when factories are closing . . . well the factories will be closed no matter whether you are there or not . . . It’s a complete and utter waste of time’ (interview S 5). According to him, the only reason why many parliamentarians at Westminster and Holyrood put up with all this, is because they wouldn’t get away with not doing so. For a description of the constituency campaigning demands on Westminster MPs see Norton (1994: 115–18). Constituency MSPs are in a similar situation. To a lesser extent this concerns even regional list MSPs, though they are confronted with conflicting demands (accused of ‘poaching’ by constituent MSPs, yet also generally supposed to see their region as a form of larger constituency). Indeed, two of the SNP’s best performers in parliament – Michael Russell and Andrew Wilson – were downgraded by regional activists and nominated on lower list positions for the 2003 election, finally resulting in losing them their seat. One of the central reasons given for this strange behaviour was the lack of grassroots or constituency embeddedness of these two ‘stars of the chamber’.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 78

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

79

engaging with the wider public used to be the organisation of party dinners in the more rural areas of Catalonia, with members of Congress, the Catalan Parliament and the province assembly as speakers (interview Molins). As Catalan MCPs are elected from a list made by the party leadership, the local public is not central to their re-election. The long time that MSPs spend on parliamentary business may thus be explained by specific institutional demands of the Scottish (British) parliamentary system in combination with their individual re-election strategy. Catalan parliamentarians are much less bound by institutional demands and much less obliged to direct their re-election and re-selection efforts towards parliament. However, the almost complete absence of any MSPs with a concurrent occupation or a concurrent public office cannot be explained entirely by institutional time demands and individual re-election strategies. The immediate exit from the local council of those elected to the Scottish Parliament is also due to a convention deeply rooted in British (!) parliamentary culture and the respective demands of the general public (as represented by the media). In contrast to Catalonia, the concept of representing different constituencies at the same time is alien to British political culture. The public insistence on a full-time parliamentarian without significant concurrent occupational activities, on the other hand, is a much more recent phenomenon that has no origin in Westminster (where the amateur politician has been a highly regarded model, much longer than it actually reflected empirical reality). However, the regionalist discourse in Scotland – asserting that the Scottish Parliament is something important (and thus better not left to amateurs, see Macwhirter 2000b), together with the less sympathetic public debate on MSPs’ high salaries and allowances – has raised the standard with regard to the commitment expected of Scottish representatives. Today, the regional mandate is generally seen, both within and outside the Scottish Parliament, as incompatible with other occupations. Again, the situation in Catalonia is quite different. There are no traditions of incompatibility and, in general, the public and the media seem less interested in the way parliamentarians do their job. If anything, outside occupations – and in particular political occupations – bring additional status to the parliamentary mandate. Indeed, the main reasons for keeping them seem to be career related. For mayors from medium-sized towns to the big Catalan cities, or indeed for leading Barcelona councillors, the local government office provides the basic income and certainly remains at the centre of their political work. Those mayor-parliamentarians would lose out in terms of their salary, their political power and their social status, if they were to abandon their local office. Thus, they do so only in exchange for

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 79

20/8/09 11:50:58

80

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

a leading position in parliament, party or the regional government.19 For many councillors, as well as small-town and village mayors, the parliamentary mandate provides a living that allows them to continue in their local government position, which often remains at the centre of their activities and yields their non-material reward (direct contact with citizens, policy-making capacity) of living for politics. It is interesting to note, that in parliament there seem to be no problems between the professional parliamentarians and the professional local politicians. The much smaller amount of work the latter put into parliamentary business seems to be accepted by representatives of the former group (interviews Roma, Ribó). The reason for this seems to be a mixture of motives – including respect for their political stature, the perception that the parliament needs mixed experiences, loyalty to the party leadership who selected them, and the electoral asset mayors may be for the party list (cf. Magre 1999). Of course, the somewhat low parliamentary profile of these local politicians leaves professional parliamentarians not only with more work, but also with more influence and more prestigious positions. Thus, the higher the number of local politicians, the lower the number of competitors for internal parliamentary offices and leadership positions within the parliamentary groups. Another reason for the high levels of office accumulation are to be seen in the low career security in the parliamentary mandate (see next section). Local government, party and interest group positions are maintained either as fall-back positions that secure a (usually limited) income in itself or as kind of ‘base office’ (Schlesinger 1966) from where to seek out other paid positions. A similar rationale seems to lie behind keeping non-political occupations. The fact that this strategy is almost exclusively to be seen in the first term suggests that these are politicians who have not yet made the risky step of cutting links with former occupations, in order to have a fall-back position if the political career doesn’t work out as hoped. Of course, there are also some, though I would guess very few, who really see their mandate as only a temporary excursion into professional politics. And finally, we should keep in mind the relatively low parliamentary salaries in Catalonia, making any secondary occupation (if it is not a public office) a supplementary income.20 19

20

See the careers of Pasqual Maragall (PSC), Joaquim Nadal (PSC) or Josep Grau (CiU). MCPs have to register their secondary occupation and their income with a special parliamentary committee at the beginning of each legislative period. In general they are granted the right to have these occupations. They are also allowed to keep any income from private secondary occupational activities, yet only one salary out of the public purse.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 80

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

81

Taken together, the full-time political commitment of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland is not simply a function of the institutional demands from the two regional parliaments. Demands and expectations are formed not only by the institution that politicians are paid to ‘work’ in (in this case the regional parliament), but also by a general political culture, by long-time conventions and informal rules, by the public and the media, and by the party on different territorial levels. From an institutional point of view, MCPs certainly need much less time than their Scottish counterparts to fulfil their parliamentary mandate ‘properly’. The same goes for the eyes of the general public and the media. From all these perspectives, MSPs are expected to be full-time parliamentarians, while MCPs are much more flexible in controlling their time resources. From a career perspective, doing the job properly is not enough. MSPs have to work hard in their constituency to convince their constituents and their constituency party that they should re-elect and re-select them again (career security), while they have to attract the eye of the parliamentary party leaders in parliament if they want to climb up the political ladder (career advancement). All these activities can basically be seen as belonging to their parliamentary mandate. In contrast, MCPs have to address the party leadership in their bid for career continuation and advancement. Apart from the loyalty towards the party group in parliament, this is best done as a powerful local politician (with a stronghold in the provincial party and possibly also with provincial voters) or by a strong position within the central party hierarchy. Extra-parliamentary activities and the office accumulation of MCPs might thus be seen as efforts towards career security and career advancement. However, as the following section will demonstrate, they also function as a safety net to cushion a possible loss of the mandate and as base office for a restart of the professional career in some other function. This question of long-term prospects within professional politics will be dealt with in more detail in the following section. Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tenure: how long do they stay?

The last section has shown a remarkably intensive political dedication from regional parliamentarians in both cases. However, individual professionalisation and the notion of a professional political career does not only imply a highly intensive but also an extensive commitment to politics in the form of a long-term career in professional politics. Catalonia: high office turnover, yet long-term political careers

The average parliamentary tenure is generally taken as the average of those members of parliament who have already left parliament. In the Catalan case

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 81

20/8/09 11:50:58

82

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Table 3.8 MCPs’ tenure in the Catalan Parliament (September 2008)

20 and more 15 and more 10 and more 5 and more 4 and less All MCPs

Current

Former

All MCPs

6 9 20 75 60 135

8 36 96 214 268 482

14 45 116 289 328 617

this figure is at the time of writing 6.3 years (September 2008). However, as the parliament is still young, and not even all MCPs of the first cohort have left parliament, this figure clearly underestimates the real average tenure. A more reliable estimation can be reached by extrapolating from the average turnover rate. With an average turnover of 47.8 per cent and an average legislative period of 3.83 years the average tenure of MCPs can be taken to be close to 8 years. This estimation is based on an average of all MCPs. However, as a look at table 3.8 shows, the length of parliamentary careers is rather diverse. Indeed, more than half of all MCPs (268 of 482) left parliament after serving only four years (the time of a normal legislative period) or less. On the other hand, the Catalan Parliament has also seen some rather long parliamentary careers: since 1980 more than 100 members have served for 10 years and more. Almost 50 have served 15 and more years and 14 have been in parliament for at least 20 years. Of the latter group 6 members are still sitting in the current legislature (2006–), and thus will increase their overall years of service even further. If we discount those members for whom the parliamentary mandate is only a temporary, short-term occupation (those with tenure of 4 years and less), the average tenure rises to over 10 years (10.2). While these figures suggest first and foremost that for most members the mandate in the Catalan Parliament is not a long-term career, it also clearly shows that there is a ‘critical mass’ of long-term parliamentarians, who pursue a professional career in politics based on their Catalan mandate. However, professional political careers are not necessarily pursued in one institution alone. In the Catalan case this becomes quite obvious. Of the 617 MCPs who have served in the Catalan Parliament since 1980, 70 have also served (or still serve) in the Spanish Congress (serving 5.5 years on average), 34 have additionally served an average of 4.7 years in the Senate,21 and 9 MCPs have served (or still serve) in the European Parliament (average of 7.4 years). 21

I have counted only those senators who have not served simultaneously in the Catalan Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 82

20/8/09 11:50:58

POLITICAL CAREERS

83

Table 3.9 MCPs’ full parliamentary tenure (September 2008)

20 and more 15 and more 10 and more 5 and more 4 and less All MCPs

Current

Former

All MCPs

7 14 23 76 59 135

20 57 129 252 230 482

27 71 152 328 289 617

Again table 3.9 shows the differences that exist with regard to the length of the political careers of Catalan MCPs. Even after counting in other parliamentary mandates, there is a large group that serves one legislative period or less. However, this table also shows that there are considerably more politicians with long-term careers than expected from our first count. The number of MCPs with 10 or more years of aggregated parliamentary service has risen from 116 to 152, those with more than 20 years from 14 to 27.22 The ‘hard core’ of Catalan parliamentarians seem to be those who have served both in the Catalan Parliament and in the Spanish Congress. There are 72 parliamentarians with experience in both houses reaching an aggregated average of 12.9 years of parliamentary service (with 11 still serving in the current Catalan legislature, 9 in the Spanish Congress). While most long-term parliamentary careers of Catalan politicians proceed in or through the Catalan Parliament, the regional mandate is not necessarily part of every long-term career path. Among the 179 Congress members from Catalonia who have never served in the Catalan Parliament we find another 39 (including 5 current members) who have 10 years and more of aggregated service, 28 of them having served exclusively in Congress. Leaving one-time regional and Congress members aside, the Senate has been the home of 4 more long-term careers. Five Catalans have served 10 or more years in the European Parliament, with only one of them having no other parliamentary experience. The 4 parliamentary bodies allow Catalan politicians a wide variety of cross-parliamentary career paths. Until September 2008, 116 Catalan parliamentarians had served in 2 parliaments: 27 had even managed to serve in 3 of the 4 bodies.23 22

23

Among the 166 Congress members from Catalonia who have never served in the Catalan Parliament we find another 32 (including 4 current members) who have served 10 years and more and another 7 (including 1 current member) who have served 20 years and more. This figure includes senators delegated from the Catalan Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 83

20/8/09 11:50:59

84

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

However, even the aggregated years of parliamentary service do not reflect the total time Catalan parliamentarians spend in professional political life. Many parliamentarians come from semi-professional or fully professionalised political positions into the Catalan Parliament (or one of the other parliaments), and/or they hold paid political positions in an interval between two mandates, and/or they fall back into fully professionalised political positions after leaving the parliament for good. Basically there are three major institutions that offer paid political positions outside the regional, national and supranational parliaments: local government, the Catalan executive (government plus administration) and political parties. There seems to be no clear-cut general allocation of career functions or career phases to these institutions. All three could function as a stepping-stone to ‘higher’ office, as fall-back and safety-net, or as retirement positions; some even serve as central career goals. However, access to positions within these institutions is heavily affected by party affiliation. Paid local government positions are overwhelmingly held by politicians from the parties of the left, especially from the socialists. Not only has the PSC held the majority of local council seats, PSC and PSUC/ICV have generally controlled the larger municipalities and thus those where full-time, fully paid mayors and even councillors are more common. The high number of former (and concurrent) mayors and councillors – some of them fully professionalised – among Catalan parliamentarians has already been mentioned above. Yet local government positions are not restricted to ‘apprenticeship’ positions. They are often kept in order to fall back on them in case they lose the parliamentary seat or (though more rarely) are even acquired during or after the parliamentary mandate.24 Indeed, there is a fairly large number of politicians across Catalonia who pursue a full-time, long-term career in local politics, most of them mayors, but also councillors in larger cities.25 Yet professionalised political positions on the local level are not restricted to the elected positions of mayor and councillor. There are positions within the politicised local administration of municipalities, districts and provinces, and especially within the semi-private service enterprises that can be (and are) filled with politicians and party militants falling back from or striving 24

25

For examples of former MCPs with a current mayor office see Magre 1999: 129 fn 36. Magre states that about two-thirds of all mayors of towns above 10,000 inhabitants (in 1995 these were about 70 mayors) are practising their office full-time, and only a quarter wants to return to their former occupation after leaving the mayor office (Magre 1999: 91–2). Again, professionalisation is strongest among mayors from parties of the left, while nationalist mayors more often fall into Magre’s category of ‘semi-professionals’ (Magre 1999: 97–8).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 84

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

85

for a political career. More directly political are the many staff and advisory positions that are filled by the mayor himself, constituting something like his personal cabinet. Again these are positions that can function as stepping stones, but also as fall-back and interim positions for active career politicians (interviews Pujol, Campuzano, Espasa, Ribó). Thus, professional political careers in Catalonia may include various local government positions at various times. Such a closely intertwined career path is typical for PSC politicians, yet can also be seen among nationalists. The one party clearly cut off from such a career option is the conservative PP. A typical career path – and, until 2003, one more or less exclusively pursued by politicians from the parties of the nationalist coalition CiU – is connected to the Catalan government and its administration. Holding the Catalan government for 23 consecutive years (1980 to 2003) – of which only four years were held in a coalition with ERC – and thus controlling the posts of a highly politicised administration (Matas 1995, 1996) for more than two decades, opened a wide range of political career opportunities for young activists and party leaders of UCD and CDC alike. The most visible and most prestigious positions are obviously the ministerial offices in the cabinet (el consell executiu), the central political prize of a political career in Catalonia (see above). Between 1980 and 2003 this prize had been reserved to 58 politicians (serving an average of five years as ministers). All but a few of them had been affiliated to either CDC or UDC at the time of their nomination, yet only slightly more than half had held an elected public office (such as parliamentarian or local councillor) before their nomination. Instead, almost half had come directly from the higher echelons of the Catalan administration.26 For many leading CDC and UCD politicians, ministerial service has to be added to their parliamentary tenure, as they have either served as ministers after leaving parliament or have entered parliament after their time as ministers.27 More important in terms of the sheer number of positions are the higher offices within the administration (els alts càrrecs) and the many temporary, non-civil service positions (called assessors or eventuals) at the disposal of

26

27

Matas counts 60 per cent affiliated to CDC, 26 per cent to UDC, 53 per cent with experience in an elected public office and 43 per cent (!) coming directly from an office in the higher administration (Matas 2003b). The first pattern applies for example to Josep Grau (CDC) and the current UDC leader Duran Lleida. The second pathway has been pursued by, amongst others, Max Cahner (CDC) and Eugénio Cuenca (CDC) and by many of the last ministers of the outgoing Pujol government. Joan Rigol (UDC, Congress member 79–80, Catalan minister 80–85, MCP 88–03), Joan Hortalà (ERC, MCP 80–84, Catalan minister 84–87, MCP 88–92) and others exemplify both patterns.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 85

20/8/09 11:50:59

86

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the president and his ministers.28 According to the political scientist Jordi Matas, there exists a clear transfer of party elites into administrative elite positions (Matas 2001b: 111). Nearly all party-affiliated higher officials had first entered the party and made a career within the party before they entered the higher administrative echelons. Many of them remain there, others eventually move up to become ministers (and sometimes add a parliamentary mandate later on).29 Apart from providing a long-term base for party politicians and a potential route into cabinet, the Catalan administration also functions as a short-term fall-back option for politicians temporarily without a paid elected office.30 Thus, the list of eventuals provided by Ridao (2001) reads like a register of nationalist politicians – with two ex-ministers, at least 13 ex-diputados, many local councillors and members of the respective national executives of the CDC and the UDC. Finally, there are also those whose dedication to politics and the party are rewarded with a long-term post in the higher administration, who may or may not quit active politics.31 With the change of government in 2003, the higher officials of the Pujol government have been replaced (by President Maragall) with active politicians and supporters of the parties of his coalition government.32 At present there is no indication that positions at the Generalitat would not serve the same career functions as they did before (see also next chapter). The third and last major providers of professional political positions are the political parties. In general, all Catalan parties distinguish between elected office-holders – who might claim some expenses yet are usually not salaried – and party staff, who are recruited from party supporters but not necessarily from active politicians, and who are fully paid by the party. Despite their 28

29

30

31

32

According to Matas (1996: 50) in 1991 there were 94 ‘altos cargos’ (the general secretary and director general positions) within the politicised higher ranks of the Generalitat. The ERC politician Ridao (2001) in his study speaks of 180–202 temporary positions (assessors and eventuals) between 1998 and 2001. In 2004 the incoming socialist government spoke of 148 altos cargos and 227 eventuales in place when the administration was handed over (La Vanguardia, 13 March 2004). Two of the most prominent politicians who have pursued such a career path are Núria de Gispert (UDC) and Felip Puig (CDC). Many of those nationalist parliamentarians who exhibit an interrupted parliamentary career, have spent the interim time at the Generalitat (i.e. Concepció Tarruella i Tomàs (CDC), Juan Vallvé I Ribera and others). An early example would be Joan Vidal i Gayolà (CDC). A more recent one is Maria Glòria Pallé i Torres (UDC). Immediately after the change of government, some of the most loyal and most long-standing socialist members in the Catalan Parliament (Ernest Maragall, Manuel Nadal, Oriol Nello and Martí Carnicer) were directly promoted into the rank of general secretary or director general.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 86

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

87

respective deficits with regard to either their political or professional capacity, paid party positions in both variants are important intervals in many a professional political career in Catalonia. On the one hand, this is because party staff positions are increasingly seen as a stepping-stone to elected public office. Young would-be politicians work for their party in order to learn the trade of politics and to make contacts for their own potential career. In my survey of Catalan MCPs, 17 per cent had been working as party staff before entering parliament. Of course, the time that they had been employed by their party further extends the length of their career in professional politics. Yet parties also provide for more mature politicians already on the political career path. While elected party offices (at least at the Catalan level) are usually held by politicians who make a living out of their public office, most parties have mechanisms to remunerate leading party politicians who have failed to secure such an office, at least temporarily, from the party purse. This is perhaps more important for smaller parties, with fewer opportunities to place their leaders in some public office (this is at least the case for the ERC, interview Vendrell). Taken together, these findings clearly reveal that the overall time Catalan MCPs spend in professional politics is much longer than their tenure in the Catalan Parliament, and even longer than their aggregated parliamentary tenure. No doubt, there are a considerable number of members whose time in the Catalan Parliament merely represents a temporary excursion from their non-political profession. Yet a closer look at the biographies of MCPs suggests that a majority pursue a long-term professional career in politics. These careers do not always follow a clearly marked path and often entail a considerable number of different posts and offices in various institutions, yet are clearly centred around politics. This impression is confirmed by MCPs themselves. Answering one of my survey questions they located the focus of the professional life of their colleagues overwhelmingly (with 86 per cent) inside rather than outside politics. Scotland: long-term parliamentary careers with high career security

In Scotland, where the parliament is only in its third legislature, any attempt to identify the exact career length of its members is necessarily premature. However, this does not mean that there are no indications as to the length of the political careers that we may reasonably expect from members of the Scottish Parliament. A first glance at the current Scottish Parliament shows that 70 MSPs – and thus more than half of the original intake – are still active. Thus, by the end of this legislative period they will have served 12 years. As this is not necessarily their last legislative period, we can expect MSPs to pursue quite long careers in the Scottish Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 87

20/8/09 11:50:59

88

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

The best approximation of the average parliamentary tenure likely to emerge might be gained again by extrapolating from the turnover rate. The average turnover at the second and third Scottish election was 28.7 per cent. By international comparison this is a low figure.33 Continuous turnover rates at this scale would be expected to produce an average tenure of 13 years. However there are at least two points that would suggest that even this figure might be too low. The first one is related to volatility – i.e. the changing voting behaviour between elections. This factor is generally seen as the most important external variable affecting legislative turnover in stable democracies (that is, in the absence of regime change) (Matland and Studlar 2004: 95, 106). The higher the volatility, the more seats change between parties and thus the more parliamentarians lose their seat. Conversely, the lower the volatility, the fewer dangers for incumbents. The volatility rates at the second and third Scottish election were 9 for the constituency vote and 11.3 for the list vote in 2003, and 10.6/12.1 in 2007. By international comparison these are neither particularly high nor particularly low figures.34 However, these figures are above the volatility shown by the Scottish electorate at the UK level.35 Thus, the relatively high rate of incumbency re-election to the Scottish Parliament (the inverse of the low turnover) has been achieved not because of a low volatility. If at all, it has been achieved despite a relatively high volatility. This suggests that it’s not the short-term variable volatility but institutional – and thus more static – variables that are responsible for the result. Furthermore, as Scotland has seen a major adjustment of its party system in the third election (when the small parties lost most of their seats and the Labour Party lost its dominant position), it might be argued that it has already seen its volatility peak. And indeed, while this is not the end of history, a further dramatic increase of electoral volatility is not to be expected. The second argument is based on my empirical data of MSPs’ careers. Extrapolating from turnover rates generally starts from the assumption that incoming members are freshers with no prior experience in the parliament. 33

34

35

The first systematic cross-country analysis of turnover rates in a sample of 25 democracies found an average turnover from one election to the next of 32.3 per cent (Matland and Studlar 2004). According to data compiled by Lane et al (1997: 164) there are OECD countries that consistently produce much lower rates. In the early 1990s (1990–94) Germany had a volatility of 5.5, the UK one of 5.1 and the US one of 3.9. However, there are also countries with a long history of much higher rates such as Turkey (20.0: 1990–94) and France (19.1: 1990–94). The respective volatility figures for the last UK elections in Scotland are: 9.7 in 1987, 9.5 in 1992, 8.5 in 1997, 5.6 in 2001 and 8.2 in 2005 (calculated by the author).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 88

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

89

However, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, some MSPs who had lost their seats in 2003 used the next opportunity in 2007 to return to the Scottish Parliament. Thus 7 of the 44 ‘new’ MSPs in 2007 (and thus 16 per cent) were not new at all, but had been part of the 1999 cohort. If such an additional return rate (after a break of one period) were to continue, expectations for MSPs’ total tenure will of course rise above the 13 years previously calculated. Taken together, these deliberations point to a very long parliamentary tenure of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. In addition, being a member in the Scottish Parliament might not be the only professional political position MSPs hold during their careers. Apart from those who had served as Westminster MPs, the Scottish Parliament contains many MSPs who had been active in local government before moving on to the parliament. In the semi-professionalised structure of Scottish local councils, council leaders and other leading council group members can safely be called political professionals.36 Those MSPs with local government background often come from leading, and thus more or less professionalised, council positions. They have also usually served for rather long times. Given the dominance of the Labour Party in Scottish local politics, this career path is particularly strong among Labour MSPs. 37 Other pre-legislative professional political positions include party staff and parliamentary assistants. As parties in Scotland do not employ many staff there are not many former party employees in the parliament (7 in 2008), yet those who are had often been in leading staff positions.38 More often MSPs had been employed as parliamentary assistants to a Westminster or Euro MP (15 in 2008). The most astonishing figure, though, is the number 36

37

38

According to a survey by Bochel and Bochel (1998) a third of Scotland’s councillors claim to be full-time councillors. While standard allowances are rather low, there are additional remuneration elements paid according to the specific task of councillors. Together with the basic allowance, payment can add up to above £20,000 (£28,000 in the case of the Glasgow City Council leader) (see The Herald, 11 July 2003). See for example Jack McConnell (leader of Stirling district council 1990–92), Cathy Craigie (leader of Cumbernauld district council 1994–96), Frank McAveety (leader of Glasgow City Council 1997–99), Charlie Gordon (leader of Glasgow City Council 1999–2005). Yet there are also non-Labour professional councillors, such as Lib–Dem MSP (1999–2007) Donald Gorrie, who according to his parliamentary web-page, had been a full-time councillor for 19 years (1980–99). Former Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell had been General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party between 1992 and 1998; Michael Russell, leading SNP MSP (1999–2004, 2007–) had been SNP chief executive between 1994 and 1999.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 89

20/8/09 11:50:59

90

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

of former researchers and parliamentary assistants coming from the Scottish Parliament itself. In the third legislative period there are already seven MSPs who had been working for an MSP in a staff capacity previously. With some more as candidates, this form of in-house recruitment seems to be becoming an important career-path for the future. Taken together, in the current legislature 28 MSPs and thus 22 per cent had occupied a professional political position as parliamentary, party or government assistant/adviser before entering the Scottish Parliament. This is a clear sign of a new pattern of individual political professionalisation emerging. Again this career-path is particularly popular with Labour MSPs. At the same time, though, another traditional Labour career-path seems to have declined in importance: while 14 (30 per cent) of current Labour MSPs had been parliamentary, party or government assistants/advisers, only 5 (11 per cent) declare a post as trade union official in their official career cv. This analysis has suggested that the majority of Scottish MSPs are following a professional political career that is intended and expected to last rather a long time. Their entry into the Scottish Parliament may constitute the cross-over point from merely living for politics to a career that also allows them to live off politics, yet there are also many MSPs who have already worked in a professional political capacity as local councillors, party staff or parliamentary assistants before their election to the Scottish Parliament. Once elected, however, parliament becomes the almost exclusive focus of this professional career. Following the electoral evidence presented above, we should expect this career to be rather long. This finding is also confirmed by MSPs’ self-perception. According to Labour MSP and former Scottish Executive minister Wendy Alexander, ‘the faces on the Mound [MSPs] are likely to change little in the next two decades’.39 In my survey almost all MSPs stated that they thought politics would be the central focus of the professional life of their colleagues. Comparison

Comparing the longevity of the political dedication (career length) of Catalan and Scottish regional parliamentarians leads to quite similar results as the comparison of the intensity of this dedication (see last section). With regard to the central question, parliamentarians from both regions are rather similar: 39

This remark was made in a letter to the former SNP politicians Jim Sillars – a letter that was quite critical of the Scottish Parliament and its members (especially from her own party). The letter was leaked and published in The Scotsman, 1 October 2002.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 90

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

91

They do dedicate themselves quite extensively to professional politics. In general they pursue professional political careers, rather than temporarily filling political posts as an excursion from their ‘proper’ job. Differences, though, exist with regard to the extent to which this finding holds true for all parliamentarians and with regard to the form these long-term careers take. Among Catalan parliamentarians there is a considerable group (though a minority) with a short-term political career. Those who do pursue a longterm professional political career can be divided into at least three categories: long-term members of the Catalan Parliament, long-term parliamentarians (Catalan, Congress, Senate, EP), and long-term politicians with a professional political base outside parliament (local government, the Generalitat or the party). By contrast the professional political career in Scotland is basically a parliamentary career. While some may come from another professional position into parliament, once they are there, they strive to stay in as long as possible – and their chances are rather good. While average tenure measures cannot be directly compared between the two parliaments (because of their young age), a look at the re-election rate – the mirror image of the turnover – best highlights the huge differences in the (expected) length of parliamentary careers. As stated above, the average Scottish re-election rate of 71.3 per cent is quite high by international comparison. By contrast, the average re-election rate in the Catalan Parliament (1984–2006) is only 52.2 – and thus lower than in any of the 25 national parliaments studied by Matland and Studlar (2004). As a result, the expected tenure length in Scotland is 14 years, in Catalonia only about 8 years. Explaining these differences in re-election rates and thus the subsequent difference in parliamentary tenure we have to look at both the attractiveness and the accessibility of re-election for sitting regional parliamentarians. In terms of attractiveness, the survey data show that a majority of members from both regional parliaments want to return to their mandate in a future legislature. Yet the magnitude of this majority is rather different. In the Scottish case 90 per cent want to return, while ‘only’ 70 per cent of Catalan regional parliamentarians stated they would seek re-election. One reason for this difference can most probably be seen in the different level of payment parliamentarians receive. The salary of Catalan MCPs is not only below that of most non-political jobs for people with such an educated background, there are also political jobs available that are financially much more attractive. Higher administrators in the Generalitat and even temporary adviser positions are better paid and so are executive positions in the larger municipalities (the mayor, his personal staff and higher administrative positions). In Scotland, the mandate in the regional parliament is not only far better paid than in Catalonia: an MSP’s salary is also quite competitive with the salary levels of

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 91

20/8/09 11:50:59

92

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

most of those occupations where parliamentarians came from. Of the political posts, only a post in the Scottish Executive is significantly better paid. This leads to the second major difference in the incentive structure of the two regional parliaments: the prospect of career advancement. While Scottish back-bench parliamentarians maintain or even increase (as seniority can be seen as part of the promotion criteria) their chances of government promotion with every re-election victory, Catalan parliamentarians do not gain any such advantage, as government ministers are more frequently recruited from outside the Catalan Parliament than from among its members. However, the stated re-election ambition of 70 per cent of all MCPs and the fact that there are quite a number of members who have actually pursued long-term careers in the Catalan Parliament suggests that lower levels of attractiveness may not be the central element in explaining the difference in tenure length. Instead, the central explanation for the much lower re-election rates in Catalonia has to be related to vastly different conditions of accessibility. In general, one might suppose that the election is the time when the decision about the return of parliamentarians is made. However, a quick glance at the figures of table 3.10 shows that this is not necessarily the case. In Catalonia – except for the turbulent transition from the first to the second legislature40 – the number of seats changing parties41 is actually lower than in Scotland, yet parliamentary turnover is much higher. In fact, in Catalonia the high overall turnover (and thus the low re-election rate and subsequently the shorter tenure) is to only a small degree caused by elections, as can be seen from the huge gap between party seats changed and overall tenure. An average of 47 40

41

During the first legislature (1980–84) Catalonia saw major changes to its party system, manifested in the implosion of the centrist party UCD, the decline of the Andalusian socialist party PSA, and the rise of a new party on the right – the AP later to become the PP. Together with the landslide victory of the governing CiU coalition this produced a huge electorally induced turnover. This figure does not represent the aggregate change of seats between parties on an overall Catalan or Scottish level, but is calculated as an accumulation of seat changes in each constituency (4 provinces in Catalonia and 73 single-member seats plus 8 regions in Scotland). In the Catalan case, this figure thus represents exactly the turnover that would have occurred had all parties fielded the same candidates on the same list position. In Scotland, the case of regional list incumbents winning constituency seats and vice versa complicates things. Here, the number of seats changing parties constitutes the upper limit of electorally induced seat losses of incumbents. While not all the 22 seats that changed parties have lead to an incumbent losing their parliamentary mandate (they may get through via their second candidacy on the list or in the constituency) the 8 more seats that changed their occupants (for a turnover of 30) are definitely caused by nonelectoral factors.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 92

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

93

Table 3.10 Volatility, seat change and turnover in Catalonia and Scotland n

CAT 80/84 CAT 84/88 CAT 88/92 CAT 92/95 CAT 95/99 CAT 99/03 CAT 03/06 Average CAT

135 135 135 135 135 135 135 135

SCOT 99/03 constituency seats regional seats SCOT 03/07 constituency seats regional seats Average SCOT

129 73 56 129 73 56 129

Volatility

Seats changing parties

Parliamentary turnover

%

Seats

%

Seats

%

34.3 6.1 7.2 11.9 7.6 a 9.4 a 8.0 12.1

48 9 8 17 17 18 8 17.9

35.6 6.6 5.9 12.6 12.6 13.4 5.9 13.2

79 53 56 60 70 68 66 64.6

58.5 39.3 41.5 44.4 51.9 50.4 48.9 47.8

22 7 15 30 14 16 26

17.1 9.6 26.8 23.3 19.2 28.6 20.2

30 11 19 44 19 25 38.5

23.3 15.1 33.4 34.1 26.0 44.6 28.77

9/11.3 9 11.3 10.6/12.1 10.6 12.1 9.8/11.7

Source: calculation and compilation by author based on results published by the respective parliaments (see www.parlament-cat.net/portal/page?_pageid=34,34652&_dad=portal&_ schema=PORTAL and www.scottish.parliament.uk/msps/results-03/source_sheets/analysis/ xls/table1.xls). Note a In 1999 the PSC and ICV had a common list in 3 out of 4 provinces. If we credit the PSC with the full percentage points and seats won by the common list in Lleida, Girona and Tarragona, and the ICV only with its own votes and seats in Barcelona – as some studies do when representing the results (see von Roller and van Houten 2003: 2) – this would inadequately inflate the volatility. In this calculation I have thus opted to aggregate PSC and ICV results for 1995 and 2003. This produces a slight underestimation of the real volatility, yet a much more accurate picture than a one-sided ascription to the PSC. Calculated on the latter basis the volatility for 1995/99 would be at 14.7 and for 1999/2003 at 14.9. The number of seats changing parties can be calculated much more accurately, as ICV had held only one seat in 1995 and only won two seats in 2003 in the three provinces.

incumbents (more than a third of the whole parliament) lose their seat in every election without any electoral reason for it. As such a huge difference can hardly be explained by voluntary exits due to a lack of attractiveness (see above), these figures point to the inner-party system of recruitment. In theory, a closed party list system could of course produce very low turnover and high career security of parliamentarians, as the party selectorate is effectively able to immunise the parliamentarians from the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 93

20/8/09 11:50:59

94

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

unpredictable will of the voters by placing incumbents at the upper end of the list. However, the centralised nature of the nomination process in all Catalan parties seems to turn the effect of this system in the opposite direction. Without any direct relationship to the voters and very little influence of their local party organisations or any other group of party activists, parliamentarians have no power base of their own and are thus completely dependent on the tactical, strategic or simply personal consideration of a very small circle within the leadership of their parties.42 As the control over nominations to all levels of government (Spanish, Catalan and even many local authorities) is in the same few hands, parliamentarians can be much more easily placed, replaced and displaced from one body to the other, than in systems with a greater number of people involved or in systems where nomination is separated with regard to the respective electoral arena. According to the interviews with Catalan parliamentarians, this is exactly what happens. While support from a local party or a certain party faction, or some kind of policy expertise, may be necessary for getting reselected, they are hardly sufficient. With neither an inner-party nor an electoral corrective (voters do not react to the replacement of incumbents on the list, as they hardly notice) party leaders are almost completely autonomous in their personnel decisions. In Scotland the completely different opportunity structure places many more re-election resources in the hands of incumbents. This is in particular true for the 73 directly elected constituency members. As the turnover ratios reproduced in table 3.10 show, re-election is almost twice as likely for constituency MSPs than for their list colleagues. In part, this is due to the electoral system and the geographic distribution of partisan support that has produced many safe seats. The campaigns of incumbents also benefit from the high levels of publicity a constituency MSP can build up during his/her mandate and the high levels of infrastructural and staff support provided by the parliament. Most importantly, though, he or she can be pretty sure of being re-nominated. So far, there hasn’t been a single case of party de-selection of constituency MSPs. Constituency party organisations are obviously following Westminster practice. Whether this conduct may be due to the high institutional hurdles for de-selection,43 to the embeddedness of constituency MSPs 42

43

According to an anecdote disclosed by a CiU parliamentarian in an interview with the author, an up-and-coming young member of the parliamentary group was ranked down the list and subsequently lost his seat after he was overheard joking about president Pujol’s wife. In the Labour Party, which holds most of Scotland’s constituency seats, such a move would need a motion by the respective Constituency Labour Party (often supported by more than one branch) and the approval by the Scottish Labour Executive.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 94

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

95

in the local party network, or to the potential threat of electoral punishment for any de-selection perceived as arbitrary or unfair is hard to tell. A rather new threat consists of the fear that a rejected candidate might stand (and win) as an independent candidate.44 In contrast, table 3.10 shows regional list MSPs to be much more vulnerable to losing their Scottish mandate. A detailed study of the 2003 election exits had shown that only 2 of the 19 MSPs who were not returned can be clearly counted as electoral defeats, as 8 had left their mandate voluntarily and 9 had been ranked down or had even been completely deselected (Stolz 2006: 120–1). This confirms the general finding of the Catalan case that closed list electoral systems place greater power in the hands of parties. Apparently their non-exclusive, semi-detached relation with their constituents in rather large regions (where there are 6 other regional list MSPs) does not give regional MSPs the same degree of protection as MSPs from single-member constituencies enjoy. Furthermore, the procedure of ranking various prospective candidates in order of preference makes it much easier to remove incumbents from their positions than a clear-cut de-selection of one single candidate. However, compared to the Catalan case, the number of party-selectioninduced exits is still rather low. This may be caused by the rather different selection process. In 2003 all Scottish parties except the SNP decided their lists by one-member-one-vote postal ballot of party members in the region. This method leaves little room for short-term tactical decisions (as the number of selectors involved is too high). Furthermore, it quite obviously favours incumbents, as they will be the candidates best known to ordinary members. This argument is supported by the fact that in 2003 the party that did not have such a system in place (the SNP), suffered the highest number of party-induced casualties.45 Thus, differences in re-election rates – and, as a consequence, in the parliamentary tenure of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland – are due neither to a different attractiveness of the regional parliaments nor to a differing degree of volatility within the respective electorates. The 44

45

After all, the short history of the Scottish Parliament knows already two such cases: Dennis Canavan, a Labour MP who was rejected by the Labour Party to stand for the Scottish Parliament, nevertheless, stood as an independent, winning his old seat with an even greater majority. At the nomination for the second election, Margo MacDonald (SNP) was down-ranked by party activists, yet won a regional seat as an independent. Of course the SNP is also the party who lost the highest number of regional seats at that election. Nevertheless, of the 28 regional MSPs of 1999 from parties other than the SNP, only 2 lost their seat in 2003 because of de-ranking, while 7 out the 28 regional parliamentarians from the SNP did so.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 95

20/8/09 11:50:59

96

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

major reason is rather to be found in the largely diverging resources the electoral system and the inner-party selection procedures provide to incumbent members of parliament. Catalan opportunity structures leave the decision about access to a further legislative period largely with the party leadership, while in the Scottish case incumbents are much better placed to pursue their re-election ambition. The fact that Scottish professional careers are mainly parliamentary careers while Catalan careers are more diverse is thus partly caused by the superior degree of career security that MSPs enjoy. The other, though probably smaller, part of the explanation, however, is a question of the availability of professional political positions outside the parliamentary realm. While Scottish parliamentarians may have advanced from a number of already professionalised springboard positions (parliamentary assistants, party staff, local government) into the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish political-administrative arena (with its strictly non-partisan civil service, and rather non-professional party organisations) offers little opportunities to stay in such a career once they have lost their seat. In contrast, due to the politicised nature of the Catalan administration (including in local government), the stronger organisational structure of its political parties, and the more attractive opportunities at local level, Catalan parliamentarians can pursue and prolong their professional political career in and through different offices in varying political institutions. In this context of high office turnover, long-term careers are only possible because of the existence of an effective agency that controls and distributes offices (Borchert 2001: 9–10). While Catalan parties do fulfil this function, parties in Scotland do not have the necessary financial and organisation resources, nor the patronage power to play a similar role. Resumé

Taken together the evidence from the political careers of Catalan and Scottish politicians suggests that regional politics in both cases has become a professional occupation. While regionalism has somehow affected recruitment practices, in no way has it worked as a deterrent to this process of political professionalisation. The functional differentiation of regional politicians may start long before entry into the regional parliament. Catalan as well as Scottish regional parliamentarians generally enter the parliament only after serving a rather long ‘apprenticeship’ in various political positions. While some of these positions are already fully professionalised, most of them are not. Nevertheless, set on this course, political ‘trainees’ are socialised into the norms of the political profession, while increasingly losing touch with – and interest in – their non-political occupational career.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 96

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

97

Entering the regional parliament, finally, most of them have become full-time professionals. While the dedication of Catalan regional parliamentarians is spread over different political offices and positions they hold concurrently with their mandate (mostly in local and party politics), Scottish regional parliamentarians are exclusively dedicated to their regional mandate, which is a fully professionalised political office. Their careers are more or less exclusively focused on the parliamentary arena. Given the quite favourable opportunity structure of incumbent MSPs, they are set for a long-term professional political career. Catalan MCPs, by contrast, have to live with a high office turnover, mostly induced by a small and powerful party selectorate. However, their professional political careers are not necessarily much shorter than those of their Scottish counterparts. Given the much wider patronage power of Catalan parties and quite low institutional boundaries these political careers often consist of a sequence of rather different political positions in different institutions and organisations held for only a limited time. In both cases though, politics has become a functionally differentiated system, and their professional protagonists (regional politicians) are socially distinct from their fellow citizens – not only by the elected office they hold, but also by the socialisation they have undergone so far, and by the career interests and the career expectations they foster.

Territorial differentiation: the regionalisation of professional political careers

Having established regional politicians in Catalonia and Scotland as a socially distinct group in the section above, the following pages are concerned with their territorial distinction. Do regional politicians form an integral part of professional politicians in the whole country or are they separated from their colleagues in any way? Again we turn to their careers as a major source of evidence. In his Occupational Sociology Taylor defines careers as a ‘succession of related jobs, hierarchical in prestige, with ordered directions for an individual to pass through them in a predictable sequence’ (Taylor: 1968: 266). While such a sequence is usually defined by functional criteria of the specific sector or profession in question (i.e. for a political scientist we would expect to find the sequence of student, Ph.D.-student, lecturer, reader, professor), it also has a territorial dimension. To pass from one job to the other often entails a change of place. In some sectors the top jobs are concentrated in one or a few cities, thus establishing a predictable sequence of movements through territory towards a final destiny.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 97

20/8/09 11:50:59

98

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

In the profession of politics this territorial dimension of careers seems to be most obvious. Top jobs are to be found first and foremost in the national capital. In fact, the hierarchy of posts in the political profession seems to correspond more or less exactly to the territorial order of the polity leading from local, to regional (or state) to national (federal) office. Two US American political scientists have even gone so far as to reduce this political career ladder to two universal yet particular political ‘ambition principles’, the first stating that politicians ‘seek to increase their territorial jurisdiction’, the second, making a similar point, stating that they ‘seek to increase the size of their electoral constituency’ (Francis and Kenny 2000: 3). However, while the resulting uni-directional career path up the territorial ladder from the local to the national level might be quite common in some countries, it certainly does not constitute a law of career politics. In fact, empirically we find quite different patterns across countries and even across regions within the same country (see Stolz 2003). Obviously deviation from the traditional, nationally oriented pattern is dependent on the existence of strong and attractive regional institutions, as are found in federal or regionalised countries. As has been argued at the beginning of this chapter, regionalism may foster such a deviation by increasing the attractiveness of regional positions and a regional career. What is less clear though, is what kind of career pattern will emerge from such a challenge to the traditional hierarchy of positions on the career ladder. Theoretically, career movements between the regional and the national arena can take four distinct forms (Borchert 1999b; Stolz 2003; see also figure 3.1): the first is the ‘classical springboard’ pattern, depicted by Francis and Kenny, where regional politicians move ‘up’ to the national level (i.e. in a centripetal direction), but hardly any move ‘down’ to the regional arena (i.e. in a centrifugal direction). This pattern suggests a clear hierarchy of preferences, with the national centre widely accepted as the apex of political careers. This is basically the pattern to be found in the US, that has served as role model for the theoretical deliberations of Francis and Kenny. An increased attractiveness of the regional arena in a regionalist setting could have three different effects: it could reduce the ambition of regional politicians to move on to the national centre, it could increase the ambition of national politicians to move down to the regional level, or it could even have both effects at the same time. Ideal-typically these three effects correspond to three different patterns. The first deviating pattern would consist of ‘alternative careers’, where regional politicians remain on the regional level and national politicians remain on the national level. Such an overall pattern may be the result of either a fairly equal evaluation of a regional and a national political career among politicians (where transaction costs restrict movement between arenas) or of the existence of two groups of politicians with opposing

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 98

20/8/09 11:50:59

POLITICAL CAREERS

99

Figure 3.1 Career patterns in multi-level systems High centripetal movement

Low centripetal movement

Low centrifugal movement

Classical springboard

Alternative careers

High centrifugal movement

Integrated careers

Inverse springboard

Note: Typology (with slightly different labels) taken from Stolz (2003).

preferences – one with a clear regional orientation and the other with a national one, each following their particular ambition. In a second scenario we may find frequent career movements between the two arenas in both directions. Such a pattern of ‘integrated careers’ is the result of a circuit of positions with no strong boundaries and no clear-cut hierarchy between the regional and the national arena. This pattern might be the result of politicians with no particular preference moving between regional and national arenas with no sense of territorial direction, yet also of two groups of politicians with opposing preferences, whose movements (from the regional to the national and from the national to the regional arena) are cancelling each other out. A third theoretical possibility is represented by the ‘inverse springboard’ pattern, defined by frequent centrifugal career movements from the national to the regional arena and more or less no movement from the regional level ‘up’ to the national centre. Such a pattern is only conceivable in the context of a complete reversal of the traditional hierarchy of offices. However, empirically this pattern is highly unlikely even in circumstances where regional offices are generally perceived as more attractive. On the individual level such an inverse springboard career could be quite feasible, as a national detour might be an important asset or even a pre-requisite for a higher office on the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 99

20/8/09 11:50:59

100

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

regional level (e.g. in the regional government). However, since in general (though not always) there is a much higher availability of regional offices, a national springboard position is neither a necessary nor a viable career option for a majority of politicians who want to enter regional politics (i.e. as there are more seats in the regional parliament than regional seats in the national parliament, why go for the latter in order to move on to the former?). All three deviating patterns are compatible with a regionalist revaluation of the traditional career hierarchy. Which particular pattern will emerge in each case seems less dependent on the increased attractiveness of regional offices than on the concrete institutional opportunity structures that govern the availability of these offices and access to them. Following these theoretical deliberations, the empirical analysis will proceed in four steps. The first part will focus on the relative attractiveness of regional offices and regional careers in Catalonia and Scotland. Dealing with the subjective side of the question, I will identify the prevalent territorial orientation of Catalan and Scottish politicians. Drawing from survey data and interviews, I will analyse preferences, evaluations and ambitions as well as the reasons for them. How attractive are regional offices vis-à-vis national positions to Catalan and Scottish politicians and what makes them so appealing? As individual preferences do not necessarily determine political behaviour, and career ambitions do not always translate into congruent career paths, the major part deals with the careers actually pursued by Catalan and Scottish politicians. I will then shed some light on career movements from the regional to the national arena. How much movement is there, who is moving and why? Next, I will look at career movements in the opposite direction. Do the two regionalist cases show considerable levels of career movement from the national to the regional arena and what makes national politicians go ‘down’ to regional politics? Bringing together the results from both analyses, the final section asks about the emerging pattern of movements. Are Catalonia and Scotland developing the same pattern? What explains the similarities and how can we account for differences? The territorial orientation of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland

In most parts of the world political positions at the national level would generally be rated ‘higher’, more prestigious and more attractive than similar positions on the regional level.46 This clear-cut hierarchy – usually 46

Obviously a regional prime minister may be rated higher than a national parliamentarian.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 100

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

101

shared by the general public and professional politicians alike – is the basis of the traditional ‘springboard model’ of political careers described above. It rests on the traditional status of the nation-state as the central and primary (yet hardly the only) frame of reference in politics that usually corresponds to a higher measure of political power, resources (infrastructure, staff and salaries of politicians, yet also public funds at their disposal) and media attention. Regionalisation processes are shifting power and resources towards the regional level, thus elevating the status of regional politics in the perception of politicians – and arguably also in the general public – though they are not necessarily challenging the superior status of the national level. Regionalism, however, provides a direct challenge to the central state’s status as the primary political frame of reference. Politicians who share this regional frame of reference may orientate their political career according to it, as long as the power and resource balance is not too uneven. Furthermore, the more common this perception is in the region, the more social prestige it bestows upon political offices in the regional arena. This prestige might be expected to have a positive impact on the attractiveness of regional positions, even for politicians who are not genuinely regionalist in their political disposition. In the following section I will look at preferences and ambitions of Catalan and Scottish politicians with regard to the territorial arena in which they want to pursue their career. Do they really deviate from the traditional hierarchy of offices as suggested in the deliberations above? And if so, how is this deviation to be explained? Catalonia

The survey among members of the Catalan Parliament (MCPs) clearly indicates that the majority of those who have embarked on a regional career path (by entering the regional parliament) do so on purpose, fulfilling their first preference, and that they intend to stay within regional politics. (For a summary of the survey results see table 3.11.) Unsurprisingly, MCPs overwhelmingly think of themselves first as Catalan rather than Spanish politicians (only one stated both identities). In a question that asked which parliament they would rather stand for, if they did not have a mandate yet and were offered a secure place on the respective electoral list of their parties, 72 per cent of respondents declared they would run for the Catalan Parliament, 17 per cent stated they had no preference and only 10 per cent would have preferred the Spanish Congress. This result also holds – with similar proportions – across parties. If anything, members of the nationalist CiU coalition

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 101

20/8/09 11:51:00

102

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

– and not those of the PP or the socialists – are slightly less likely to opt for the Catalan mandate. The regional orientation reflected in this response is even more pronounced when the hypothetical question about primary preferences is replaced by a more concrete question of future career ambitions. Of those who want to continue their political career (only 8 per cent stated that they would retire), three-quarters (76.6 per cent) want to do so in the Catalan Parliament. More than a fifth (21.3 per cent) additionally aim at a parliamentary office (in the presiding board of the parliament, as committee convenor or group speaker) and more than a quarter strive for the Generalitat (27.7). Taken together, 85.1 per cent state a position on the Catalan level in which they would want to continue their career. Among the three other territorial levels of government, it is the Spanish level that is surprisingly referred to least often. Only two respondents (4.3 per cent) wanted to take on a Congress mandate in their future political life (one PP and one CDC MCP) and not one of them is aiming at the Spanish Government. In contrast, more than 10 per cent (12.8) of MCPs see their future political life in Catalan local politics. For 6.4 per cent, even a mandate in the European Parliament seems to be more attractive than a Congress seat. This strong affection of Catalan politicians for the regional career arena seems to be mainly caused by the fact that their primary territorial frame of reference in politics is Catalonia rather than Spain. Asked about reasons for their preference for the Catalan Parliament over the Spanish Congress, more than 80 per cent (82.9) stated that their major political aim is to influence Catalan politics, about a fifth (19.6) stated private/family reasons, and even fewer respondents claimed to pursue specific policy interests (14.6) at the Catalan level. This clear dominance of the general political perception over more specific interests that emerges from the survey was also found in indepth interviews. Evidence from these interviews, however, suggests that private reasons may be more important (probably understated in the survey for reasons of social desirability), as most interviewees claim that for a Catalan, life in Madrid was far from enjoyable.47 The Catalan parliamentarians’ preference for a political career in the Catalan Parliament may also be aided by their perception of the social prestige attached to a mandate in the Catalan Parliament. A majority of respondents believe that not only they themselves but also the Catalan public attaches a 47

Apart from the larger distance from home and family, complaints about the Madrid life include the absence from Catalan society and feelings of isolation as well as ill-feeling and prejudice against Catalans (interviews Espasa, Ribó). According to ex-minister Joan Majó this incapacity to adapt to Madrid society is specific to Catalans and is not shared by Basque politicians (Udina 1997: 199).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 102

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

103

higher value to the mandate in the Catalan Parliament than to a Congress mandate. Scotland

Evidence of the superior status of the Scottish Parliament as a career aim for Scottish politicians had even been gathered before the actual establishment of the parliament. According to a survey by Bochel and Bochel (1998), a seat in a devolved Scottish Parliament was the most attractive career ambition for Scottish local councillors in 1996: 39 per cent of respondents stated they would be interested in being elected to such a body. This contrasts with just 17 per cent stating an interest in a potential independent Scottish Parliament and only 14 per cent for both the Westminster and the European Parliament. Given that local councils had long been the main recruitment pool for Scottish Westminster MPs (see above), this result demonstrates the widespread attractiveness of a regional career path. This pre-devolution finding closely corresponds to the results in my survey of MSPs (see table 3.11). In the survey MSPs show an overwhelmingly Scottish identity (94 per cent stated that they think of themselves first as Scottish politicians, only two stated a predominantly British identity, and one declared both) and a clear preference for a seat in the Scottish Parliament (again 94 per cent). Given the chance, not one single MSP of the parties that supported the establishment of the Scottish Parliament (Labour, Lib–Dems, SNP, SSP, Greens) would opt for a Westminster seat instead; even among the MSPs of the party that opposed its establishment – the Conservatives – more than 80 per cent (81.8) would again stand for the Scottish Parliament. Concrete career ambitions of MSPs point in the same direction. Apart from the 10.6 per cent who want to retire from politics, all MSPs see at least part of their future political life in the Scottish Parliament. Nearly a third strive for a position in the Scottish Executive and roughly the same would appreciate an internal parliamentary office in the parliamentary bureau, the parliamentary corporate body or a committee convenorship. Only two MSPs (4.8 per cent) declared Westminster ambitions (one Conservative and one other) and only one of them (2.4 per cent) is aiming at the UK government. With just one MSP, the European Parliament scores even lower. Local government positions were not mentioned once as a future career ambition. Altogether these responses from MSPs suggest that almost all regional parliamentarians in Scotland pursue an exclusively regional political career. MSPs themselves explain their clear-cut preference for a political career in Scotland primarily through their interest in influencing Scottish rather than UK politics. Nearly 80 per cent (79.6 per cent) stated this reason. A specific

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 103

20/8/09 11:51:00

104

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Table 3.11 Preferences, ambitions and perceptions of MCPs and MSPs (%) MCPs

MSPs

Preferences Regional mandate National mandate No preferences

n = 58 72.4 10.3 17.2

n = 48 93.8 4.2 2.1

Reasons for regional preference Main aim is to influence regional politics Private/family reasons Specific policy interests

n = 51 82.9 19.6 14.6

n = 45 79.6 31.8 22.7

Ambitions Retire Continue political career regional parliament inner parliamentary office regional government regional position (mandate, parl.-office or gov.) national parliament national government European Parliament local government

n = 51 7.8 92.2 76.6 21.3 27.7 85.1

n = 47 10.6 89.4 100.0 28.6 31.0 100.0

Perception of higher estimation among groupsa By the regional public Regional parliamentarian National parliamentarian No difference By the regional media Regional parliamentarian National parliamentarian No difference Among regional parliamentarians Regional parliamentarian National parliamentarian No difference

n = 58

n = 47

56.2 17.2 27.6

48.9 25.5 25.5

29.6 33.3 37.0

56.5 19.6 23.9

65.4 11.5 23.1

76.1 2.2 21.7

4.3 0.0 6.4 12.8

4.8 2.4 2.4 0.0

Note: a Original survey question: ‘Which of the two mandates, do you think, is held in higher esteem?’

interest in the policy fields devolved to the regional level was only quoted by 22.7 per cent, while 31.8 per cent stated private/family reasons. Again this corresponds with results from in-depth interviews. In these interviews, MSPs not only emphasised their strong Scottish identity but also the particular hopes and expectations they attach to the Scottish Parliament as a new

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 104

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

105

institution, with a new political ethos.48 Others clearly stressed the quality of life in Scotland and the fact that they can be home with their family every night, referring to broken marriages and families among Westminster MPs. Some of the new MSPs stated that they would never have thought of standing for the UK Parliament. Another advantage over their UK counterparts perceived by MSPs is their central position within Scottish society. According to MSPs’ perception, the Scottish public as well as the Scottish media hold their mandate in higher esteem than a UK mandate. In the interviews many stated they were completely astonished by the amount of public and media interest in their work. While the downside of this immense media interest is also clearly felt by most MSPs,49 on balance publicity and media interest certainly adds to the attractiveness of their position. This is reflected in frequent complaints of Scottish Westminster MPs who have felt sidelined since the emergence of MSPs (Macwhirter 2000a). Comparison

With regard to the central question set for this section the results from the Catalan and the Scottish survey are strikingly similar. In both cases the traditional hierarchy between regional and national political offices is invalid – if not reversed – for regional parliamentarians. Regional careers are highly attractive and are pursued in their own right. Those who have embarked on a regional career path do so on purpose and generally hope to continue their career at this level. Ambitions to move to the national level are rather rare and, while there are some who would want to make such a step, it is not generally seen as a step ‘up’ the career ladder. While there are many different concrete reasons to pursue a specific regional office (to do with the office and institution in question), the high general disposition of politicians to remain in this arena seems to be a reflection of the political identity of this territorial unit vis-à-vis the central state. 48

49

‘I think . . . most of us here, we would agree, we wanted to stand for the Scottish Parliament. We are very much, I think, Scottish Parliamentarians. I think, we see ourselves differently . . . we worked very hard to establish the Parliament, to make it accessible, and I think we are a different breed of people’ (interview Duncan McNeil). ‘I felt very strongly when the Scottish Constitutional Convention came up with this idea that the Scottish Parliament should be not for the people who had always been involved in politics, but for others, people with life experience, who had brought up a son as a single parent, worked in a low paid job in the Health Service . . . And I always felt we should have equal representation for women’ (interview Hughes). MSPs have come under a lot of media criticism over questions such as salaries and expenses (see also chapter 4). Most of them feel unfairly treated by the press.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 105

20/8/09 11:51:00

106

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

This is indicated by the regional parliamentarians’ response to direct survey and interview questions (see above), but also by the general impression gained from interview partners talking about their political mindset. However, as table 3.11 shows, there are also some differences in degree between the Catalan and the Scottish case. In general, MSPs’ preferences and ambitions for a regional career seem to be even more pronounced than that of their Catalan counterparts. For those MCPs who would rather be elsewhere, local government and not the national parliament is the most attractive career target. In fact, if we compare national ambitions in both cases, they are more or less equal (only two parliamentarians in each case). A more detailed account of the rationale that informs real career decisions of Catalan and Scottish politicians will be provided in the next sections. Moving up: career movements from the regional to the national level

National government is traditionally at the apex of political ambition. The number and share of politicians from a particular region in the national government (and their position in that government) can thus be seen as an important indicator for the career opportunities of politicians from this region in the national arena and for the political integration of this region in general. While this is a measure for general career prospects of regional politicians, it does not take account of the overall magnitude of career movements from the regional to the national level. However, the two are not completely unrelated: even though only a few will ever achieve such a goal, careers leading from the region into national government might set a model other regional politicians strive to follow. A much better indicator for the overall frequency of movement from the regional to the national arena is the share of former regional parliamentarians to be found in the first chamber of the national parliament (the centripetal ratio). This figure focuses on what is arguably the most representative political institution (parliament) and (as an aggregate measure) provides more than a snapshot of current career flows (though, of course, less than full longitudinal analysis). As table 3.12 shows, ‘centripetal ratios’ (defined as above) diverge considerably across different regionalised and federal systems. The long-established federations of Switzerland and the United States produce significantly higher rates than all the newly regionalised systems, but also higher than the longestablished federal systems of Austria, Canada and Germany. The same study (Stolz 2003) has even discovered a high variance between regions within the same country. In line with the theoretical deliberations set out above, many of the regions with a strong and virulent regionalism (i.e. Quebec, Flanders and the Basque Country) produced rather low scores.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 106

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

107

Table 3.12 Share of national parliamentarians with experience in a regional parliament Country

%

Switzerland United States Spain West Germany Austria Belgium Australia Italy Canada

68 38 16 15 14 13 12 10 6

Source: Stolz (2003).

While centripetal ratios represent a highly practicable and meaningful comparative measure, a more detailed analysis would have to include a whole number of other indicators and perspectives. Looking at the personnel exchange between two institutions, we may see these institutions both as importing and as exporting its members. The number of politicians moving between these institutions should thus be related to both the total number of members in the importing as well as in the exporting institution. The first ratio, generally compiled in recruitment studies, represents the numerical presence of a particular career background in a political institution. This might allow insights into the spirit and the working of the importing institution (as this could be seen to be heavily influenced by the experience and the socialisation of its members) as well as into the value of the exporting institution as a resource in the pursuit of an office in the importing one. The second ratio, however, which is hardly ever looked at, is much closer to a genuine career perspective: it represents the probability of moving from institution A to institution B. In order to identify a stable, long-term career pattern we will also have to look at career movements over time. Only the flows from election to election will tell us whether a high centripetal ratio is the result of constant career movements or of one (or a few) exceptional event(s). Furthermore, we have to differentiate between different types of parliamentarians and the concrete career path they are following. It does make a difference whether it’s government members or back-benchers, party leaders or foot soldiers who are moving between territorial arenas, or whether particular career paths are restricted to specific parties. In the following analysis of career movements in one direction only, I will skip the systematic comparison and explanation of the two cases. This is to

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 107

20/8/09 11:51:00

108

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

avoid potential duplications, as the two analytically distinct career movements make up a composite pattern which is later presented and explained from a comparative perspective. Catalonia

Since Fernando VII established the office of minister in the early nineteenth century, there have been almost 80 Catalan ministers in the Spanish government. For three very short periods in the second half of the nineteenth century there had even been a Catalan politician at the head of the Spanish government.50 In general there have been more Catalan ministers during times of democracy than in periods of monarchy and dictatorship. In the time since the first post-Francoist elections in 1977 there have been 13 Catalan ministers in the Spanish cabinet (until September 2008) – one in the centrist governments between 1977 and 1982, five in Gonzalez’ socialist governments (1982–96), three in Aznar’s conservative governments (1996–2004) and four in the current socialist government of Zapatero (2004–).51 The most striking fact about their careers is their lack of parliamentary experience at the time of their appointment. Only five of them had been recruited from Congress (the socialists Lluch, Solé Tura, Borrell, Montilla and Chacon), and one from the Catalan Parliament (Punset, UCD).52 The other seven had come from private industry (Birulés, ind/PP), from the higher ranks of the state administration (Majó, PSC and García-Valdecasas, PP), from the higher ranks of the Catalan administration (Piqué, ind/PP), and from Catalan local government (Serra, Clos and Corbacho, all PSC). 50

51

52

Joan Prim i Prats (1869–70), Estanislao Figueras i de Moragas and Francesc Pi i Margall (both in 1873) had all been presidents of the government. For a more detailed look at Catalan ministers over the last two centuries see Ainaud (1996). In contrast to Ainaud (1996) and Udina (1997) Catalan ministers are defined as those coming from a Catalan political base rather than those with a Catalan ancestry. Thus, three ministers of the UCD government who have been referred to as ‘Catalan’ – Oliart, Rovira and Mayor Zaragoza – are discounted in this analysis as their political career is not a Catalan one. All three had been representing nonCatalan constituencies in Congress. José Montilla (PSC, Industry, Telecommunications, Energy, Commerce and Tourism, 2004–) was nominated to the government right after his election to Congress. Thus, he was appointed from Congress, yet he owes this position not to his parliamentary career but to his office as the general secretary of the PSC (the number two behind president Maragall). Solé Tura had been a member of the Catalan Parliament before he was elected to Congress and appointed to the Spanish government.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 108

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

109

The longest-serving and most prominent of them was the Catalan socialist Narcís Serra who spent 13 years (1982–95) as minister in Felipe González’ cabinet, five of them as vice-president of the government. Others, however, did serve rather less time. In the 31 years since the establishment of a democratic Spanish government the 13 Catalan ministers have served a total of 41 years in government. This corresponds to an average of about 3 years per minister (two are still serving) and a virtual 1.3 Catalan ministers in government at any particular time. Given its economic and political importance, its share of the population and, indeed, its share of Congress members, we may conclude that Catalonia has been rather under-represented in the Spanish government.53 But how about career movements from the Catalan Parliament into the Spanish Congress? Viewed from the latter, the move from the Catalan Parliament into the Spanish Congress looks like a well-trodden career path. Nine out of the 43 Catalan members in the IX Spanish Congress (2008–) had served in the Catalan Parliament before moving to Madrid. This amounts to a centripetal ratio of 19 per cent and is even higher than the average among Spanish regions (Stolz 2003). A look at table 3.12 shows that by international comparison this is a fairly high score (only the national averages of the US and Switzerland are higher). In absolute terms, flows from Barcelona to Madrid look much less impressive (see table 3.13). Nevertheless, they are stable and seem to reflect a deliberate choice. At every Congress election no less than two and no more than five parliamentarians with experience in the Catalan Parliament were elected. Two-thirds of these parliamentarians came directly from a current Catalan mandate, suggesting a voluntary move up to the national level. However, a look at individual career paths (as provided by author’s dataset) shows that only 17 of the 29 really exhibit a clear-cut ‘springboard path’. For 12 others this move has not been the only career move between the two parliaments (at least so far). Instead, six had come from the Congress into the Catalan Parliament in the first place, four returned to the Catalan Parliament later on, and two parliamentarians (Alavedra and Fernández Teixidó) had actually moved from Congress to the Catalan Parliament before and after their move from the Catalan Parliament to Congress. Finally, taking on an export perspective, movement from the regional to the national parliament looks altogether less spectacular: of all MCPs who have left the Catalan Parliament since its establishment (482), only 6 per cent had found their way into Congress. With 94 per cent of its members never 53

The 47 Catalan Congress members represent 13.4 per cent of the whole chamber – 1.3 ministers in a cabinet of about 15 ministers represent just 8.7 per cent.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 109

20/8/09 11:51:00

110

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Table 3.13 Members of the Catalan Parliament moving to the Spanish Congress (1982–2008) MCPs ‡ Spanish Congress Members moving, n = 482 Members moving directly CiU (n = 200) ERC (n = 40) PSC (n = 125) PSUC/ICV (n = 48) UCD/CDS (n = 22) AP/PP (n = 44)

1982 1986 1989 1993 1996 2000 2004 2008

all

%

3

2

4

5

5

4

3

3

29

6.0

3

1

4

4

2

1

3

1

19

3.9

0 1 1 0 1 0

1 0 0 1 0 0

1 0 1 0 1 1

3 0 0 1 0 1

3 0 1 1 0 0

2 1 1 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 2

2 1 0 0 0 0

13 3 4 3 2 4

6.5 7.5 3.2 6.3 9.1 9.1

reaching Congress, the Catalan Parliament is hardly a very promising ‘springboard’ to a career as a national parliamentarian. A look at the party distribution surprisingly shows the path towards Congress to be predominantly frequented by parliamentarians from nationalist parties. Slightly more than half of the total number is made up of CiU or ERC politicians. However, as the last column of table 3.13 shows, their export ratios are not that far from the average, the high total number thus reflecting their electoral strength and the high turnover of parliamentarians in this group rather than a particular nationalist ambition. The parties whose MCPs have been most likely to move to Madrid are those on the right of the party spectrum: the centrists (Centristes de Catalunya– UCD and CDS) and later the conservatives (AP/PP). Nearly 10 per cent of their parliamentarians have moved on to the Congress. In contrast, the parties of the left do not show a common pattern. The share of Catalan communists (PSUC) and later post-communists (ICV) moving towards Madrid is just above the average for all parties. The most striking result however, is the low number of parliamentarians from the party that is closely associated with the second major party of the Spanish party system: the PSC. Only four socialist MCPs (and thus just 3.2 per cent) have followed this path since 1980.54 Any attempt to explain these party differences has to include both the party rationale and the disposition of individual parliamentarians to make such a move. For members of the two small Catalan parties ERC and ICV (formerly 54

This figure clearly disproves Genieys’ unsubstantiated claim that PSC parliamentarians would perceive the Catalan Parliament first and foremost as a springboard to the national level (Genieys 1997: 251–2, 1998b: 174–5).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 110

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

111

PSUC) as well as for the leading nationalist party CiU, the main attractiveness of a Congress mandate is the relatively small size of their parliamentary group in Madrid in contrast to that of the Catalan Parliament. This smaller contingent (ICV and ERC had only one or two seats most of the time) increases the competition, yet also the visibility of the individual elected members. As their parties’ main link to the Spanish arena, these parliamentarians are in a central position to draw public attention to their party, but also to themselves. Thus, there is a strong incentive for the party to send experienced, senior politicians (mostly headed by the party’s number two) and a clear incentive for experienced, senior politicians to stand for a Congress seat. Even though they may not like life in Madrid, ambitious regional parliamentarians from these parties hardly reject a chance for a Congress seat. These deliberations are reflected in the overall share yet also in the individual career paths of those who moved up from the Catalan Parliament to the Spanish Congress: those who have moved have largely been leading members of the respective party groups in the Catalan Parliament. Often these movements have been the consequence of changes in the inner-party hierarchy – for example, a new deputy party leader moving from the regional to the national parliament. While such a new head of the Congress list might be granted a relatively free hand to pick his Congress team, other MCPs may nevertheless be placed on the Congress list by the party leader himself in order to have a check on his number two. Yet individual career paths in these three parties also clearly show that a move from the Catalan Parliament to Congress is not necessarily part of uni-directional career movement towards the desired Spanish career arena. In fact, four of the 19 CiU ‘springboard’ parliamentarians had started their parliamentary career in Congress before moving to the Catalan Parliament and later back to Congress. Furthermore, two of the 19 CiU MCPs, one of the three ERC members, and all three of the ICV/PSUC members have later returned to the Catalan Parliament. By contrast, centripetal movements of parliamentarians from the two parties with close ties to the two big Spanish parties are pursued in rather different opportunity structures. PSC members are not only much less likely than their CiU counterparts to move from the Catalan Parliament to the Congress, the four MCPs who have made this move also show a rather different profile. Two of them were mere back-benchers in the Catalan Parliament, the two others (Martín Toval and Solé Tura) had already made their mark at the Spanish level (both had actually started their career in Congress). This suggests a much more clear-cut division among regional and national parliamentarians within the PSC. While some opt for a Congress career right from the start, neither back-benchers nor the parliamentary leadership of the PSC

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 111

20/8/09 11:51:00

112

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

in the Catalan Parliament show a strong inclination to move to Madrid. Apart from a general Catalan orientation (that does not distinguish PSC MCPs from nationalist ones), this pattern might be explained by their rather different opportunity structure: while CiU members from the Catalan Parliament can move into a smaller, more distinct parliamentary group in the Congress, Catalan socialists are ‘drowned’ within an even larger PSOE group in Madrid (since 1982 the distinct PSC group has dissolved itself into the PSOE group). Furthermore, the chances for promotion into the Spanish government for PSC Congress members have proved to be rather poor, while the Catalan Parliament – and, since 2003, the Catalan government – offers much better chances for the career promotion of socialist MCPs.55 Centrist and Conservative parliamentarians, by contrast, are much more likely to move from the Catalan Parliament to Congress. Furthermore, those who do move are even more heavyweight than their colleagues from other parties, as they have even included incumbent leaders of the respective Catalan party organisations.56 A simple explanation for this would stress the centralist tradition of both party families and a potentially lower regional identity of its politicians. And indeed, although the survey results do not explicitly support such a claim, this argument should not be completely dismissed.57 However, conditions of party competition and institutional factors certainly also play an important role. As to the first, the leading position that centrists – and later, conservatives – have held within the Spanish party system is in stark contrast to their rather marginal role in Catalonia. Thus, the attraction of the Spanish level for UCD and PP MCPs may not rest exclusively in their national political frame of reference: the Spanish system is certainly also the arena where they are closer to political power. Finally, the two latest PP cases of ‘springboard’ movement (Dolors Nadal and Alicia Sánchez-Camacho) were single-handed decisions of the then Catalan leader Josep Piqué, a reminder that in the PP – perhaps even more so than in other Catalan parties – it is the party leader who finally decides about career pathways. Taken together, we have depicted a continuous movement of parliamentarians from the Catalan to the Spanish Parliament. At first sight, this appears to be completely in line with what we know about career patterns in 55

56

57

Indeed, between 2003 and 2008 more MCPs have been promoted into the Catalan government than during 23 years of CiU government. Antonio Fernández Teixidó (CDS) and Jorge Fernàndez Díaz (PP), both in 1989. In my interviews the Catalan identity of PP parliamentarians was clearly less pronounced than that of others. Furthermore, a look at the surnames of some PP politicians moving to Madrid (Fernández Díaz, Sánchez-Camacho, etc.) clearly show an ancestry from outside Catalonia.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 112

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

113

other regionalised and federal countries, and thus in contrast to any notion of regionalist exceptionalism. However, a closer look at individual career paths clearly shows that almost half of these careers do not follow a classical ‘springboard pattern’, as they comprise political positions on both territorial levels without following a single direction. In fact, for many if not most of those who have accomplished the move up to the national arena, this was neither their ultimate career aim nor has it been their final political destiny. With the exception of a few (especially socialist and conservative) parliamentarians who are genuinely orientated towards Spanish politics, the move into Congress does not represent a step into a superior arena. Instead their Congress mandate is often either the expression of an instrument of inner-party promotion. And it is indeed this inner-party promotion that lies at the heart of their career ambitions. The party, in most cases a distinct Catalan institution, is their political home that grants them influence on Catalan public policy but also privileged access to Catalan public office. If it is a mandate on the Spanish level that helps to rise within this Catalan institution and to increase prospects for a more prestigious public office in Catalonia – so be it. Scotland

In contrast to Catalonia, Scots have traditionally been represented very strongly in the UK government. Since the Union of Parliaments in 1707 there have been numerous prime ministers from Scottish constituencies (Gladstone served for 14 years, Asquith for 8), the latest being, of course, Gordon Brown. However, any meaningful comparison of regional representation in the national cabinet between Scotland and Catalonia can involve only the time since the election of the first democratic Spanish government in 1977. In this period, Scotland had 16 cabinet ministers serving for a total of 79 years. With a virtual 2.6 Scottish ministers in the cabinet at any time, Scotland’s presence in national government has thus been much stronger than the Catalan representation with a virtual 1.3 cabinet members. For the time up to 1999 when the Scottish Parliament was established, this is hardly surprising. After all, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for Scotland has always been a compensation for the lack of self-government.58 A look at the period since 1999, however, shows that Scottish cabinet representation has even been strengthened with the emergence of a Scottish Parliament. With Gordon Brown as Prime Minister (since 2007) and previously Chancellor of the Exchequer (1997–2007), Robin Cook as foreign 58

And indeed, if the total is reduced by the 26 years in which the SoS had been a full cabinet position the Scottish figure (1.7) is closer to the Catalan one.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 113

20/8/09 11:51:00

114

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

minister (1997–2001) and Alistair Darling also as Chancellor (2007–), Scottish MPs have not only occupied the most prestigious cabinet positions, they have also served a total of 36 years in this time-period, which corresponds to an average of 4 Scottish ministers in the UK cabinet at any time between 1999 and 2008. At the time of writing (September 2008) the Prime Minister, three cabinet minister, four junior ministers and two government whips come from Scottish constituencies. In other words, 10 of the 59 Scottish MPs are in government office. From a systematic perspective, the appointment of Scottish MP John Reid as Health Secretary (2003–5) was perhaps the most significant. As health is a devolved matter, this appointment shows that a Scottish MP could even take over a ministry that deals exclusively with policies for England and Wales. Viewed in isolation, the relatively good career prospects for Scottish MPs at Westminster depicted above might be seen to strengthen the disposition of Scottish politicians to move to the UK arena. However, as a look at recent career flows from the Scottish Parliament and the wider opportunity structure of MSPs shows, this hardly applies to members of the Scottish Parliament. At present, the Scottish contingent of 59 MPs at Westminster has only 2 former MSPs, a centripetal ratio of just 3.4 per cent. At the two UK general elections since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, only three politicians with experience in this body got themselves elected to the Westminster Parliament. A closer look at these three parliamentarians, though, shows that they can hardly be seen as representative for a wider centripetal ambition among MSPs. In 2001 the only MSP who stood for a Westminster seat at the UK general election was in fact an old Westminster hand: the then and current SNP leader and long-standing MP Alex Salmond. Elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 as a sitting MP, he resigned as SNP leader in 2000 and gave up his Scottish mandate rather than his Westminster seat when dual mandates were forced to end at the Westminster election of 2001. Thus, Salmond had actually never left Westminster. To make his an even more unlikely springboard career Salmond has since not only regained the SNP leadership but has also returned to the Scottish Parliament (as First Minister). Four years later, at the general election of 2005 one former and three sitting MSPs stood as Westminster candidates: two of them were elected. All three sitting MSPs were list MSPs standing for a Westminster constituency in their region, while the former MSP (Ben Wallace) had actually resigned from the Scottish Parliament after one legislative period in order to stand for an English seat at Westminster. All four have one thing in common: they are members of the Conservative party. Thus, even at their second chance, no single MSP from one of the pro-devolution parties – Labour, Liberal

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 114

20/8/09 11:51:00

POLITICAL CAREERS

115

Democrats and SNP – has made use of a potential ‘springboard’ function of the Scottish Parliament. It is perhaps indicative that none of the 15 MSPs who had involuntarily lost their Scottish mandate in 2003 stood for a Westminster seat in the 2005 UK elections in order to re-enter professional politics. Instead, six of them rejoined the Scottish Parliament in 2007, suggesting their failure to stand for Westminster was not for lack of ambition, but either because of the low accessibility or the low attractiveness of Westminster to them. Compared to Catalonia where every Congress election saw between two and five MCPs moving up, these figures point to considerably lower flows of parliamentarians from Edinburgh to London. Furthermore, unlike the party distribution in the Catalan case, these figures also suggest that among Scottish regional parliamentarians ambition for a national career is restricted to Conservative members. This might be explained in various ways. It might simply reflect the stronger UK orientation usually attributed to Conservatives (as against their MSP colleagues from other parties) and depicted in my survey (though on a quite low scale, see last section). Given the still better chances of the Conservatives winning a UK election than move into the Scottish Executive, it might also reflect advancement prospects. As one of only a handful of Conservative MPs from Scotland, chances for a ministerial career in a Conservative UK government would certainly be considerable. Yet Westminster candidacies of Tory MSPs are also a function of the access dimension: with only one Conservative incumbent in a Scottish constituency, it is much easier for Conservatives MSPs to get the nomination for a seat. With no incumbent in place MSPs are generally the most prominent and best qualified Tory candidates from which constituency activists might choose. However, in most constituencies easy access to nomination reflects low chances of winning. The complete lack of any MSP from the pro-devolution parties standing for Westminster can confidently be attributed to their very strong and distinct Scottish orientation. This general orientation is complemented and reinforced by more promising concrete career prospects in Scotland and problems of access to Westminster common to all these parties, though in slightly varying form. For Labour MSPs, the party’s strong position in Scotland (since the 1960s Labour has been Scotland’s dominant party) created a long-term prospect of belonging to the government party. Given the very favourable cabinet/member ratio at Holyrood59 Labour MSPs were seen to stand a 59

With 10–12 ministers for 129 MSPs the cabinet/member ratio (1:12) under Labour in Scotland had been much more favourable for parliamentarians than at Westminster (C. 19 to 659 or 1:35). The SNP First Minister Alex Salmond has since reduced the number of cabinet ministers to 6.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 115

20/8/09 11:51:01

116

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

very real prospect of becoming a government minister, if they held on to their Scottish mandate long enough. At the same time, though, Labour’s Westminster MPs have certainly not lost out in terms of ministerial office (see above), making Scottish Labour MPs the least likely to stand down and make way for potential MSPs with UK ambitions. Prospect of government office is certainly also a very important factor in making the Scottish Parliament an attractive place for Liberal Democrat MSPs. As junior partner in a coalition government between 1999 and 2007 they held two cabinet and three junior ministries, while at Westminster they have still not reached the electoral threshold that would make them a potential government party. On top of their unquestionable general Scottish orientation, SNP MSPs also face a much more attractive role and much better career prospects in the Scottish Parliament. A marginal party at Westminster (in contrast to the pivotal role of the Catalan nationalists in the Spanish Congress), in Scotland the SNP had been the official opposition and have now moved into government. It is perhaps significant for the strong regional career orientation within the SNP that even the political heavyweights who had lost their seats in 2003 (Michael Russell, Andrew Wilson) have not sought a nomination to Westminster in order to continue their political careers. With regard to accessibility, SNP MSPs have benefited from the proportional element in the Scottish system, while chances for SNP candidates at Westminster (and thus for any cross-over) have traditionally been reduced by the first-past-the-post system (though this might not necessarily be so for much longer). The electoral system is, of course, also the reason why – irrespective of their actual career ambition – MSPs from the Scottish Socialists or the Green Party hardly stand a chance of moving on to the Westminster Parliament. Thus, despite a tradition of successful Scottish politicians at Westminster, evidence and arguments compiled above clearly suggest that the low number of MSPs moving to the UK Parliament at the first two elections since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament are not likely to increase in the foreseeable future. The strong regional orientation, the high career security and attractive career prospects at the Scottish Parliament, and the very restricted access to Westminster all point towards careers that remain within the Scottish arena, or to be more precise, within the Scottish Parliament. Moving down: career movements from the national to the regional level

Political careers leading from the national level ‘down’ to the regional political arena are far less common than vice versa. Generally, regional political

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 116

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

117

Table 3.14 Regional parliamentarians with experience in the national parliament (%) Region California New York North Dakota Alberta Ontario Quebec Tasmania Queensland South Australia Burgenland Oberösterreich Wien Bayern Niedersachsen

Country

Number

%

USA USA USA CDN CDN CDN AUS AUS AUS AUT AUT AUT GER GER

0 0 0 0 0 2 1 2 0 0 1 5 3 2

0 0 0 0 0 2 3 2 0 0 2 4 1 1

Source: Stolz (2003).

positions have been less attractive for those politicians who have already made the step into the national arena. With the exception of national parliamentarians moving into regional government and some national parliamentarians looking to the regional parliament as their retirement home, this career path is rarely frequented. This general impression is clearly reflected in the share of former national parliamentarians in regional parliaments (the centrifugal ratio) to be found in long-established federal countries (table 3.14). The most extreme case is the US, where even the large and highly professionalised state legislatures of California and New York do not contain a single former member from the House of Representatives. A look at the larger more professionalised provincial parliaments in Canada shows a similar picture. And even in the strongly regionalist Quebec there are only two parliamentarians who have come down. In Australia, Austria and the western Länder of Germany we do find the odd former national parliamentarian in regional parliaments, though often in a government position. Their share, however, hardly ever exceeds 1 or 2 per cent. In the following I will examine whether Catalonia and Scotland, as two strong regionalist cases, deviate from this pattern. As argued above, regionalism might be seen to increase the attractiveness of regional politics and might thus attract even politicians from the national level into regional institutions.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 117

20/8/09 11:51:01

118

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS? Catalonia

A look at the current Catalan Parliament clearly shows the exceptional position of Catalonia in international comparisons. At the end of 2006, the 135-member-strong Catalan Parliament contained 13 former Congress members, corresponding to a centrifugal ratio of 9.6 per cent. This is in stark contrast to the almost complete absence of such a career path in traditional federal countries. By far the strongest drive towards the regional parliament was caused by its establishment in 1980. At the first election to the Catalan Parliament 11 and thus roughly a quarter of the 46-strong Catalan contingent of members in the Spanish Congress took the opportunity to leave Madrid for Barcelona (export perspective). In the Catalan Parliament, they, together with six former Congress members, produced a share of 12.6 per cent of MCPs with prior Congress experience (import perspective). A look at the party distribution in the Catalan Parliament of 1980 shows that this phenomenon was not restricted to parliamentarians of the regionalist groups CiU and ERC. On the contrary, the share of former Congress members was even slightly higher in the communist and socialist group. Viewed from the Congress of 1979, however, the picture changes significantly: 40 per cent of the nationalist members (4 of 10), nearly 30 per cent of the communists (2 of 7), yet only around 10 per cent of the socialist and centrist Congress members made the move from Madrid to Barcelona. Thus, this centrifugal movement seems indeed most attractive to the regionalists, yet it is clearly not restricted to them. But what political stature did these parliamentarians have? Given that they moved ‘down’ the political ladder, we might be inclined to think of them as mere inferior players. However, empirical data again proves this conventional wisdom wrong. These were not some Congress backbenchers deciding that a Barcelona mandate might bring them closer to family or to their ‘civil’ occupation, but the leading figures of Catalan politics! Among the 17 we find the-then party leaders of all five major political forces in Catalonia.60 In 1977 they went to the constituent legislature of the Spanish Congress in order to set up the constitutional framework for Catalan autonomy. In their time in Congress they debated and ratified the Spanish Constitution (1978) and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (1979). At the same time three of them – Reventós, Pujol and Gutiérrez Díaz – were serving in the provisional Catalan 60

Jordi Pujol, general secretary of the CDC and leader of the nationalist coalition CiU, Heribert Barrera, leader of the republican nationalist ERC, Joan Reventós, general secretary of the Catalan socialist party PSC, Antoni Gutiérrez Díaz, general secretary of the Catalan communist party PSUC, and Anton Canyellas then leader of the Catalan centrists CC–UCD

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 118

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

119

Table 3.15 Direct and indirect movements from the Spanish Congress to the Catalan Parliament (n = 186) Cong. ‡ Cat. Parl. Candidates with Congress experience elected to Catalan Parliament Congress members moving directly

1980 1984 1988 1992 1995 1999 2003 2006 All

% of exits

17

6

8

2

6

10

6

3

58

31.2

11

2

2

1

5

3

3

2

29

15.6

Note: These figures document movements rather than parliamentarians. Two parliamentarians have moved twice from the Congress to the Catalan Parliament and are thus double counted. n is the number of exits from the Congress between 1977 and the end of 2006.

government. Once Catalan institutions were established, they returned from Congress to shape Catalan politics in and through the Catalan Parliament. Most of them made their mark – and a career – in Catalonia while one of them, Jordi Pujol, became the dominant figure of Catalan politics for 23 years. While the establishment of the Catalan Parliament saw a record flow of 17 former Congress parliamentarians moving back to their regional base, the high centrifugal ratio in the current Catalan Parliament has nothing to do with this exceptionally high original intake. None of these parliamentarians still holds a mandate. Instead, as table 3.15 shows, it is the result of a constant flow of parliamentarians. At every election since 1984, between 2 and 10 former Congress members have been entering the Catalan Parliament (an average of 6 parliamentarians per election). Taken together, between 1980 and 2006 a total of 56 politicians have moved from the Congress to the Catalan Parliament (two of them even moved twice). Viewed from the Congress (export perspective) this figure looks quite impressive. A total of 186 Congress exits of Catalan members between 1977 and 2006 has produced 58 movements to the Catalan Parliament. In other words, almost a third (31.2 per cent) of all Congress members have moved on to the Catalan Parliament. Even if we adjust this result for the exceptional situation of the inauguration of the Catalan Parliament in 1980 the result does not change much. Of the 108 parliamentarians who entered Congress after 1980 and left it by the end of 2006, 28 have since found their way into the Catalan Parliament. This suggests that the probability of a Catalan Congress member entering Catalan Parliament sometime later in his or her career amounts to 26 per cent. A first indication that these centrifugal movements are not necessarily a step down the career ladder is given by a closer look at the position of

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 119

20/8/09 11:51:01

120

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

parliamentarians at the time of their election. Exactly half of these parliamentarians have moved directly between parliaments. Thus, they have given up a current Congress mandate for a seat in the Catalan Parliament. Others have intentionally stood down from Congress at the the end of the legislative term in order to stand at the next Catalan election. Many CiU members have directly moved into the Generalitat, only later followed by a parliamentary mandate. Thus, it has clearly been a small minority for whom the Catalan Parliament has been a fall-back position after losing their Congress seat. A look at the party distribution of all the parliamentary movements from Congress to the Catalan Parliament between 1980 and 2006 (see table 3.16) predictably shows Congress members of the nationalist parties CiU and ERC, yet also members from ICV/PSUC to be most likely to make such a move. Around 40 per cent (!) of parliamentarians from these parties have actually taken such a step. By contrast just a quarter of Catalan socialists and only just over 10 per cent of conservative and centrist Congress members show this pattern. As a regionalist party the high share of former CiU Congress members moving to the Catalan Parliament is hardly surprising. Yet these movements cannot be exclusively attributed to a general regional career orientation, since many of these moves came with some form of career advancements. In fact, for half of the CiU members moving from Congress to the Catalan Parliament this move had been either accompanied by, or even preceded by, a promotion into the Catalan government.61 This clearly reflects that CiU members moving from Congress to Barcelona were generally from the higher party ranks. The same is true, though, for ERC and ICV/PSUC, even though movements of their Congress members were not induced by government promotion. Here a considerable share of the movement actually comes from incumbent party leaders moving back to Catalonia, where party leaders belong. Among the strongest Catalan Congress group, the PSC, centrifugal career flows have been much less frequent. This clearly reflects their oppositional status in Catalonia until 2003 rather than any different, perhaps more 61

In total there are 15 CiU Congress members who have later been appointed to the Generalitat. Two of them never entered the Catalan Parliament (Gomis, Trias Fargas) while one actually moved twice between Congress and Generalitat/ Parliament (Alavedra). Of the 14 moves that included both the Catalan Paliament and the Generalitat 9 were direct moves from a current Congress mandate into the Generalitat (in 7 cases the Catalan Parliament was only entered later, in 2 cases simultaneously). In two cases the move came directly from a Congress mandate into the Catalan Parliament with the Generalitat coming only later, and in 3 other cases there was a break between leaving Congress and entering the Generalitat and the Catalan Parliament (1 Generalitat first, 2 parliament and Generalitat simultaneously).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 120

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

121

Table 3.16 Movements from the Spanish Congress to the Catalan Parliament, by party Cong. ‡ Cat. Parl.

1980 1984 1988 1992 1995 1999 2003 2006 All

all (n = 186) 17 CiU (n = 56) 4 PSUC/ICV (n = 18) 4 PSC (n = 61) 6 ERC (n = 5) 1 UCD/CDS (n=21) 2 AP/PP (n=25) 0 changed parties 0

6 2 2 2 0 0 0 0

8 5 0 1 0 1 0 1

2 1 0 0 0 0 1 0

6 3 1 2 0 0 0 0

10 7 0 1 0 0 0 2

6 2 1 1 0 0 2 0

3 0 0 2 1 0 0 0

58 24 8 15 2 3 3 3

% 31.2 42.9 44.4 24.6 40.0 14.3 12.0 0

Note: Again, these figures document movements rather than parliamentarians. Two parliamentarians have moved twice from the Congress to the Catalan Parliament and are thus double counted. n represents the number of exits attributed to the party that parliamentarians belonged to when they left Congress. Members who left Congress as representatives of one party, yet entered the Catalan Parliament representing another, are classified under the residual category ‘changed party’.

detached, attitude towards the Catalan political level. For, if we discount those CiU parliamentarians who actually moved from Congress to the Catalan government, there remains hardly any difference between the share of the two party groups. Similarly, the status of PSC parliamentarians coming from Madrid does not lag far behind that of their CiU, ERC and ICV/PSUC counterparts. Three incumbent party leaders (Reventos, Obiols, Montilla) and a number of other high-profile politicians made this move. In fact, in 2006 José Montilla left his super-ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism in the Spanish government in order to run as candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat – a clear indication of the high value of Catalan political offices even within the socialist party. Another indicator that reflects this high value is the respective length of the parliamentary careers at each level. In all the above-mentioned parties (CiU, ERC, ICV/PSUC and PSC), parliamentarians moving from Congress to the Catalan Parliament generally spend a much longer time in Barcelona than in Madrid (Stolz 2006: 154–6). For most of them their stint in the Spanish Congress thus seems to have been a clearly limited interval in an otherwise Catalan political career. By contrast, the rather low number of centrifugal careers of parliamentarians from the parties of the right clearly corresponds to a much stronger Spanish orientation within UCD, CDS, AP and PP. This impression is further supported by the fact that these parliamentarians show much longer tenure in the Spanish than in the Catalan Parliament. However, the fact that despite

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 121

20/8/09 11:51:01

122

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the marginal role of these parties in Catalonia, three acting party presidents (Canyellas CC–UCD, Fernández Teixidó CDS and Piqué PP) have moved from Madrid to Barcelona also suggests that even within the conservative, more central state-orientated parties, Catalonia cannot simply be regarded as the inferior career arena. Taken together, the extraordinarily high number of career movements from the national to the regional political level and the high status of those moving ‘down’ clearly deviates from the traditional understanding of the unitary centripetal direction of political careers and the corresponding hierarchy of the respective territorial arenas. In fact, the empirical data shown above make Catalonia the very antithesis of such an understanding. Its strong centrifugal flow of ambitious professional politicians can only be understood in the context of Catalonia’s specific regionalist setting. For many Catalan politicians, Catalonia is the polity that defines their political frame of reference. It is this, basically regionalist disposition that explains their general career orientation and subsequently also the direction many careers have actually taken. However, a comparative look at the Scottish case will show that while regionalism might be the cause for the exceptional frequency of careers following a centrifugal direction, this cause will not produce the same effect in every institutional setting. Scotland

In the present Scottish Parliament there are 9 MSPs with experience in the Westminster Parliament. This corresponds to a centrifugal ratio of 7.8 per cent. While in comparative terms this figure is quite high, in contrast to Catalonia it is almost exclusively the result of the exceptionally high intake of national parliamentarians at the first Scottish election. At the inauguration of the Scottish Parliament in July 1999, 9 former and 15 current Westminster MPs were sworn in as MSPs.62 Hence the first Scottish Parliament contained 24 MSPs with Westminster experience – a share of 18.6 per cent. While the first Scottish Parliament thus had a larger share of regional parliamentarians with experience in the national parliament than the Catalan one in 1980 (12.6 per cent), the share of those leaving a current national mandate for a regional seat was lower than in Catalonia: 15 of the 72 Scottish Westminster MPs left London for Edinburgh in 1999 (20.8 per cent). The corresponding share for Catalan Congress members in 1980 had been 24.6. 62

MPs elected to the Scottish Parliament were allowed to hold a double mandate until the next Westminster election.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 122

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

123

Similar to Catalonia all major parties had former national parliamentarians in their first regional parliamentary group. And again, the highest share is not to be found in the regionalist party. However, viewed from the Westminster Parliament in 1999 it becomes clear that it is for the regionalists that the Scottish Parliament provided the most attractive career option: all of the 6 sitting SNP MPs have moved to the Scottish Parliament, while a much smaller share of Liberal Democrat (20 per cent) and Labour MPs (12.5 per cent) made this move (in 1999 there were no Scottish Conservative MPs). This overrepresentation of regionalists is much stronger than in the Catalan case. With regard to the stature of the politicians moving ‘down’ to Scotland there is also a clear difference between parties. Unsurprisingly, the leadership (including leader and deputy leader Salmond and Swinney) of the only regionalist and the only Scottish party, the SNP, exchanged their rather marginal position at Westminster for a more prominent role in Scotland. The Scottish top politicians within Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party behaved rather less homogeneously. In the Labour Party the most prominent Scottish MPs Gordon Brown and Robin Cook remained at Westminster, or to be more accurate, at Whitehall, as both had become prominent cabinet ministers in 1997. Those who left for Edinburgh were Scottish Office ministers (Donald Dewar, Sam Galbraith, Henry McLeish) and MPs with long time ‘home-rule’ credentials (Home Robertson, McAllion, Chisholm, Canavan). In a way devolution allowed those Labour MPs with a Scottish brief and those fighting for the Scottish cause to follow their vocation in a Scottish institution, while the group of Labour MPs with UK ambitions and interests remained at Westminster. In the other pro-devolution party, the Liberal Democrats, the then Scottish party leader, Jim Wallace, moved to the Scottish parliament, as did the former UK leader of the Liberals, David Steel. But other leading Scottish members of the party remained at Westminster – two of them (Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell) later even became UK Liberal leader. The Conservatives, the only party that opposed the Scottish Parliament, were heavily defeated in the general election of 1997 returning not one single Scottish MP to Westminster. Following their convictions the Scottish leadership of those days (Rifkind, Lang, Forsyth) did not pursue a career in the Scottish Parliament. The two former MPs that did move to the Scottish Parliament clearly were not, or – in the case of the former Scottish Office minister Lord James Douglas Hamilton – were no longer among the leading Scottish Tory politicians. In the first years, the ‘Westminster men’63 played a very prominent role in the new Scottish Parliament. Labour’s Donald Dewar became the first Scottish 63

Despite the high rate of women in the Scottish Parliament there is only one amongst the ex-MPs.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 123

20/8/09 11:51:01

124

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

First Minister, appointing two of his former Scottish Office ministers (Galbraith and McLeish) as well as ex-MP and leader of the Scottish Lib–Dems Jim Wallace to his cabinet (with two more as ex-MPs as junior ministers). Similarly the first two leaders of the opposition (Alex Salmond and John Swinney) and even the first two presiding officers of the parliament (David Steel and George Reid) had been former MPs. Even before its second term though, the Scottish Parliament had its first ‘home-grown’ First Minister (Jack McConnell). While the current government is led by another former Westminster MP (Alex Salmond), his government contains only one of his former colleagues. The remaining seven do not play an important role. All the parliamentary parties except for the SNP are led by Holyrood socialised parliamentarians. As the Catalan example has already shown, exceedingly high intakes of national parliamentarians into the first regional parliament may be followed by much lower numbers at the following regional elections. Although highly significant with regard to the territorial career orientation of regional politicians, these initial flows do not form part of a long-term pattern, as they are the product of quite exceptional circumstances. Firstly, never again will it be as easy to enter these regional parliaments (as there were no incumbents in the first legislature); secondly, never again will there be the same demand from the national parliaments (as the number of national parliamentarians who never had a choice to pursue a career in the regional parliament in the first place will decrease); and, thirdly, never again will the attractiveness of these parliaments be solely derived from expectations (as these institutions develop, their public reputation and the experience of politicians inside will become more important yardsticks). And indeed, in stark contrast to the huge original intake of 1999, the second and third Scottish elections in 2003 and 2007 saw very little movement in the Scottish direction. In 2003 not one single MP (or ex-MP) stood for a Holyrood seat. Another four years on, at the Scottish election of 2007, there were three Scottish parliamentarians (one current and two former MPs) who moved to the Scottish Parliament. This is even more significant, as the 2007 election was the first after the reduction of Scottish seats at Westminster. However, despite an exceptionally high share of involuntary turnover, only two of those MPs who had lost their seat in 2005 stood for the Scottish Parliament. Taken together, three MPs moving to Scotland in two elections hardly constitutes a recurrent pattern.64 By comparison, in Catalonia 64

One of them, of course, was again Alex Salmond. As the leader of his party, Salmond had been one of those SNP MPs who went into the Scottish Parliament in 1999. However, in 2000 he surprisingly resigned his party leadership, followed by a resignation from his Scottish mandate in favour of his Westminster seat (at the 2001 general election dual-mandate parliamentarians had to choose). Just three years later, though, in 2004 he regained the party leadership initiating a second

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 124

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

125

the second Catalan election (1984) brought another six, the third election another eight, so these two together had thus brought another 14 Congress members to Barcelona. Thus, while in Catalonia centrifugal flows have been continuing after the first election (though on a lower magnitude), in Scotland this movement has almost completely stopped. At first sight this might be surprising. After all, for many commentators it was only a matter of time until the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’ (as described in chapter 2), Scots MPs lack of constituency work and their lack of concern for English matters would also affect their status, their voting right or their pay. However, so far Scottish MPs had not to endure any detrimental consequences at Westminster. As shown, Scots still occupy prominent and powerful positions in parliament and the UK government. The UK House of Commons thus still remains an attractive place for all those Scottish MPs with a genuine interest in UK high politics (i.e. foreign affairs, taxation and economics), with an ambition for UK ministerial office or those who have found their own policy niche.65 As those with the strongest Scottish career orientation have already left Westminster in 1999 most of the remaining, and indeed the new MPs, would fit one of these criteria. At the same time the experience of former Westminster MPs in the Scottish Parliament hardly provides any positive role model for those inclined to move to Scotland. Furthermore, since the inauguration of the Scottish Parliament, relations between MPs and MSPs have clearly deteriorated, especially in the largest parliamentary group, the Labour Party (see chapter 4), making cross-overs even less likely. While UK MPs would hardly switch to the Scottish Parliament for a mere back-bench role, new arrivals from Westminster overtaking senior MSPs on the career trail would not go down well at Holyrood.66

65

66

move to the Scottish Parliament. Thus his 2007 move can be seen as the final turn in a highly unorthodox case of level-hopping that only he could get away with. One of the most Scottish-oriented Labour MPs in Westminster is certainly Mark Lazarowicz (a former chair of the Scottish Labour Party, leader of Edinburgh City council and well-known home-rule activist). However, as he was not approved as a candidate for the Scottish Parliament by the party’s vetting commission, he stood for Westminster. Since entering the UK Parliament he has made his mark as the most ecological of all Westminster MPs (at least in his own perception) and seems to be quite content with his new role. During the first years of the Scottish Parliament informal debates about a possible successor for the Scottish First Minister Donald Dewar had even ruled out Robin Cook (Scottish MP, at that time still UK foreign secretary and a long-time devolution supporter) because (among other reasons) MSPs would not accept an ‘import’ from Westminster. Anecdotes like this clearly show the difficulties any MPs would have to overcome, should he or she move to the Scottish Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 125

20/8/09 11:51:01

126

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Yet even those MPs who would prefer a Scottish over a UK mandate would stand little chance of realising their ambition in the foreseeable future. As stated above, the Scottish Parliament has a very low turnover. The widespread ambition among sitting MSPs to continue their careers in the Scottish Parliament and their very high career security (see above) leaves little room for challengers from outside, even if they come from the Westminster Parliament. In contrast to Catalonia, the second and third elections to the Scottish Parliament have shown that regionalism does not necessarily produce frequent and constant centrifugal movements. However, this does not render the strong initial flow of parliamentarians from Westminster to the first Scottish Parliament meaningless. The sheer quantity of centrifugal movements and the high calibre of many of those who moved in that direction constitutes additional empirical proof of a strong prevalence of a regional career orientation among Scottish politicians detected in my survey. The magnitude of this orientation is quite similar to that detected in Catalonia, though it should be noted that in Scotland this orientation is more strongly conditioned by partisanship and individual considerations. Unlike the Catalan case, this regional career orientation of Scottish politicians is expressed in their low disposition to move up to Westminster rather than in frequent flows down to the Scottish Parliament. Patterns of movements

In the following, career movements from the regional to the national level and those in the opposite direction will be examined together and in relation to each other. What kind of hierarchy of positions do they reflect, what kind of overall pattern do they form, and how do hierarchy and patterns differ between Catalonia and Scotland? Catalonia

In order to identify a long-term pattern, any results of exceptional events (where elements of the regular opportunity structure are suspended) should be discounted. A balance of movements between Spanish Congress and Catalan Parliament would thus include the elections since 1982, yet not the first election to the Catalan Parliament in 1980. Re-examining centripetal and centrifugal career flows (see table 3.17), the most obvious observation is the high frequency of movements in both directions. In 26 years 60 parliamentarians conducted 70 career movements between the regional and the national parliament. On average at every election

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 126

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

127

Table 3.17 Career movements of Catalan parliamentarians between regional and national parliament (1982–2008) 82 84 86 88 89 92 93 95 96 99 00 03 04 06 08 82–08 CAT ‡ ES direct ES ‡ CAT Direct

3 3

2 1 6 2

4 4 8 2

5 4 2 1

5 2 6 5

4 1 10 3

3 3 6 3

3 1 3 2

29 19 41 18

5 parliamentarians were elected that had been members of the other parliament. In more than half of these cases sitting parliamentarians gave up their current mandate in order to move on to the other. The most surprising result of this analysis, however, lies in the balance of movements. In contrast to traditional career patterns in many federal countries, it is the path from the national parliament ‘down’ to the regional one and not the one ‘up’ to the national parliament that has been most frequently pursued. With 41 against 29 movements, or 5.9 against 3.6 movements per election, the prevalence of regionally directed careers is fairly considerable. While this result has to be slightly qualified by a look at the almost equal number of direct movements from current mandates, the last section has also shown that indirect movements might also constitute voluntary career decisions. This surprising centrifugal balance is clearly shown in the career movements of parliamentarians from both major parties (see table 3.18): in the socialist PSC centrifugal movements are more than twice as common as centripetal ones. The balance among CiU parliamentarians is also overwhelmingly tipped towards the Catalan Parliament. Only the smaller parties with their lower overall numbers of movement do not comply with this pattern. Here, conservatives and centrists (and thus the most centralised parties) but also ERC display a centripetal balance. Viewed from a career (or export) perspective, this discrepancy becomes even more pronounced. While roughly one in three Congress members (31.2 per cent) has eventually moved on to the Catalan Parliament, only about every seventeenth MCP (6 per cent) ever reached the Spanish Congress. Thus, a move to the Catalan Parliament is a fairly likely continuation of a Catalan Congress career, while career paths of MCPs only rarely lead towards Congress. While career movements between Catalan Parliament and Congress can be seen as the best proxy for movements between the Catalan and the Spanish arena in general (see above), they do not cover all movements between the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 127

20/8/09 11:51:01

128

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Table 3.18 Career movements of Catalan parliamentarians, by parties (1982–2008)

CiU ERC PSC PSUC/ICV PP UCD–CC, CDS Changed parties Total

Catalan Parl. ⇒ Congress

Congress ⇒ Catalan Parl.

13 3 4 3 4 2 0 29

20 1 9 4 3 1 3 41

two arenas. However, exchange patterns between other institutions basically support the general thrust of the analysis. A high overall frequency of movements and a surprisingly high level of centrifugal movements is also to be found in the career flows between the Catalan Parliament and the directly elected Senate members from Catalonia (Stolz 2006: 164).67 A similar permeability of the two arenas and a similarly high regional career orientation of Catalan politicians is shown in the recruitment patterns to the Catalan government. Twenty-one of the 93 Generalitat ministers between 1980 and 2008 (22.6 per cent) either held a mandate in the Spanish Cortes at the time of their first appointment or had held one before. This is a remarkably high figure of national recruits for a regional government. Movement in the centripetal direction is again less frequent: of the 13 Catalan ministers in the Spanish government only 2 (15.4 per cent) had held a mandate in the Catalan Parliament before. If we compare the 21 former Catalan Congress members in the Catalan government to the 5 former Catalan Congress members in the Spanish government it becomes apparent that Catalan Congress members are four times more likely to end up in the regional than in the national government. In his time as president of the Generalitat, Jordi Pujol had even recruited more government ministers directly from a Congress mandate than from an up and running parliamentary career in the Catalan Parliament (9 against 8).68 Given the much lower number of Catalan members in Congress, a Spanish mandate had thus been a much better springboard to Catalan government than a 67

68

As the senators designated by the Catalan Parliament serve in both institutions simultaneously, they cannot be seen to ‘move’ between institutions or territorial arenas. This figure is discounting those MCPs who were appointed to the Generalitat immediately after their election to the Catalan Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 128

20/8/09 11:51:01

POLITICAL CAREERS

129

mandate in the Catalan Parliament. This pattern, however, is about to change. In the five years since a PSC politician took over the Catalan presidency (in 2003), Maragall and Montilla have already appointed more ministers with experience in the Catalan Parliament than Pujol in his 23 years as president (23 v. 19, 19 v. 8 from an up and running mandate). The Catalan Parliament rather than Congress seems to have become the main recruiting pool for Catalan government ministers. Taken together, this evidence does not demonstrate a straightforward, unequivocal correspondence of the Catalan case with one of the four ideal-type career patterns mapped out at the beginning of this chapter (see figure 3.1). Nevertheless, there is strong argument that it comes closest to the pattern of integrated careers. Frequent career movements between the Catalan and the Spanish level of government mark these two career arenas as highly integrated. Indeed, a closer look reveals that they are in fact one arena. There are numerous politicians moving from a public office in Catalonia to one on the Spanish level, and even more who move in the opposite direction. Furthermore, these are not two distinct groups of politicians in pursuit of two opposed career ambitions. Those who move from Catalonia to the Spanish centre hardly differ in terms of party affiliation, political status, age, gender or any other criterion from those who move into the opposite direction. Furthermore, these results from the aggregate level are also reflected at the individual level. The career pathways of successful Catalan politicians often show them see-sawing to and from the Catalan and the Spanish level (e.g. Alavedra and Fernández Teixedo serving twice in Congress and in the Catalan Parliament). Clearly, the Catalan case does not exhibit two opposed career patterns (a centripetal and a centrifugal one) but one pattern whose central characteristic is its multi-directionality. With regard to the hierarchy of positions at the two levels, there is evidence that points to a reversal of a traditional conception of the career ladder. There is hardly any doubt that the ultimate aim of a Catalan political career is generally not the national but the regional government (e.g. Montilla).69 Together with the regionally weighted balance of career movements between Congress and the Catalan Parliament, this may even point to the inverse springboard pattern. And indeed, in individual careers the national parliament has functioned as a springboard to regional government. However, these 69

As one journalist aptly pointed out: ‘De ahí una ley que no parece llevar muchas trazas de fallar: el catalán que pretenda llevar una carrera política ambiciosa, debe orientarla hacia el único objetivo codiciado, o sea, la presidencia de la Generalitat’ (‘A law that so far seems not to show many exceptions: the ambitious Catalan who wants to pursue a political career should orient it towards the only object of desire, i.e. the presidency of the Generalitat’) (Xavier Bru de Sala 2006).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 129

20/8/09 11:51:02

130

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

features hardly represent a complete reversal of the traditional springboard pattern. In Catalonia, the movement from the regional to the national level is also a highly frequented career path. Movement between the two parliaments does not in itself constitute a move up or down the career ladder and it would certainly be misleading to see a Congress mandate as inferior to a mandate in the Catalan Parliament. What we have instead is a highly integrated multi-level career arena (also including the local and the European level) with no pre-determined career ladder and no clear-cut hierarchy between the territorial levels but a wide variety of progressive career paths that may integrate positions at all territorial levels in different sequences. Despite the reversal of the traditional hierarchy with regard to the ultimate apex of careers, this pattern may thus be located close to the ideal-type of integrated careers. Scotland

Despite the quite recent establishment of regional institutions, the empirical evidence from Scotland already shows some clear indication as to which career pattern might finally emerge. The analysis of centripetal parliamentary movements has shown that in two UK general elections only two MSPs (both from the Conservatives) have used the Scottish Parliament as a springboard to Westminster.70 Furthermore, not one of the MSPs who lost their Holyrood mandate at the second Scottish election of 2003 attempted to re-enter parliamentary politics at the UK level at the following general election of 2005 (instead they waited for the regional election in 2007). These figures clearly support the findings of my survey, where MSPs almost unanimously declared a Scottish rather than a UK career ambition. Yet neither is Westminster developing into an important recruitment pool for the Scottish Parliament. Apart from those originally moving into the newly established Scottish Parliament, only two other former Westminster MPs have since accomplished such a step.71 The combination of high incumbent career security (both at Westminster and Holyrood) – resulting in low supply for potential cross-over careers as well as in low levels of accessibility in the potential import institution (again Westminster and Holyrood) – together with high transaction costs (for details of this argument see below) make the assumption highly plausible that the very high initial movement to the 70

71

As stated above, the third who has won a Westminster mandate as a sitting MSP, Alex Salmond, had actually never left Westminster and can hardly be said to have used the Scottish Parliament as a springboard. Again, Alex Salmond is discounted here, as he actually was one of the original intake.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 130

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

131

Table 3.19 Career movements of Catalan (1980–88) and Scottish (1999–2007) parliamentarians ES Regional election 1980/1999 National election 1982/2001 Regional election 1984/2003 National election 1986/2005 Regional election 1988/2007 1982–88/2001–7

3 2 5

CAT ⇒ ⇐ ⇒ ⇐ ⇒

UK

17 1 6 2 8 14

3

SCOT ⇒ ⇐ ⇒ ⇐ ⇒

24 0 3 3

Scottish Parliament was indeed a one-off. There won’t be many Westminster MPs following such an inverse springboard career. Thus, Scotland resembles neither the springboard, nor the inverse springboard pattern. Career movements are evenly balanced yet do not reach the same frequency as to be found in Catalonia (see table 3.19). In fact, the Scottish case seems to be conspicuous for the very lack of movement. What seems to be emerging in Scotland is a pattern of alternative careers, where members of the two parliaments pursue their careers predominantly within their own institution resulting in only little movement between them. Comparison and explanations

With regard to the movement between regional and national positions, political career patterns in Catalonia and Scotland do not look very similar: the Catalan case is close to the integrated careers pattern, while the Scottish case closely resembles the alternative careers type. At first sight, this empirical result might be seen to contradict one of my theoretical starting points, namely that regionalism matters for political careers. After all, two very strong and very similar cases of regionalism have produced very different, if not totally oppositional, career patterns. However, regionalism is no isolated variable that affects political careers (and indeed other social and political phenomena) independent of other factors. Instead it has been argued that regionalism affects careers mainly by producing attractive professionalised political positions on the regional level and by enhancing the general evaluation of these positions and their attractiveness to professional politicians. This revaluation of political offices may even lead to a prevailing regional career-orientation among professional politicians. However, these rather general career-orientations are shaped into concrete political careers by the opportunities provided by the institutional structure on all territorial levels of the political system.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 131

20/8/09 11:51:02

132

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

As the survey results of this chapter show, Catalonia as well as Scotland exhibit a widespread regional career orientation. The combined effect of attractive regional institutions and a regional career orientation has been demonstrated by the exceptionally strong centrifugal movement into the newly established Catalan and Scottish Parliaments. Unlike in Italy, France and indeed in many of the other regions of Spain these regional parliaments offer the chance for an alternative parliamentary career that allow national parliamentarians from Scotland and Catalonia for the first time to bring their interest in living off politics in tune with their basic motivation and the territorial focus of their living for politics. Both regional parliaments provide them with a level of professionalisation similar to that in the national parliament and with a more limited, yet still very considerable level of policy competencies directed at the polity they always wanted to influence. Thus, while they stand to lose little on these two dimensions, some of them are attracted by the ‘gains’ that could be made in another respect. As symbols of regional identity and democracy both parliaments carried a high status with the general public and the media in their respective regions. Furthermore, in these smaller parliaments with a different party composition most of these parliamentarians stand a much better chance of career advancement to government level. And last but not least, all these opportunities could be taken at a considerably ‘lower price’ than the national mandate, as Barcelona and Edinburgh are much closer to home and family and are generally seen as more attractive to live in for Scots and Catalans than the respective national capitals. However, in this period of foundation, regional parliamentary mandates were not only available and attractive, they were also highly accessible – especially for national MPs. With no incumbents to beat, sitting national parliamentarians were clear favourites to win party nominations72 and may even have carried an advantage with electors. Thus, at the initial elections to the newly established regional parliaments, the common regionalist setting indeed produced the same effect on Catalan and Scottish political careers, namely the movement of numerous national MPs into the regional parliament. However, with the system up and running career patterns have diverged dramatically. While the highly permeable Catalan and Spanish arenas have produced political careers that integrate positions on both levels, the Scottish and the UK arena have developed into strongly bounded arenas allowing mainly for alternative careers. This divergence does not express a decreasing significance of the regional orientation as an explanatory factor for political careers, but, rather, highlights the importance of political institutions as opportunity structures 72

Although some were deliberately kept out (see earlier in this chapter).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 132

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

133

in transforming these orientations into concrete career paths and collective career patterns. In order to explain the diverging patterns we should thus revisit the theoretical discussion on the potential effects of the opportunity structure in Catalonia and Scotland. In both cases regionalisation has provided regional politicians with the opportunity to pursue a professional political career on the regional level. In both countries regional political power is installed by way of high levels of regional autonomy rather than by way of regional participation in structures of joint decision-making at the central state level (as to be found for example in Germany).73 In both regions, regionalisation produced a similar number of elected public positions available for professional politicians. In both regions, salaries, staff support and infrastructure in the regional parliaments were set at levels only slightly below these in the respective national parliament. These high levels of political resources and legal competencies granted to Catalonia and Scotland make for a high attractiveness of the regional vis-à-vis the national arena in both cases. It is thus not the basic state structure and the respective position of Catalonia and Scotland in these newly regionalised states that made the difference. Instead, diverging career patterns are caused by those features of the opportunity structure that influence the recruitment and retention of regional politicians, and their incentives and restrictions to move between territorial levels. More specifically, they can be mainly attributed to three factors: the electoral system, the intra-party process of candidate nomination and the respective model of parliamentary government. While, taken separately, the particular form of each of these factors may not necessarily point to one particular career pattern, it is their specific configuration and the mechanics of their interplay in each case that is largely responsible for the divergence between the two cases. The significance of the electoral system and the system of candidate nomination for political careers is quite obvious. Earlier in this chapter I pointed out the role the party list system and the centralised nomination process play for the rather discontinuous Catalan political careers. Stripped of any direct relationship with the electorate or any other personal resources in the battle for re-nomination and re-election Catalan parliamentarians are completely dependent on their party leadership. As a result the average tenure in the Catalan Parliament and in Congress is rather low. In contrast, the plurality electoral system in single-member constituencies fosters the 73

While the UK state does not feature any central-state institution based on representation from its four components (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), the Spanish Senate represents a hybrid of provincial and regional representation and is only a very weak actor in the central state decision-making process.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 133

20/8/09 11:51:02

134

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

emergence of a strong and direct representational relationship between parliamentarian and electorate and a strong position of this parliamentarian within the close-knit network of the local party selectorate. It has thus produced exceptionally long careers in the Westminster Parliament and a low turnover in the Scottish Parliament, where a majority of MSPs are elected by this system. Anything that affects career length in a particular institution is of course also a main factor with regard to access to this body. Hence, the high number of regional parliamentarians who have been deselected or ranked down increase the general accessibility of the Catalan Parliament for outsiders, and thus facilitate movements from Congress. Similarly, Congress members who are refused re-nomination unwillingly open up space for members from the Catalan Parliament. High turnover in both parliaments provides for a high permeability of the institutional boundaries and thus also a high permeability between the two territorial arenas. By contrast, the very long tenure of Westminster MPs and prospectively also of Scottish MSPs seriously limits access to both parliaments and erects solid institutional boundaries. In fact, the lack of access, can perhaps be seen as the most important factor in the separation of the Scottish and the UK career arenas. This effect of turnover and tenure length actually has a demand- as well as a supply side dimension. The shorter parliamentary tenure of Catalan members in the Spanish Congress and the Catalan Parliament compared to Scottish Westminster MPs and MSPs not only increases the demand for new recruits (and thus opportunities for parliamentarians from the respective other parliament), it also provides a large supply of experienced parliamentarians ready to take such an opportunity in order to continue their professional political careers. The opportunity for sitting parliamentarians to directly exchange one mandate for another, or for a party to replace a certain number of their parliamentary group with parliamentarians from another parliament is also strongly conditioned by other aspects of the nomination process and the electoral system not directly related to different levels of overall turnover. The fact that in Catalan parties it is largely the same, very small group of people who compile the lists for the regional as well as the national election allows Catalan party leaders to move individual parliamentarians directly from one institution to the other. Such a transfer is often the result of strategic deliberations within the party leadership (and takes place with the consent, yet not necessarily to the delight of the transferred parliamentarians), yet it does provides a channel for those actively seeking such a career move. Due to the de-personalised, strongly party-mediated relationship between parliamentarian and the electorate in Catalonia, such a transition does not thwart any basic

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 134

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

135

representational principle, even if it takes place only a very short time after the original mandate. In Scotland, even the congruence of Scottish and UK constituencies that existed between 1999 and 2005 did not facilitate the transition between the two parliaments at the elections of 2001 and 2003. Several factors militated against such a transfer. The first one is related to the inner-party nomination process. While it had indeed been the same selectorate that chose the Scottish and Westminster candidate in each constituency, such a nomination is not the strategic choice of a small group of individuals, but the result of a rather less plan-able and less foreseeable process involving the local party membership in each constituency. Such a process offers only a small chance for an individual challenger to replace any particular incumbent in his or her constituencies (as long as they are not voluntarily standing down) and an even smaller chance of a concerted action that would replace a considerable share of incumbents with members from other parliaments (as conducted by Catalan party leaders). With the end of congruent constituencies such a concerted action becomes even less feasible. An even stronger deterrent to a voluntary and direct transition between the two parliaments lies in the subsequent by-election that in the UK electoral system inevitably follows any vacation of a seat in between general elections.74 Understandably incumbent parties hope to avoid these in-term elections as they entail the possibility of losing the seat to a rival party. No doubt, if vacated seats in the Catalan Parliament or the Congress were filled in an open contest rather than through a substitute from the party list, Catalan parties would also think twice before they allowed parliamentarians to move between mandates or even actively transfer members between parliaments. This formal aspect of the electoral system gains an additional importance in connection with the wider understanding of representation in the UK parliamentary tradition. In contrast to Catalonia, to abandon a current UK or Scottish constituency mandate in pursuit of another political position (or even worse, due to party strategic deliberations) contains an element of disloyalty to the constituents, and is thus not done lightly. Given the different electoral cycles, any attempt to enter the Westminster Parliament as sitting constituency representative in the Scottish Parliament or vice versa might therefore entail serious repercussions that may either harm the electoral ambitions of the prospective parliament-hopper or the chances of their party at the subsequent 74

Alex Salmond dodged this principle by keeping on his Westminster mandate after winning a seat at Holyrood in 2007, openly violating an all-party agreement against dual mandates. He was strongly criticised, yet it remains to be seen whether this behaviour creates a new convention.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 135

20/8/09 11:51:02

136

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

by-election for the seat vacated. It is no coincidence that it is list MSPs rather than constituency members who have been standing for Westminster so far. Yet even this second element of the Scottish electoral system, the closed regional lists – and thus the very feature held responsible for frequent levelhopping in Spain – clearly restricts movements between the arenas in the UK context. This is, of course, due to the fact that in Scotland, unlike Catalonia, the electoral system for the regional parliament differs from that for the national parliament. The list element in the Scottish electoral system has been installed as a top-up mechanism for all those parties who do not gain (many) seats (such as the Greens, the SSP and even the SNP and the Tories) under the first-past-the-post system used for the election of constituency MSPs. However, this is the very system used for Westminster. As a result, these top-up seats generally go to parties that don’t do very well under the Westminster system. This mismatch of opportunities seriously hampers movement between the two parliaments, as MSPs from these parties do not stand much chance of winning many Westminster seats, while the low number of MPs from these parties (the Greens and the SSP do not hold any) impinges on any significant movement in the opposite direction. While the electoral system in combination with the system of candidate nomination is largely responsible for different degrees of accessibility, the different attractiveness of careers crossing over institutional boundaries, is largely due to different degrees of transaction costs, conditioned by the respective tradition and form of parliamentary government. The British parliamentary system in operation in the Westminster Parliament yet also in Scotland provides strong incentives for individual members to follow the parliamentary career path once adopted and discourages movements between parliaments. The most important factor in this respect is the fact that government members are exclusively recruited from parliament (Westminster and the House of Lords). Furthermore, contrary to Spanish (and for that matter Catalan) parliamentarianism, the pursuit of legislative and executive offices follows a well-structured inner-parliamentary career path (for Westminster see Riddell 1993: 9), where in-house seniority and in-house performance are much more important resources for career advancement than any other form of political experience or position. Thus, promotion chances improve for those who stay in long enough, while any parliamentarian crossing over to another institution would lose at least some of their accumulated political capital. Government appointments from outside the respective parliament are even prohibited by Westminster (and Holyrood) rules. In Catalonia and Spain by contrast, the lack of seniority and parliamentary experience do not hamper the chances of career advancement into senior parliamentary positions and even government office. This is most obvious in

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 136

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

137

the socialists’ recurrent direct appointment of Catalan local and party politicians with no prior parliamentary experience at all into the Spanish government (e.g. Serra, Montilla, Clos, Corbacho). An even more frequent feature has been the direct appointment of CiU Congress members into the Catalan government. Thus, a Catalan politician with a regional career orientation does not stand to lose anything in entering the Spanish Congress.75 On the contrary it might provide him or her with the necessary resources to move on to the higher ranks of Catalan politics. Scottish politicians with a clearcut regional or national career orientation, however, would be ill-advised to enter the ‘wrong’ parliament: the possibility of crossing over to their first choice parliament is highly limited, fast-track parliamentary careers are hardly conceivable, and a direct cross-over appointment to the government is even formally precluded. As a consequence of the inter-related institutional mechanisms described above, the widespread regional career orientation to be found among Catalan as well as Scottish regional parliamentarians have been transformed into completely different career patterns. In Catalonia this orientation is most notably expressed in the high frequency of career movements from the Spanish to the Catalan level. The many career movements from the Catalan to the Spanish level do not contradict the existence of a regional career orientation, as the strong integration of the two arenas and the ease with which Congress members may move back to the Catalan level marks centripetal movements as not generally being movements away from a regional career. In Scotland, on the other hand, regional career orientation can find its expression only in long careers inside the Scottish Parliament and a low level of movements to the Westminster Parliament. In the UK context, the lack of centrifugal movement into the Scottish Parliament does not contradict the existence of such a regional career orientation, as it can be explained as a function of institutional barriers separating the two career arenas.

Political careers and regional political class in Catalonia and Scotland

The comparative analysis of various aspects of Catalan and Scottish political careers has revealed rather different patterns with regard to their professionalism and territorial direction. Bringing together these analytically 75

Whether this will change under a socialist Catalan government remains to be seen. So far a socialist president has not appointed a minister directly from Congress to the Generalitat. However, five of the 34 ministers in a socialist-led government (plus one of two presidents) had at least experience in the Congress.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 137

20/8/09 11:51:02

138

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

separated results, the following section will provide a more generic (yet also a more simplified) view of political careers in each case highlighting the major differences between them. In the final parts of this section, the career perspective will then be developed into a political class perspective. What do political careers in Catalonia and Scotland tell us about the social and territorial distinction of regional politicians vis-à-vis regional citizens and national politicians? How distinctive and how homogeneous are they as a class in itself? What is their territorial and institutional base and what is the focus of their collective interest? Are there extensions to this base and differentiations of the collective interest? For reasons of presentation I will start with the Scottish case. Political careers Scotland

Scottish political careers follow a fairly clear-cut, easily depicted pattern. While once Scottish professional politicians followed the traditional British career pattern neatly revealed in Michael Rush’s seminal article (1994), devolution has fundamentally altered the opportunity structure for them. With regard to the initial choice of party, the Scottish arena provides politicians from four, five or even six different parties (instead of the British two) with a reasonable chance of eventually gaining not only parliamentary mandates but also government office. Affiliation to a political party is thus still a major precondition to any political career,76 yet the choice of party does not determine career chances in the same restrictive way as in pre-devolution Britain. The first step on the political career ladder is generally either a local party office or a mandate as a local councillor – in many cases even both. Most political careers also end at the local level. However, even at the level of local government there exists a career path to be followed, leading from ordinary ward members to committee convenors, to councillors with specific tasks, to the council leader. The latter of these positions frequently allow their holders to live off their local mandate, turning some of them effectively into professional politicians. In addition to the traditional and most common route via elected party and local government office there are a variety of other political positions functioning as stepping stones into a professional political career, many of them already professionalised or at least on a semi-professional status. The 76

As shown above, the election of three non-affiliated MSPs in 2003 does not contradict this statement. After all, two of them had been senior party politicians not long before their election.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 138

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

139

most important of these are parliamentary staff positions, party staff positions, and, for Labour Party politicians, posts as trade union officials. In general, however, professional political careers in Scotland are parliamentary careers. These careers are rather long and demand the full-time commitment of parliamentarians. Thus, other public offices, such as positions in local councils but also many party or interest group positions are given up in order to concentrate on the parliamentary mandate. Only some elected party offices, mainly in the leadership of the party, are held simultaneously. Apart from the small number of Scottish Euro MPs (MEPs), until recently such a professional parliamentary career had been by definition a career as a Westminster MP. Since devolution however, political hopefuls face a new choice. Today they not only have to choose which party to join but also which parliament to enter. In the first election to the Scottish Parliament Westminster MPs who never had this choice in the first place got the chance to redress this situation. A fifth of them changed track. Since then, the career paths in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament have remained almost completely separated. As pointed out in the last section, this is not necessarily a function of completely diverging career ambitions. Apart from those who clearly prefer the one over the other and consequently will only run for one of them, there are still candidates standing for both, Westminster and the Scottish Parliament. However, once elected to one of the two parliaments, strong institutional boundaries and an incentive structure that rewards institutional loyalty rather than change makes for two fairly rigid and distinct career paths. Yet a career in the newly established Scottish Parliament is not just another alternative career path. In fact, the high number of seats available to Scottish parliamentarians is now making a career in the Scottish Parliament by far the most common professional political career for Scottish politicians. With its 129 seats the Scottish Parliament is offering twice as many professionalised mandates for Scottish politicians than the Westminster Parliament with its reduced contingent of 59 Scottish MPs. Compared to the parliamentary careers in both these institutions, the seven Scottish seats in the European Parliament make a European career a rather negligible option.77 The internal career ladder in both the Westminster and the Scottish Parliament is highly differentiated. Back-benchers may strive to rise up to 77

Since the introduction of direct elections in 1979 there have been just 22 Scottish Euro MPs. Similarly to careers at Westminster or Holyrood, Euro-career paths are clearly separated from the other two parliaments. In fact there is only one Scottish MEP whose career links any of the two with the European Parliament: Winnie Ewing (SNP) had moved into the EP from Westminster, and later moved directly from her European mandate into the newly established Scottish Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 139

20/8/09 11:51:02

140

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

committee convenorship, into leading positions in their respective parliamentary groups, or to become a member of the body that is running the business of the chamber (the House of Commons Commission in Westminster and the Parliamentary Bureau in Scotland). Furthermore, corresponding to the ‘efficient secret’ of the Westminster model of parliamentary government – described by Bagehot (1963: 65) as ‘the nearly complete fusion, of legislative and executive powers’ – parliamentary careers are ultimately focused towards government office. The vast number of hierarchically ordered executive positions that are open to active MPs – and, on slightly lower scale, to MSPs – and to them only, represents indeed the second part of the parliamentary career ladder in Westminster and at Holyrood. In both systems the loss of the parliamentary seat is not necessarily the end of the career as professional politician yet it constitutes a serious problem and a highly unwelcome set-back. As there are no alternative professionalised political career paths and only very few fall-back positions in professional politics,78 electoral defeat usually entails a career break and at least a temporary transfer to a non-political occupation. This occupation is generally either the one held before the parliamentary mandate or one in a professional field close to politics (in some cases this is actually the same). Traditionally these have been positions within the law (and to a certain extent they still are). Today the media and all forms of consultancy firms are very popular in this respect. Many of the electoral casualties stand again at subsequent elections. Once re-elected they are back on track with their political career. In the Westminster system long-serving and loyal MPs may also be ‘elevated’ into the House of Lords (HL) – either directly as a prize for vacating their seat, or as a consolation after electoral defeat. Theoretically this transfer also reopens opportunities for career advancement, including the appointment to the UK government. However, in reality in all but a few cases it leads to political retirement. Whether the HL will also function as a political graveyard for MSPs and Scottish Executive ministers remains to be seen – especially with reforms impending. Taken together (see figure 3.2), this brief summary shows Scottish political careers following two alternative and largely separate pathways that are nevertheless featuring very similar characteristics. On their way up the political ladder politicians may pass through three different career arenas – the local, the regional (Scottish) and the national (UK) – structured by their distinct 78

The unsympathetic public reaction to the appointment of former MSP and Scottish Executive minister Iain Gray as special adviser to Alistair Darling at the Scotland Office shows just how unusual such a transfer of former parliamentarians into an unelected yet publicly paid political office still is. In Catalonia such a move would hardly be talked about at all.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 140

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

141

Figure 3.2 The Scottish career pattern Scottish arena

UK arena

Scottish executive

UK executive

Scottish parliament

UK parliament

Local arena

Local government

yet fairly similar systems of government, built around a central parliamentary institution. Entry to careers in all three arenas is governed by a localised regime of party selection and public elections in rather small constituencies (the exception being the regional list MSPs in the Scottish Parliament). All three arenas have a fairly rigid and clear-cut internal hierarchy of positions to be held successively rather than cumulatively. Career advancement within these arenas is mainly governed by your own party’s electoral support and the leadership of your parliamentary group (with seniority and in-house performance being important assets). Careers within each arena – i.e. within its central institution – are often very long. There is little or no accumulation of public offices across its boundaries. Even party offices that are held simultaneously tend to correspond to the territorial arena of the public office. The local arena is hierarchically subordinated to the Scottish and the UK arena. Its boundaries are highly perforated, allowing ambitious local politicians to move up to the Scottish or the UK arena – thus functioning as a springboard for both major professional career paths. Movement in the reverse direction is very rare and constitutes by definition a career descent. The other two arenas are located parallel to each other, with their strong boundaries sealing them off against each other. Career movements are thus largely restricted to the respective parliamentary system, with the UK and the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 141

20/8/09 11:51:02

142

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Scottish Executive as the uncontested apex in their career arena. Thus, there are two alternative career paths, both uni-directionally structured, proceeding from local politics either into a Scottish or a UK parliamentary career. In his seminal article, Rush strongly emphasised the role of political parties. And indeed, in both these career paths, parties are crucial ‘not only as gatekeeper to political careers but as a major factor in the continuation and success of those who secure election to the House of Commons’ (Rush 1994: 569) or, indeed, to the Scottish Parliament. As the great majority of Scottish MPs and MSPs are coming from UK-wide parties (currently 90 per cent of MPs and more than 60 per cent of MSPs) and Scottish parties are also operating across the English border, parties appear to be the only political organisations that bridge the gap between the Scottish and UK arena, providing a permanent link between each of the two distinct parliamentary career paths and a common extra-parliamentary institution. However, a closer look at party careers and the role the various party units play for the pursuit of careers in public office clearly shows this assumption to be seriously flawed. Firstly, while national executives play their part in the political recruitment process – via the compilation of lists of approved candidates, a possible veto over constituency nominations, and the rare case of imposing by-election candidates on local parties – the gate-keeping role of political parties remains largely localised. Nomination of candidates is dispersed to a large number of constituency parties (and, in the case of Scottish list members, some regional associations) and cannot be seen as a unified function of ‘the party’ across the UK. Recruitment and candidate selection do not tie Scottish politicians with separate career paths (i.e. MPs and MSPs) to the same organisational base.79 In contrast, the party’s role in career advancement is clearly much less dispersed. However, again, it is not the respective national executive or any other inner party board that is most instrumental in promoting and demoting politicians up and down the career ladder. This is largely done by the Prime Minister or the First Minister, the respective parliamentary group leaders and the whips: in short, by the parliamentary parties. Thus, MPs’ career prospects depend on their Westminster group leadership, while MSPs are dependent on their respective Holyrood group. Again, what we find is not a unified party organisation integrating institutionally and territorially distinct career arenas. In fact, with respect to the party’s role in the career advancement of public office-holders, the inner party division of labour reflects exactly the separation of the two territorial arenas. 79

Since the decoupling of Westminster and Holyrood boundaries no MP/MSP is accountable to exactly the same selectorate.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 142

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

143

Finally, inner-party careers can also hardly be seen as a major integrating force. Apart from the position of party leader (which is also parliamentary leader) elected party offices are actually of very little importance for the political careers of its holders. Many of the most powerful and ambitious politicians within a party don’t hold an office in the party executive at all (e.g. as Chancellor, and Labour Party leader in waiting, Gordon Brown had no such office). Thus, membership of the ruling party bodies is neither a good measurement of the standing of individual politicians within their party, nor does it reflect their future ambition. Thus, even though there exist a few ex-officio positions for Scottish politicians in UK party executives and vice versa, national and regional party executives of UK parties hardly constitute important (integrated) career arenas on their own. Catalonia

Catalan political careers are founded on the same institutional pillars as Scottish careers: political parties and local politics. In fact, early entry and lifelong party militancy are among the very few common features of the widely varying career paths to be found in Catalonia. Elected positions in local party organisations or in one of the sectoral party units (especially youth organisations) often represent the first steps into politics. The other major starting point is provided by the vast number of local councils in Catalonia. Very few Catalan politicians have not started their career either as a councillor or as a small town mayor. Quite often local party and local council office are held together. This phenomenon is also to be found in Scotland, yet it is even more common in Catalonia. In contrast to Scotland, these offices do not function merely as springboards into higher office: instead they are commonly held as ‘base office’ (Schlesinger 1966) throughout the political career. Professional political careers in Catalonia can start from several points of entry and can take different directions, creating a great variety of possible pathways. The first professionalised political positions to be taken up are quite similar to those in the Scottish case. These are either a local government office, a party staff or trade union position, or a parliamentary mandate.80 In addition to these conventional options, the heavily politicised administration of the Generalitat constitutes another route into professional politics, as it provides active party politicians with a living in a semi-political job, and a good starting point from which they can pursue more explicitly political offices – within and 80

Parliamentary staff positions, though, are less common and less political than in the Scottish case, and are thus only very rarely used as stepping-stones to a political career.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 143

20/8/09 11:51:02

144

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

outside the Generalitat. As a matter of course, this pathway is open only to members of the governing party (or parties). Some of these institutions offer long-term professional careers, while others are merely used as stepping-stone or fall-back positions. Catalan local government – much more than Scottish local government – provides not only entry to, but also long-term careers in professional politics. Many mayors, their personal staff and many full-time councillors in the larger cities live off politics for long periods of time without ever leaving the local level. Others move on to serve in the Catalan Parliament or the Spanish Cortes, or, in rare cases, even directly into regional or national government.81 Most councillors or mayors keep their local office simultaneously with a parliamentary mandate, as it provides both career security and additional stature. Only an active leadership role in parliament may prohibit such a double function. Others continue (or return to) their local office after leaving their parliamentary mandate. Professional local government careers are a particularly common and important career path for socialist politicians. However, CiU, ICV and some ERC politicians also follow such a path. Only the PP is effectively excluded from such a trajectory. Professional parliamentary careers can be pursued by Catalan politicians in four parliamentary chambers on three territorial levels. The most common parliamentary career by far is the one in the Catalan Parliament. Although many MCPs serve only for a short time, this is also the career path with the highest number of long-term parliamentary careers. Catalan parliamentarians in the Spanish Cortes (Congress and Senate) and in the European Parliament do not serve less time on average, yet their lower overall number makes longterm careers in these bodies less common. The most striking observation about Catalan parliamentary careers, however, is their high degree of integration. While there are long and short careers in any one of theses institutions, a considerable share of members also moves between the parliaments, linking not only different institutions but also territorial levels of government. Neither careers in the Catalan Parliament or the Congress nor multiparliamentary careers are restricted to parliamentary mandates. Instead, there is a high degree of office accumulation, mostly with party and local government offices, but also with positions in interest groups. Furthermore, various different professionalised political positions may be held prior to, in between, or after a parliamentary mandate. Apart from local government mandates, these positions include party staff positions, and positions within the regional 81

Narcís Serra and Juan Clos moved from their positions as mayors of Barcelona directly into the Spanish government, Arthur Mas from the Barcelona city council into the Generalitat, both without having had a parliamentary mandate at the time or prior to their appointment.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 144

20/8/09 11:51:02

POLITICAL CAREERS

145

and local administration. They may provide a stepping-stone to higher office, yet may also function as fall-back positions that provide loyal and merited parliamentarians with a paid interim-position after losing their mandate, or even as a retirement home for those who have departed from front-line politics. Probably the least conventional professional political career is the one inside the Catalan administration. Of course, careers that remain exclusively within the administrative realm can hardly be called political careers. However, as stated above, administrative positions can also provide the economic basis for de-facto, full-time party political or local government careers. Some, though hardly most, of these careers eventually lead into a fully paid public office in the political domain. Until 2003, a very particular and very important career path for members of CDC and UCD proceeded up the administrative career ladder of the Generalitat into its upper echelons (the ranks of secretary general and director general) and from there directly into the cabinet (the PSC-led government seems not to follow this nomination pattern). On the other hand, there are also movements from the political domain into the administration, emphasising once more the political nature of the Catalan administration. Administrative positions are generally much better paid than political positions and are used to provide active party politicians with a living, to cushion the loss of a parliamentary mandate, or even as the final promotion of a long political career. The ‘highest’ political position to be achieved in a Catalan political career is the presidency of the Generalitat, closely followed by a place in the Consell Executiu (the Catalan cabinet). For a few conservative and socialist Congress members a place in the Spanish government is perhaps on an equal, in very few cases even on a higher ‘altitude’. However, in contrast to the Scottish case, regional and national government neither form the respective apex of two distinct career paths, nor do they represent the double apex of an integrated career path. As government office can be reached from nearly every political position (and even from the realm of business or academia), this common career ambition does not ‘shape’ collective career patterns. Thus, there are no clear-cut career paths with government office as their ultimate apex. Taken together (see figure 3.3), Catalan political careers are characterised by a high degree of office accumulation and a high pace of movement between mandates and offices at the local, regional and national level. In contrast to the Scottish case, the political institutions at the different territorial levels of government do not constitute separate well-bounded career arenas, but an integrated circuit of political positions to be held simultaneously or in succession. While there are higher (e.g. government offices) and lower positions (e.g. simple mandates) within every institution, career movements between institutions do not show a general direction. The common career

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 145

20/8/09 11:51:03

146

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Figure 3.3 The Catalan career pattern

arena (embracing positions on the local, regional and national level) is neither structured through an undisputed hierarchy between territorial levels of government nor through a clear-cut career ladder within them. In Catalonia political parties play an even more comprehensive role for the pursuit of political careers than in Scotland. In addition to the strong gatekeeper function that parties in both regions fulfil, Catalan parties are also capable of determining individual career paths to a much greater extent than their British and Scottish counterparts. Due to the electoral system and internal party rules a small group of party leaders controls nearly all professionalised public political positions (parliamentary mandates, mayor offices and government offices) available to Catalan politicians. Furthermore, due to the very wide-ranging patronage power of political parties, this control extends even to administrative positions and posts within organisations of civil society. Party leaders do not only facilitate, hinder or block individual career ambitions, but actively place and replace politicians in and out of their

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 146

20/8/09 11:51:03

POLITICAL CAREERS

147

offices. As access to political careers, career security and career advancement are in the hands of the respective party leaders, individual career paths are less a function of politicians’ ambitions and preferences than of party strategy.82 Rather than reflecting recurrent individual calculations of the accessibility and attractiveness of a potential career step within a given institutional structure of opportunity, Catalan careers are governed by a strategic collective actor making career decisions for its individual members in the context of changing political circumstances. Thus, Catalan careers do not follow long-term patterns shaped by institutional structures but proceed in rather heterogeneous pathways dependent at each turn on the strategic reasoning of party leaders. However, the lack of pre-established career models and the complete dependency on the party leadership does not correspond to a complete lack of career security. On the contrary, while Scottish parliamentarians are far more secure in their parliamentary mandate than Catalan ones, the role of Catalan political parties as broker for political jobs means that high-ranking party politicians are effectively irredeemable from public office, despite high turnover rates for specific positions and institutions. As a consequence party offices are of far greater importance than in Scotland. In Catalonia inner-party promotion is usually sought parallel to the quest for paid position in public office. The pursuit of an inner party career is not only an integral part of any political career, it is its central element. The status in the party largely determines career opportunities. And it is the party rank (as in most cases it does reflect status) that represents the only common yardstick as to the position of individual politicians from different political institutions on the career ladder. While public offices come and go, party offices are held, and as long as politicians are actively pursing a career they are striving to move up the internal party ladder. Without a clear-cut unidirectional career path to be followed (or two alternative paths as in Scotland), the swapping of one public office for another is often not clearly indicating promotion or descent, while any move up or down the party hierarchy directly reflects movement on the career ladder. In a nutshell, the difference between the two cases can be stated as follows: Scottish careers are basically parliamentary careers. The regional and 82

This perception is shared by politicians from all parties. In my interviews almost all parliamentarians stated that they had not ‘chosen’ a particular career path, but were put on their respective track by the party leadership. ‘Pero no es que yo optaría a ir a Madrid o al Parlamento. Yo nunca tenido opcion de escoger’ (‘But it is not that I would opt to go to Madrid or to the Catalan Parliament. I never had the opportunity to choose’) (interview Casas). Responding to the survey question about the political positions parliamentarians would like to take on in future, one MCP answered frankly ‘el que decideix el meu partit’ (‘whatever my party decides’).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 147

20/8/09 11:51:03

148

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the national arena provide two alternative pathways each structured by a hierarchy of parliamentary offices (including government office) and governed by the respective parliamentary leadership (or the leader of the government). In contrast Catalan careers are party careers, pursued in a common arena integrating local, regional and national offices, structured by a party career ladder and largely determined by the party leadership. A regional political class?

Having revealed the career patterns and the opportunity structures of Catalan and Scottish politicians we may now return to the question of the political class. In both cases the huge majority of regional politicians can be seen as full-time, fully paid and long-term professional politicians. In general these professional regional politicians do not perceive their regional positions as a springboard to ‘higher’ national office. Instead, they have been deliberately striving towards the regional level. Regional politicians in Scotland and Catalonia are pursuing a professional political career based on and orientated towards the regional arena. They are forming a functionally as well as territorially defined group, distinct from fellow citizens employed in other walks of life, as well as from fellow politicians active on the national level group and can thus be understood as a regional political class in itself. However, the structure and the internal homogeneity of the two regional classes are rather different. Scotland

At first sight, the unitary nature of the UK state does not leave room for more than one political class. After all, as the Scottish Parliament is merely devolved from the sovereign Westminster Parliament, the ultimate source of revenues seems to be the same for professional politicians north and south of the border. Not only are the salaries of MSPs paid out of the UK Chancellor’s purse, the institutional context in which they pursue their careers is also strongly dependent on Westminster legislation. However, does the formally unitary nature of the UK really provide a unified opportunity structure for professional politicians around the country? Do Scottish Westminster MPs and their Holyrood counterparts really belong to the same political class? The analysis of career patterns of Scottish politicians provides clear evidence to the contrary. In the Westminster Parliament Scottish MPs are making a living out of debating the same set of policies as their colleagues from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Indeed, while devolution has generated a controversial debate about their status vis-à-vis MPs from non-

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 148

20/8/09 11:51:03

POLITICAL CAREERS

149

devolved areas (hence the infamous ‘West Lothian Question’), the abolishment of the old Scottish Office and the subsequent loss of Westminster careers exclusively dedicated to Scottish politics has further integrated Scottish MPs into a common Westminster career structure.83 Their careers proceed along the same full-time, long-term Westminster career paths orientated toward the same ultimate target (the UK Government) and based on the same formal and informal rules for career advancement (all set and governed at Westminster). Scottish MPs are thus part and parcel of a UK political class. By contrast, the regional political class in Scotland is based on the newly established Scottish Parliament. Once elected to the Scottish Parliament the professional life and ambition of MSPs has little in common with their Westminster counterparts. It is to the Scottish Parliament that they owe their living, it is to the Scottish Parliament that they dedicate their full working time, and it is to the Scottish Parliament (with the Scottish Executive as an integral part) that even the most ambitious of them look for their political and professional future. Their career maintenance is dependent on localised electorates and selectorates with hardly any interference from UK party bodies. Furthermore, career advancement is not only a function based on the Scottish level, but again one that is governed by parliamentary institutions – i.e. the leadership of parliamentary groups and the executive. With the existence of separate Scottish career paths – pursued entirely within the Scottish arena and orientated towards a Scottish apex, governed by an opportunity structure almost exclusively dependent on Scottish norms and Scottish actors, and centred around one single Scottish institution (the Scottish Parliament) – the Scottish political class appears to be very close to the ideal-typical model of a regional political class. And indeed the high level of professionalism and strong regional orientation of Scottish politicians institutionally welded to the Scottish Parliament are marking them out as a highly distinct and internally homogeneous regional political class. However, some qualifications have to be made. Despite all the evidence for their disjunction, the Scottish and the UK arena nevertheless remain linked to some degree through political parties, through some political careers and even through the constitutional structure of the UK. The most important element of Scottish integration into the British state has long been the Labour Party, which offered Scotland a strong voice at the centre, and thus operated as an important deterrent to the nationalist exit option. As a party defending the 83

The final proof of which has been the appointment of John Reid, a Scottish MP, to the post of Secretary of State for Health commanding a policy field (English and Welsh health policy) that is of no concern to his constituents (as Scottish health policy has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 149

20/8/09 11:51:03

150

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Union its own organisation has remained highly centralised. Scottish Labour politicians are thus still socialised in a markedly British institution – in its organisation and its ethos. This socialisation is reproduced at party meetings, annual conferences, etc. The Labour Party also offers its aspiring political hopefuls the general prospect of a political career at the central state level and in the UK government. However, once the choice for the Scottish Parliament has been made, career outlook, dependence structures and general ethos are changing. From then on, the UK level of the party has become next to irrelevant for their careers. Career advancement is to be made exclusively in and through the parliamentary group at the Scottish Parliament, while career security – apart from the electorate – is dependent on the local constituency party, and to a lesser extent on the Scottish Labour Executive, the latter arguably representing the most strongly UK-orientated body in this line of dependency. In spite of the strong connections between the Westminster and the Holyrood Parliaments in general, other parties show a closer linkage between the parliamentary groups of the two parliaments. This clearly applies to the Scottish Tories, where most MSPs show a remarkable fidelity to a body they once staunchly opposed (the Scottish Parliament), yet others clearly strive towards Westminster for ideological and status reasons, yet perhaps also because of the better career prospects Tories face, given their much more competitive position in the UK arena. Tory MSPs with a Westminster orientation by definition blur the boundaries between the UK and the Scottish political class and introduce an element of heterogeneity within the latter.84 However, due to their small number this does not constitute a significant cleavage within the Scottish class. A reverse pattern of orientation is to be found in the SNP where a UK career clearly is a second prize for ambitious politicians, yet opportunity structures facilitate Westminster re-election and prohibit against a move to the Scottish arena. Their isolated position within Westminster (due to their ideological rejection of the very institution they sit in, yet also due to the lack of any prospects of career advancement) is clearly separating them from the rest of UK MPs. On the other hand, their organisational base in a Scottish party and their unquestioned focus on Scottish politics locate them very close to their colleagues in the Scottish Parliament. Thus, there is a strong case for treating the SNP Westminster contingent as a ‘diaspora’ of the Scottish political class in the UK arena, thus again blurring its boundaries and differentiating its structural base. 84

If only because their self-regulatory capability in and through the Scottish Parliament is compromised by parliamentarians who do not belong to the Scottish political class.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 150

20/8/09 11:51:03

POLITICAL CAREERS

151

Apart from these minor deviations, the hard core of the Scottish political class – in the shape of the members of the Scottish Parliament – nevertheless remains fairly distinctive and homogeneous. In fact, the strong institutional coherence of this hard core represents the major internal cleavage of the Scottish political class. Political professionals in local government, party staff positions, and as parliamentary assistants or political advisors generally live on much lower salaries, more short-term career prospects and are remunerated by separate, sometimes private organisations. Some of them may well move up into parliament eventually, but due to the low parliamentary turnover most of them will not. While many of these positions are located within the Scottish arena and are better equipped to function as a stepping-stone towards the Scottish Parliament, they can also be used as a springboard to Westminster and thus constitute some element of common ground between the two political classes. They are thus not only adding to the internal differentiation of the Scottish political class but also constitute at least another limited form of blurring its boundaries vis-à-vis the UK one. The major link between the UK and the Scottish political class is provided by the unitary structure of the British constitution. The British constitution provides Westminster, and thus the UK political class with a formally unrestrained power over Scottish institutions. Professional politicians in Scotland thus seem to lack the institutional autonomy – i.e. the self-regulatory power that is part of the definition of any distinct political class. However, UK politics is less based on statutory rules than on political considerations and conventions. As a matter of fact, Westminster legislation has left many institutional matters open to be decided in Scotland. This applies in particular to the less politicised questions, such as internal parliamentary rules, which are nevertheless quite important with regard to career opportunities. Yet even the central institutional features of the political system in Scotland (such as the electoral system) are not completely taken out of the hands of professional politicians in Scotland. As the next chapter will show, a Scottish consensus on Scottish institutional matters – even if they are constitutionally reserved to Westminster – can hardly be ignored. Their formal lack of self-regulatory power does not necessarily contradict their distinction as a class in itself. To what extent it affects their capacity to act as a class for itself, will be discussed in the next chapter. Catalonia

Career patterns and institutional structures of opportunity show the Catalan political class to be very different from the Scottish one. Instead of splitting up into a regional and national political class along institutional lines, the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 151

20/8/09 11:51:03

152

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

high-pace, multi-directional movements of Catalan politicians between institutions of different territorial levels are largely centred around and dependent on Catalan institutions, and thus make for an integrated regional political class, albeit with boundaries extending its proper territorial base. While professional Catalan politicians may be differentiated into various subgroups by their institutional and territorial adherence, this division is highly temporary, since the respective composition is changing with every electoral circle. Despite career paths and opportunities crossing institutional and territorial boundaries, a majority of professional positions is based in Catalonia and so is the ultimate prize of a Catalan political career – a place in the Catalan government. Thus, the existence of attractive positions on the Spanish level (e.g. that of a Congress member) does not contradict the statement that a majority of careers are clearly based in and focused on Catalonia. Living off politics for Catalan politicians generally means living off the provisions of a territorially and institutionally differentiated Spanish state.85 However, the public positions that provide them with the means to pursue a professional political career are effectively controlled and distributed by political parties – and thus, with exception of the PP, by Catalan organisations. Catalan political careers are basically party careers with changing public offices. Thus, in contrast to Scotland, where the regional parliament provides the institutional base of the regional political class, in Catalonia parties function as the organisational bond that integrates professional politicians from a variety of offices and even from different territorial levels into a single political class. These peculiar features of the Catalan political class have important consequences for its external boundaries and internal homogeneity. In terms of the social distinctiveness of professional politicians in Catalonia, the structure of opportunities in which they operate clearly offers chances to pursue part-time and short-term political careers (with a huge overlap between the two) for those who do not want to leave their prior ‘civil’ profession for good, yet compels many others to leave the realm of professional politics even though they might want to stay. As a result, a considerable minority (much larger than in Scotland) of politicians holding a professionalised political office do not completely rely on the political profession, but maintain ties to their prior occupation, thus blurring the distinction between professional politicians and politically active citizens. While this makes for a particularly large fringe of the Catalan political class, there is, nevertheless, a considerable core of professional politicians who might be compelled to move 85

This even applies to party staff positions, as political parties are heavily state-funded (see next chapter).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 152

20/8/09 11:51:03

POLITICAL CAREERS

153

between offices and territorial levels, yet who are firmly set on a fairly secure professional political career. In terms of the territorial distinctiveness of Catalan politicians, the extension of their careers into the Spanish arena (but also into the local and European arena) naturally creates some form of overlap between the Spanish and the Catalan political class. Catalan Congress members share a common space, a common institution, common working conditions and common privileges with their colleagues from other regions and can thus also be seen as forming part of the national Spanish political class. And indeed, some of the long-term Congress members from the PSC and especially the PP may even be more closely attached and orientated towards the national level than to the Catalan one. Given the influence of the Spanish PP on the career maintenance and career advancement of their parliamentarians (even those from Catalonia), at least the PP parliamentarians may indeed be attributed to the Spanish political class. However, on the whole, Catalan Congress members remain largely dependent on a Catalan party, strive to move up a Catalan party hierarchy, and face attractive career opportunities in Catalonia – all of which clearly distinguishes them from their colleagues. Hence, the Catalan contingent in the Spanish Congress can clearly be seen as representing an institutional extension of the Catalan political class into the central state arena, yet one that is also blurring the territorial distinction of this political class. Within the Catalan arena, PP members of the Catalan Parliament that strive towards a national career may play a similar role. The high-pace and multi-level structure of Catalan political careers is not only affecting the external boundaries of the Catalan political class but also its internal coherence and homogeneity. Unlike the Scottish political class, Catalan professional politicians are not concentrated in one, highly bounded institution. Instead, the Catalan political class is dispersed into different institutions held together by their party bonds. Thus, the inner core of full-time, long-term professional politicians consists of the higher ranks of the respective party hierarchies, almost all of which hold some kind of paid public office. The largest number of core members from all the major political forces sits in the Catalan Parliament. As this is also the institution most members will pass through during their political career, the Catalan Parliament, together with the councils of the larger municipalities also functions as a central socialisation agency, forging some kind of collective consciousness and the perception of collective interests. Furthermore, with all the party leaders present, it provides a central forum for inter-party co-operation – something that often takes place in the parliament building, yet not necessarily by way of parliamentary procedure. In contrast to the Scottish case though, the Catalan Parliament is not separating an institutionally defined core of the regional political class from

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 153

20/8/09 11:51:03

154

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the rest of its members, but is, rather, linking various groups and sub-groups of this class through high levels of office accumulation, a high parliamentary turnover and the close connection of its parliamentary groups with the respective (extra-parliamentary) party executives. A consequence of such an extended political class without a strongly bounded centre is, of course, that the institutional and territorial differentiations that do exist within the political class are imported into its very core. Thus, while the core of the Scottish political class, the MSPs, all share the same socio-structural base with regard to their working conditions, the source of their revenues, their future career perspectives, etc., in Catalonia the core is dispersed into different institutions, and even the members of what may be seen as its central institution show strong divisions with regard to the degree and focus of their political professionalisation. Due to the crucial role political parties play in the shaping of political careers (as against a set parliamentary career path), but also due to the ideological and organisational differences between the parties and the differences with regard to their respective competitive position, party affiliation provides a major dividing line within the Catalan political class. The most obvious example in this respect is the special status and the specific opportunity structure CiU politicians have enjoyed for the first twenty odd years of Catalan autonomy. Their long years of government not only allowed them to dominate the Catalan policy process but also to build, shape and staff a new Catalan administration. While a small group of party leaders were running the Catalan state, a much larger flock of professional politicians were accommodated within its complex and highly politicised structure. Due to the absence of government alternation, the CiU parties were effectively able to monopolise access to such state privileges and saw no need to distribute them among all parties. This fundamental difference in their resource base produced a major cleavage between politicians from the ‘state parties’ and the rest (especially the main rivals from the PSC) that runs far beyond the mere differentiation of career paths and has retained some of its virulence even after the structural disparity has been reversed. The strength of the socialist party at the local level has allowed the PSC to establish similar ‘fiefdoms’ – though on a smaller scale – in the large Catalan cities, most notably in the city of Barcelona. Hence the party political division of the Catalan political class is based on two major parties or party formations, which until recently had a stable, quasi-monopolistic access to clearly separated sources of public revenue via the regional and local administrations and three minor parties competing together with the two major parties for the much more restricted resources of the parliamentary arenas. The two smaller parties of the left – the post-communists with its various allies (currently under the label of ICV–EUiA) and the republicans (ERC) –

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 154

20/8/09 11:51:03

POLITICAL CAREERS

155

both contain not only a considerable contingent of non-professional activists but also a strong grassroots element that is highly critical of political professionalisation and any political class, which they perceive as purely self-interested and detached from ordinary people. However, so far, their professionalised party leaders have successfully managed this intra-party schism between antisystem ethos and office seeking orientation. It is not only their entry into the Catalan government in 2003 that clearly marks them as part of the Catalan political class. Instead the most marginal position within the Catalan political class is arguably occupied by politicians of the PP. While conservative councillors – due to the electoral weakness of the PP at the local level – are even less likely to hold professionalised positions in local government than councillors from the two small parties on the left, conservative members in the Catalan Parliament, like many of their counterparts in other western democracies, also seem to exhibit lower levels of political professionalisation than their colleagues.86 Thus, PP politicians appear to be the least likely to fully meet the political class criteria of social distinction. With regard to their territorial orientation, the strong Spanish identity of the party and its hierarchical, central-state-centred organisation is also relegating PP politicians to the fringes of a Catalan-based political class. Catalan political careers in the PP are heavily conditioned by decisions of the Spanish leadership; career paths are less clearly orientated towards the Catalan level. Finally, with its strong undercurrent of antiCatalanism (and, in wide circles, even open antagonism) the PP also stands a large ideological distance from the Catalan mainstream. However, while the PP is certainly on the fringe of the Catalan political class it is not completely isolated. Their support of the CiU minority government between 1999 and 2002 clearly shows that the PP group in the Catalan Parliament can indeed function as an integral part of the Catalan political system and as part of its political class. Within this group there is a considerable share of PP MCPs who share not only the political professionalism of their colleagues but also their Catalan career orientation. Taken together, the internal cohesion of the Catalan political class is clearly weakened, its external boundaries are strongly blurred by a rather heterogeneous institutional and socio-structural base and a virulent segregation along party lines. Nevertheless, there is a core of professional politicians from all parties who share the same regionalist identity, the same political 86

This assessment is supported by my survey, where a disproportionately high share of PP MCPs fell into the group of semi-professional politicians (though on the basis of only seven respondents), yet also by the statements of most of my interview partners.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 155

20/8/09 11:51:03

156

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

professionalism and the same career orientation towards an extended Catalan career arena. Furthermore, while their opportunity structure remains strongly wedded to their party affiliation, the extreme partisan segregation of this arena is being dissolved, because since 2003 three former opposition parties have taken control of the offices and perks of regional government. With government alternation more than a theoretical notion and participation in the regional government a realistic prospect for politicians from all parties, opportunity structures are clearly converging and the structural base of Catalan politicians as a class in itself has become much more unified.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 156

20/8/09 11:51:03

4 (Re)making political institutions: a regional political class for itself

As we have seen in the last chapter, political institutions established in Catalonia and Scotland have allowed for a professionalisation of Catalan and Scottish politicians and are shaping the patterns of their careers. Thus, regionalisation has not only brought about a territorial differentiation of politics but has also come with a new functional division of labour. Regional self-government is more or less delegated to political professionals trusted with this task. These professional politicians, both in Catalonia and in Scotland, have been shown to exhibit structural similarities in the conditions of their reproduction that point to the existence of common interests and thus allow us to classify them as a ‘class in itself’. Yet this is only one side of the interdependent relationship between regionalisation and professionalisation to be observed in Catalan and Scottish politics. In this second part of the study the focus is on the opposite dimension – i.e. on the potential effect of political professionalisation on regional political institutions. To assume that such an influence actually exists is not to invoke the invisible hand of pure functionalism. By implying that those professional politicians who populate the regional arena do also have a common interest in shaping the institutional structures that regulate the way in which they pursue their profession, the theory of the political class is introducing a collective actor potentially driving such a process. In the following, it will be asked, whether these politicians have actually attempted to re-form their institutions according to their own professional self-interest and how successful they have been in these attempts. This is the question of professional politicians as a ‘class for itself’ and as an independent variable in the process of regional institution-building. Such an undertaking cannot be conducted without an analytical framework, integrating the notion of political class and its theoretical implications into a more general theory of institutions and institutional change and its application to the context of regionalism and regionalisation. The following section will thus provide a brief outline of the basic conceptual framework that is guiding the empirical analysis.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 157

20/8/09 11:51:03

158

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS? Theoretical considerations: the institutionalisation of professional politics in a regionalist context

Professional politicians as self-interested actors in institutional politics

Institutions are generally known for stability rather than change. In fact, according to Goodin (1996: 22) ‘the stable, recurring, repetitive, patterned nature of the behaviour that occurs within institutions, and because of them’ is one of their central defining features. As ‘ossified past practices’ (Goodin 1996: 10) they are regulating the behaviour of actors towards each other, encapsulating dominant notions of social order. At the same time, however, they can be seen as symbolising ‘central animating ideas’ (Goodin 1996: 26) about social relations and social order. It is by carrying this ‘Leitidee’ or ‘Leitbild’1 that institutions fulfil a function of orientation and integration that is perpetuating their validity. However, such an understanding does not preclude change. In fact, institutions may be viewed as nothing but constant processes of institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation of social relations and ideas of social order (Lepsius 1997: 63; Lessenich 2003: 42; Patzelt 2003: 59). Neither the enforcement of certain social relations nor the dominance of certain ideas about them follow any automatism. They are socially constructed and valid only in so far as they are realised in the behaviour of intentional actors. Despite what is known as path-dependency, there is a choice of options. ‘The selection may be being done in terms of the animating idea of the institution in question, but the selection is done by intentional agents working within and internalising the animating ideas of that institution’ (Goodin 1996: 27, emphasis in the original). In such a scenario change is possible by historical accident, or as an incremental evolutionary process but also and especially as the result of intentional strategic action (Goodin 1996: 24–5). However, such a change is somehow contingent on the leeway given by the dominant animated ideas. Most of the time, institutional change as a change of interaction patterns will not be based on a radical challenge to its guiding ideas, but will be couched in terms of a different interpretation, or an emphasis on a different aspect of them. This does not, however, over time prohibit institutions from accumulating several – sometimes even conflicting – guiding ideas (Weber 1985: 17). 1

Of course, this topos is at least as old as Max Weber (1985) [1922]. In current German sociology it is mainly referred to as ‘Leitidee’ (Lepsius 1995 and many others). The term ‘Leitbild’, used mainly in this study, was deliberately coined in order to strip this notion of its idealist overtones (Lessenich 2003: 44–5).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 158

20/8/09 11:51:03

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

159

From such a perspective, institutional politics may be seen as ‘an intentional effort to influence the degree and the direction of the institutionalisation or de-institutionalisation of a particular guiding idea’ (Lepsius 1995: 400, my translation). One Leitbild that has been successfully established in many modern states – though obviously in quite different forms – is the principle of democracy. Attempts at institutional reform, especially those with any prospect of success, will thus have to be framed in terms of their compatibility with this Leitbild. Yet democracy is not the only Leitbild of modern states. Ever since the introduction of parliamentary salaries, political professionalisation has evolved as another guiding principle in the formation of political institutions. While in the early days these two principles were seen to be positively related, today they are increasingly perceived as counterparts. However, unlike many other ideas, the principle of political professionalisation has the apparent advantage of reflecting the collective self-interest of those who are trusted to define the rules of the political game: professional politicians. Following Borchert (2003a: 42), we may thus see the ‘objective of the self-interested institutional politics of professional politicians in the attempt to guard professionalisation as guiding idea against the competing idea of democracy without abandoning the latter’. As a consequence, formal political institutions incorporate both ideas without resolving their apparent tension. Professionalisation as Leitbild is institutionalised in a polity once its institutions allow for the pursuit of a full-time, long-term professional political career (regulating function) and provide incentives for doing so (orientating function). Borchert (2003b: 7–8) spells out three structural pre-conditions to be met in this respect. Prospective professional politicians are inclined to pursue such a career if, and only if, they are provided with: a reliable source of income in politics, a realistic chance of maintaining a job in politics, and chances for career advancement.2 The original institutionalisation of these conditions – i.e. the ‘primary genesis’ (Patzelt 2003: 59) of institutional opportunity structures that allow for the professional pursuit of politics – can hardly be seen to be the product of the political class, for it is only after their institutionalisation that such a group can be formed. However, all three of these conditions can be met to a different degree, can be institutionalised in different forms and may even be open to attempts of de- and 2

Opportunities foster ambitions and it is thus no coincidence that Borchert’s three pre-conditions of professionalisation strongly correspond to Schlesinger’s three types of ambition (Schlesinger 1966: 10): a reliable income is the basis for discrete ambitions directed to one particular office, mechanisms to establish career security are the basis for static ambitions of long term careers in this office, and opportunities for career advancement foster progressive ambitions of higher career goals.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 159

20/8/09 11:51:03

160

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

re-institutionalisation. From a political class perspective we would thus expect the institutional politics of professional politicians to be directed towards guarding these institutionalisations, adjusting them to changed circumstances – external pressure, new Leitbilder etc.– and to improve them where possible according to their collective self-interest. They may thus be seen to be improving their working conditions and increasing their material and immaterial rewards (status, power etc.), introducing or improving mechanisms for career maintenance, and creating positions for career advancement. While these targets can be analytically distinguished, in the empirical reality they are strongly inter-related: one man’s fall-back position (career maintenance) is another man’s ultimate ambition (career advancement). One way of addressing all three of these targets at the same time is by continuously expanding the realm of professional politics into ever larger spheres of state and society. In general the institutional politics of the political class is facilitated by the exceptionally high level of self-regulation of the political profession and its huge regulatory power over other sections of society (see chapter 1). On the other hand, its coherence as a collective actor is highly dependent on the coherence of its interests and on the existence of some form of collective consciousness that allows them to recognise common interests. Strong ideological cleavages among professional politicians as well as a strong divergence of career interests among them may thus hamper their capacity as a collective actor. On the regional level, and especially in a regionalist setting, conditions are potentially less favourable. A regional political class in a regionalist context

In contrast to traditional federal systems where professionalisation has often trickled down into regional political institutions in a long-term process (though of course also via the action of intentional agents), in Catalonia and Scotland we are confronted with a situation where regionalisation and professionalisation of politics are happening at the same time. Here, the institutionalisation of regional politics starts with an original act of institutional reform – the setting of legally binding rules and norms for the region in the process of regionalisation. As we have seen in chapter 1 the regionalisation processes in both Catalonia and Scotland cannot be seen as simple top-down processes of decentralisation and state modernisation (though these were also involved). Instead they are to a large extent the result of strong regionalist demands for self-government. The respective processes and their institutional results, though, have remained strongly controlled by the central state, with a varying degree of involvement of regional actors. In any case, its ‘primary genesis’ happened before there was any significant number of professional

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 160

20/8/09 11:51:03

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

161

regional politicians and cannot be said to have been influenced by a Catalan or Scottish political class. It thus remains outside the main focus of this study. However, as the previous chapter has shown, the institutions set up in the regionalisation processes have allowed in both regions for the emergence of a group of politicians that is socially and functionally differentiated from their fellow regional citizens by the fact that they live off politics and strive to pursue a professional political career. The comparative analysis of their attempts to institutionalise their collective professional interest in regional politics – and thus the analysis of their transformation into a political class for itself – will start with a brief attempt to spell out some of the most important factors that condition the form, direction and success of their institutional politics. A regionalisation process induced by a virulent regionalism is a very specific context in which to observe the emergence of a political class. This context affects both the coherence of professional politicians as a collective actor, as well as their leeway to pursue their collective self-interest in the process of institutionalisation. As depicted in chapter 1, ideal-typically the political class is a socially and functionally differentiated group defined by their professional self-interest and not by any territorial criteria. However, following the basic idea of the theory of political class – namely that it is their striving to maintain a professional political career that defines their common interest as professional politicians (Borchert and Golsch 1995: 612) – it becomes obvious, that if this general striving is directed to a professional political career at the regional level, we may indeed encounter a regional political class. The more the region becomes the career arena in which politicians strive to pursue their professional career, the more regional politicians might be seen to develop a different interest from their national counterparts with regard to how regional political institutions – and thus the structures of their career opportunities – should be shaped. This might mainly concern the high priority that is attached to the working conditions, rewards, career maintenance mechanisms and advancement opportunities etc. on the regional level relative to those on the national level. Such a diversification of professional interests would reflect the territorial differentiation of professional politics within a country, yet it is not necessarily incompatible with the interests of a state-wide political class. After all, the enhancement of the conditions for the pursuit of professional political careers on one level may well be to the benefit of all professional politicians. However, a strong regional career-orientation among regional politicians may also set them apart from nationally orientated professional politicians. A real divergence of interests could occur with regard to the distribution of resources and competencies between their respective career arenas, with regard to the establishment and sustaining of institutional linkages between

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 161

20/8/09 11:51:04

162

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

these arenas, as well as with regard to the homology of norms and rules that are to regulate political interaction within these arenas. Yet while regionalisation and regionalism may provide for a regional career-orientation and subsequently for a differentiation of the professional interests of politicians along territorial lines, the very context that is instrumental in separating regional professional politicians from their national counterparts in the first place, may also contain a seed of dissent that is potentially hampering their capacity to recognise a common interest and to act accordingly. After all, a regionalist conflict leading up to the regionalisation process will often have mobilised and enshrined contradictory territorial loyalties and identities among regional politicians that can make it difficult to co-operate, even on issues where they share a common interest. Such a strong ideological cleavage with regard to the preferred constitutional status of the region (integrated unit of a unitary state, relative autonomous unit in a regionalised or federalised state, or separate statehood) may cross-cut common professional interests long after regional institutions have been established. But let us turn from the internal coherence of regional professional politicians to the external factors conditioning their collective action and its possible success. Again, regionalisation and regionalism provide very particular conditions for the institutionalisation of professional politics and the pursuit of a collective interest of professional politicians. On the one hand, regionalisation – as an original act of setting up formal regional political institutions where there had been none before – opens up a wide window of opportunity for the first movers, as these institutions will inevitably remain less specified and less defined than long-established ones. This is due, first of all, to the simple fact that not all the possible interrelations of political actors can be regulated at the very start. Constitutions, statutes of autonomy and basic laws may prescribe the central rules of the political game in a polity – in this case in the two regions – yet there are inevitably gaps to be filled later in the process. Yet secondly, even the rules that are explicitly prescribed still lack a fundamental criterion of social institutions, as they still have to be transformed into recurrent patterns of interaction. It is the particular way of acting out and following these norms that constitutes the institution. The actors that play the regional political game – and thus to a large extent professional politicians populating political organisations – are establishing their own institutions by way of following and interpreting prescribed rules, by establishing new practices and rules along the way, and finally by open deviation and intentional reform of the prescribed norms. On the other hand, this institutionalisation process is, nevertheless, conditioned by the formal rules and regulations set out in the original act of regionalisation and by the respective Leitbilder that have found their way into

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 162

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

163

them. Both aspects clearly limit the capacity of regional professional politicians to influence this process according to their self-interest. In contrast to what has been said about professional politicians in general, regional professional politicians – as a territorially defined group – are not ideally placed to influence their own institutional context. Their capacity for self-regulation and for the regulation of regional politics is contingent on a constitutional and legal framework set at the national level. Many of the newly created regional institutions will thus not only be reflective of the basic norms and ideas valid at the national level, their explicit recreation and reform is also dependent on national decision-making, and thus on national institutions and national actors. In such a situation, the chances for regional politicians to have their self-interest implanted in regional institutions are best furthered if this interest corresponds to the collective interest of national politicians or is it least compatible with it. The more these interests diverge, the more regional politicians might recognise a common interest in increasing their institutional autonomy from central state regulation. Elevating the issue in a way on to a meta level, such a demand might even be seen to correspond to the Leitbild of regional self-government. Regional professional politicians might thus be able to find allies for this cause within regional society. Their interest as regional professional politicians – socially defined by their living off politics – does not, however, necessarily correspond to the democratic ideals rooted in regional society, nor to the Leitbilder implanted in regional institutions. On a very general level, the newly established regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland may be seen to be designed to provide for the institutionalisation of the Leitbild of regional self-government without destroying the Leitbild of national unity. Regional institutions may thus contain elements that follow the institutional logic and democratic ideal of the central state but also aspects that arise from regional traditions and regional visions of democracy. And indeed, in both our cases regionalisation is closely linked to democratisation and thus to a concept that is related to political professionalisation in a rather ambiguous, sometimes even contradictory way (see chapter 2). Both cases, though, clearly differ with respect to the particular form of democracy implanted in the regional institutions and the ratio of regional and national components integrated. In Catalonia regional self-government was closely linked to the democratic transition of the Spanish state. Democratic government was institutionalised on the regional and the national level concurrently. The Leitbilder for the new institutions had their origin in the Spanish Second Republic, in Catalonia’s long history of self-government, as well as in the contemporary party democracies of western Europe. They were formed in the deliberations of the opposition to the Franco regime and in the Catalan

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 163

20/8/09 11:51:04

164

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

self-government movement, which were then compromised in the negotiations with the central state during the first transition years and finally transformed into the normative framework of the Spanish Constitution and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. Except for the establishment of and the degree of regional self-government, the institutional manifestation of democracy was hardly contested between region and national centre. In Scotland by contrast, regional self-government was perceived as the answer to the democratic deficit inherent in the traditional Westminster form of representative democracy. The Leitbilder formed within the Scottish selfgovernment movement were explicitly anti-Westminster in content. Notions of Scottish popular sovereignty were pitted against the central principle of the English constitution: parliamentary sovereignty. An archaic, detached and highly unrepresentative form of British government was to be replaced not only by Scottish self-government but by a form of self-government addressing all the ills of the old system. Demands included: more inclusive forms of representation, more transparency, the involvement of civic society in the political process as well as improved forms of public participation. The visions of a new Scottish politics thus contained a strong element directed against the monopolisation of the political process by professional politicians. The Scottish critique of the Westminster democracy clearly influenced the institutional set-up of regional self-government in Scotland. Yet it is important to remember that its normative base – the Scotland Act of 1998 – was ratified at Westminster and it incorporated the fundamental logic of the UK state. Regional institutions as objects of reform

Having discussed (1) the general capacity of a political class to engage collectively in institutional politics, and (2) the more specific constraints of a regional political class in a regionalist context, we may finally direct our attention to the kind of institutional structures that could be the object of such a self-interested, collective action of regional professional politicians and to the kind of adaptations, alterations or reforms that are to be expected from them. In general, the efforts of a regional political class to institutionalise and guard their specific Leitbild of political professionalisation could concern all three potential interests of professional politicians – career rewards, career maintenance, career advancement – and could be directed to all elements of their complex opportunity structure that may be seen to impact upon them. How then can we structure an analysis of its institutional politics? In the following I have opted to trace the efforts of the Catalan and the Scottish political class to institutionalise their collective self-interest within two main spheres: the regional parliamentary system and the regional party state. This dual focus not

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 164

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

165

only captures the different emphases used by Borchert and von Beyme in their theoretical conceptualisation of the political class, it also closely corresponds to the major empirical difference between the two cases, revealed in the preceding analysis of Catalan and Scottish politicians as classes in themselves. Following Borchert’s explicit linkage of the concept of political class to the parliamentary system (Borchert and Golsch 1995: 613), I will first focus on the efforts that have been made by Catalan and Scottish politicians to shape their respective regional parliament and its immediate institutional ambit. To what extent and in what way has the regional political class been able to implant its basic interests with regard to career rewards, career maintenance and career advancement prospects into the institutional core of the regional polity? The analysis will proceed in three steps, each step representing an extension of the institutional realm in which regional parliamentarians operate, accompanied by a certain loss of autonomy over the process of institutionalisation and institutional reform. Thus, the analysis starts with their efforts to institutionalise the Leitbild of political professionalisation at the very heart of their political occupation – i.e. in the internal working of the regional parliament. This includes measures to establish a stratified system of remuneration and other office endowments, the provision of infrastructural and staff support as well as setting norms and standards for the professional conduct of parliamentarians. These internal features of the regional parliamentary system are not only closest to the immediate working conditions of the largest group of professional regional politicians (regional parliamentarians). They are also largely within their capacity for self-regulation. Most of these features are well beyond the reach of central state regulation. Furthermore, as their level of politicisation is generally very low, these questions – perhaps apart from the delicate matter of salaries – usually remain fairly detached from public debate. In contrast, strategies to enhance parliamentarians’ chances of career maintenance generally aim at institutions that regulate their relations with the outside world, i.e. at the electoral system and the systems of intra-party candidate nomination, and thus institutions that are further removed from their immediate control. While incumbent parliamentarians share an interest in institutionalising mechanisms and regulations that are favourable to their re-election, any immunisation strategy will necessarily impinge upon voters’ rights and party selectors’ (whether leadership, activists or membership) capacity to pick and choose candidates according to their own rationale. Furthermore, while the electoral law may be within the legal competencies of regional parliamentarians (though this is not necessarily the case, e.g. in Scotland), its legal provisions are usually highly politicised. As any change will automatically bring about winners and losers, they are often constitutionally

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 165

20/8/09 11:51:04

166

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

entrenched and are notoriously difficult to reform. Intra-party candidate selection, on the other hand, is within the remit of the party statutes and thus also detached from parliamentarians’ direct control. A third set of institutional regulations to which the collective self-interest of regional parliamentarians may be directed is concerned with the autonomy, the status, and the competencies of the regional parliament itself – i.e. with its institutional boundaries and its position within the wider political system. As a regional political class we would expect regional parliamentarians to defend and strengthen the regional parliament and the parliamentary system both with regard to challenges from participative demands of citizens and civic organisations as well as vis-à-vis the realm of central state institutions. However, matters concerning the fundamental rules of representative democracy and the territorial order of the state are rarely within the exclusive competencies of the regional legislator. Furthermore, as these questions are usually highly politicised, the professional self-interest of politicians will generally be subordinate to party political considerations. In the second part of each case study I will start from Klaus von Beyme’s theoretical presumption that ‘the political class is a cartel of party elites’ that ‘makes its appearance mainly by extending the party state in modern democracy’ (Beyme 1993: 9, my translation). Instead of the parliamentary arena, this perspective focuses on political parties themselves, and on what von Beyme has called ‘the ‘‘colonisation” of state and society’ (Beyme 1993: 39) by political parties. Again the analysis may be divided into three main areas. The first part deals with regional party organisations themselves and the way they pull in public resources. Here, state regionalisation may be seen to provide a unique opportunity to advance the regionalisation and professionalisation of political parties and to develop them into formidable vehicles for a regional political class. Their active ‘colonisation’ of the regional state and society may, secondly, include a politicisation of public administration and other public, semi-public and civil organisations as well as, thirdly, a professionalisation of ever wider areas of the political process to be witnessed on the regional as well as on the local level. Both strategies can be viewed as an expansion of the career arena for professional regional politicians, both enhancing career security (by reducing competition and creating fall-back positions) and providing new opportunities for career advancement (e.g. inside the regional administration). Furthermore, by acquiring additional resources and patronage power over additional spheres such a colonisation is increasing some of the most important immaterial rewards of professional politicians: power and status. However, as with their collective action inside the parliamentary system, any self-interested institutional politics of regional professional politicians remains conditioned by the fundamental ideas and traditions with

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 166

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

167

regard to the separation of state and society and by central state regulations encapsulating such norms. Engagement in the parliamentary and party state spheres of activity is in no way mutually exclusive. Instead, they represent two different parts of the opportunity structure that may be shaped by regional politicians simultaneously. As Borchert has pointed out, the parliamentary sphere nowadays has become the central focus of the political class in most modern democracies. However, the sphere of influence of professional politicians is far from restricted to it. Any meaningful analysis of their collective activities would thus have to include the wider realm of the party state. In fact, as the previous chapter has revealed that the structural base of the Scottish political class is the regional parliament, while that of the Catalan political class is indeed to be seen in regional party organisations, the distinction of these two spheres may also prove fruitful to reveal differences with regard to the respective focus of their collective action as a class for itself. In the following I will thus analyse processes of institutionalisation and institutional reform in the regional parliamentary system as well as in the wider regional party state in both Catalonia and Scotland that show traces of a regional political class acting for itself. Following the dual – functional and territorial – definition of the regional political class, the analysis of the activities of Catalan and Scottish politicians will not only concern their selfinterest as professional politicians, but also the question of how much this self-interest is restricted to and/or based upon their identity as regional politicians. Similarly, the evaluation of the consequences of their action will not only focus on any potential expansion of the functionally differentiated realm of professional politics on the regional level, but also on any potential effects in terms of the territorial differentiation of the regional political arena vis-à-vis the national one.

The Catalan case

Regional parliamentarians and the institutionalisation of their professional self-interest in the parliamentary system Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (I): precursory developments at the national and local level

In the Spanish transition to democracy, the professionalisation of politics was hardly at the centre of a rather busy agenda of institutional politics. For the Catalan politicians active in this period the establishment of democratic

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 167

20/8/09 11:51:04

168

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

institutions in Spain, the regionalisation of the Spanish state and the reestablishment of Catalan self-government were the tasks they were completely occupied with. After all, these were the political goals they had fought for during the Franco regime – often risking their lives and livelihoods in the pursuit of their political ideals. When they got the chance to implement those ideals and shape the political institutions of Catalonia and Spain without being persecuted, they were happy to do so. The idea of making a long-term living off politics – of pursuing a professional political career – was hardly on their minds (interviews Pujol, Vidal, Ribó and Espasa). Standing in the first democratic elections to the newly created public offices and mandates – whether on the national (1977), the local (1979) or the regional level (1980) – candidates did not know exactly how much time their political position would demand of them, nor whether and in what form they would be remunerated. As the new regional parliaments were the last to be established, the problem arose first at the national and the local level. And indeed, at the first Congress election in 1977 some activists are said to have been deterred from standing because they would have had to give up their ‘private’ occupation, not knowing what to expect from a political career in compensation. For some political forces this resulted in a real shortage of potential candidates (interview Vidal). On the local level, many leading protagonists have found out only along the way that their political occupation would leave little room for any simultaneous occupation, creating serious economic problems for some of them. Thus, the full-time workload of political mandates and offices created a functional necessity for the introduction of salaries that allowed these office-holders to live off politics. On the national level this necessity had already been acknowledged in article 71.4 of the Spanish Constitution which states that Congress members and senators will receive ‘una asignacíon’ fixed by the two chambers. It found its expression in the provisional standing orders of both the Congress and the Senate of 1979 and later in more elaborate form in the fully developed standing orders of 1982.3 Congress members and senators were to be paid a modest monthly salary plus expenses. The economic problems of local mayors and councillors were also raised in the 1979–82 period of the Congress. While one senior local politician of the 3

Article 19 of the Reglamento provisional del Congreso de los Diputados and article 38.1 of the Reglamento provisional del Senado state in identical wording that parliamentarians have the right to receive an assignment plus expenses fixed in the parliamentary budget (see Boletin Oficial de las Cortes Generales, Num 21, Día 22 de octubre de 1977, pp. 255 and 283). Article 8 of the Reglamento del Congreso speaks of an economic assignment that allows them to carry out their function in an efficient and dignified way.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 168

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

169

Catalan nationalists remembered that the CDC leadership was quite willing to take this problem to Madrid (interview Vidal), the main protagonists in these debates were the parties of the left. As in many other countries before, the social and economic position of their representatives made them recognise that this was not only a personal problem of individual office holders, but a question of democracy. They justified their demand by the need to make local politicians more independent and less susceptible to corruption, but also with the need to make sure that politics was not the exclusive realm of those who could afford the luxury of dedicating their time without making a living out of it (El País, 21 March 1979). While a communist bill4 – presented in May 1979 by the Catalan Congress member Jordi Solé Tura – explicitly demanding salaries for mayors and full-time councillors of towns above a certain population was rejected, Congress nevertheless found a way to allow local and provincial councils to pay a modest salary to its elected members. It was only in 1985 that this accord was changed into law (the Ley 7/1985 de las Bases del Régimen Local). Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (II): a rather incomplete professionalisation (1980–99)

The remuneration of members in the Catalan Parliament became an issue only after the establishment of the regional parliament in 1980. Before, the professionalisation of Catalan politics had neither been discussed in the preautonomous Generalitat under Tarradellas nor in the deliberations about the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. According to those involved at the time, this blank may again be attributed to the amount of work and the different priorities of the transition period, yet also to the fact that at that time all the main protagonists had come from a professional career in a non-political occupation they could have gone back to (interviews Espasa and Pujol).5 The economic and social regime of MCPs was developed in the context of drawing up the standing orders of the Catalan Parliament. This Reglament was elaborated by a specially created, quite high-ranking, proportionally filled committee (Comissió de Reglament Interior del Parlament)6 that had been established immediately after the inauguration of the Parliament in April 1980. 4

5

6

Proposicíon de Ley, 7 de mayo de 1979, Boletín Oficial de las Cortes Generales Serie B Num 1-I. Jordi Pujol even suggested that, out of this perspective, they may have simply forgotten to establish an adequate measure of economic support and social security. The drafting of the reglament was actually delegated to a sub-committee (ponència redactora). Their text was later discussed and amended in the full committee.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 169

20/8/09 11:51:04

170

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

The standing orders were unanimously approved in a plenary session at the end of July. During the committee deliberations the question of parliamentarians’ remuneration, other endowments, and their occupational status did not take up much time. Like many of the other provisions in the Reglament, rules concerning these questions were closely based on the model of the Spanish Congress, sometimes even following the exact wording of the provisional Congress Reglamento.7 A functionalist interpretation of this phenomenon would emphasise the similarity of circumstances at the inauguration of both parliaments. Faced with the same functional necessities (arising from the very specific situation of the transition) decision-makers reverted to the same institutional solutions (form follows function). An institutionalist account, by contrast, would definitely stress the impact of national parliamentary traditions and conventions (function follows form). And while both perspectives have something to them, it is only when complemented by an actor-centred, career sensitive approach that the black box of this institutionalisation process is illuminated: after all, it seems highly plausible that this similarity was facilitated by the fact that three of the six draftsmen of the standing orders of the Catalan Parliament had been members of the Spanish Congress at the time of establishing its provisional standing orders.8 This reading is supported by one member who remembers that, indeed, they took the standing orders of the Spanish Congress as their model when drafting the Reglament, including its provisions for parliamentarians (interview Clotas). While the regulations set in this commission provided the normative framework for the economic and social regime of MCPs, it was mainly during the rest of the first legislature that this regime was institutionalised in its more concrete form. The economic maintenance of MCPs was provided for by granting them the right to a fixed assignment (assigniació)9 plus some variable payments from the parliamentary budget (Reglament article 10) as an indemnification (indemnització) for fulfilling their function. The specification of the exact amounts was delegated to a committee of internal government (Comissió de Govern Interior) and thus to parliamentarians themselves (see Article 11). From the outset there was a consensus among the different groups that these payments should contain a modest basic salary plus some allowances to cover travel from home to the parliament (interview Clotas). Also there was never 7

8

9

Compare for example article 19.3 of Congress stranding orders with article 12 of standing orders in the Catalan Parliament. These were Alavadra (CiU), Marín i Toval (PSC) and Capdevila (UCD). For a list of committee and sub-committee members see Parlament de Catalunya (1986: 165–6). This right was later also included in the Catalan Parliament law Llei 3/1982 del Parlament, del President i del Consell Executiu de la Generalitat (article 15.2).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 170

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

171

any doubt or even debate that this salary would be set at exactly the same amount as that of Congress members. After all, this was easy to convey to the people outside (interview Ribó). The salary was indeed very modest. In 1980 the income (salary plus allowances) of MCPs amounted to about 130,000 pesetas per month (El País, 12 June 1980). This sum has been raised on an annual basis and has since been decoupled from Congress salaries. In 2008 basic salaries plus travel allowances of members in the Catalan Parliament were between €5,440 and €6,175 – just a little less than those of their Congress colleagues. The parliamentary salaries in Catalonia (and Spain) have thus remained until now on a level that allows members of parliament to live exclusively on their mandate yet hardly constitutes the salary of members of comparable professions. Yet, the relatively low income is not the main reason for speaking of an incomplete professionalisation. More important aspects are the low levels of institutional boundaries to any form of simultaneous outside employment of parliamentarians and to their almost complete dependence on prior or subsequent jobs for social security rights and entitlements. As one member of the internal government committee of the first legislature stated, from the very start the institutionalisation of the parliamentary mandate had been meant to provide members with the chance to take up their position either in a fulltime or in a part-time capacity (interview Clotas). Despite a general reference to the need to observe valid incompatibility rules and the explicit prohibition in the standing orders (article 7 and 9) of using the mandate in the pursuit of commercial, industrial or professional activities, the Catalan parliamentary mandate has de facto been made compatible with a wide range of other professional and occupational activities. The limitations Catalan regional parliamentarians have imposed on their entitlement to pursue outside office, employment and economic activities (in the Llei 3/1982 del Parlament, del President i del Consell Executiu de la Generalitat, article 11) cover only the obvious rules on the separation of powers between parliament, the judiciary, the military, and the higher administration implementing the law.10 All MCPs have to do is to declare their outside employment, simultaneous public offices and additional income to a specially created members’ statute commission (Comissió de l’Estatut dels Diputats) which is to establish the compatibility or incompatibility on a case-by-case basis at the beginning of each legislature. In general, most outside activities are granted. 10

This is in stark contrast to the rigid and detailed incompatibility norms set out for Congress members in the Spanish electoral law (see Ley Organico 5/1985 del Régimen Electoral General, articles 155–60). However, the interpretation of these rules seems to be rather liberal and generous (Matuschek 2003). In actual practice, the two systems thus do not differ very widely.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 171

20/8/09 11:51:04

172

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

The most important restriction with regard to outside income is the rule that MCPs are allowed to keep only one salary from the public purse. Thus, self-employed professionals like advocates or architects may keep their supplementary (or in some cases primary) income, while university teachers and others who carry on some occupation in the public realm have to choose. In most cases this means that MCPs renounce their parliamentary salary in favour of a higher income from universities, public companies, the local or Catalan administration, etc.11 According to the MCPs interviewed, this rather awkward system of remuneration that rewards part-time and full-time members equally, yet favours private over public supplementary activities has not caused any open conflict among members. In the first years of the parliament, though, party groups actually ran their own internal economic regime, effectively creating an unofficial system of internal differentiation by redistributing moneys from part-time to full-time members (interview Clotas). With regard to social security the Catalan Reglament has adopted the regulations of the provisional standing orders of the Congress almost word for word. According to Article 12.1 the Catalan Parliament is obliged to enter into existing contracts and to secure the payment of contributions from its own budget during the time members suspend their employment because of their mandate. Parliament’s standing orders further hint at the possibility of registering all other members in an appropriate form with social security agencies (Article 12.2). However, the Reglament did not provide for any proper parliamentary social security system and neither have MCPs developed such a system since. As a consequence the parliamentary mandate in the Catalan Parliament is a rather precarious occupation – without its own pension scheme and without automatic access to unemployment benefits. A further aspect of the institutionalisation of professional politics in the Catalan Parliament and the professionalisation of the parliamentary mandate concerns the non-financial endowment of the mandate and the working conditions provided by the institution. Again we do not find a particularly high level of professionalisation. The parliamentary mandate in the Catalan Parliament does not come with a lot of attractive perks and privileges. Apart from salary and travel expenses, MCPs merely enjoy free postage from the parliament and free travel on public transport run by the Catalan Generalitat (including motorway tolls). According to the Reglament, members were to be supported directly by a parliamentary service (especially with regard to information and documentation) and by their respective parliamentary groups (Article 13). In turn, parliamentary groups were to be granted sufficient 11

For a list of the MCPs who have renounced their parliamentary salary in favour of other public income in the first legislature see El País, 23 January 1983.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 172

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

173

infrastructural resources plus financial support from the parliamentary budget: the latter was to come in the form of a fixed assignment for each group, plus a variable payment related to its numerical strength. Again the exact amount was to be set in the committee for internal government. Until the reforms of the sixth legislature (see following section), infrastructural and staff provisions were extremely poor. There was just one meeting room and one office for the group speaker per parliamentary group. MCPs had neither an office nor any form of individual working place, nor any other facilities or modes of communication. They had to work from home or go to the Parliament Library.12 While the staff numbers of the parliamentary service were adequate to make the parliament run, there were basically no staff supporting individual members. Even the bigger groups, such as the socialists, had only two administrative staff for the whole group. However, at least this latter problem was not due to the poor financial support that the parliament granted the groups, but rather to the quite common phenomenon that a big slice of the group funding was actually channelled into the respective party organisations rather than to supporting staff for the parties’ parliamentarians.13 A final aspect reflecting the incomplete institutionalisation of the Leitbild of professional politics may be seen in the lack of transparency and codification with regard to the professionalisation and collective self-regulation of parliamentarians. Thus, MCPs are obliged to fully disclose details of their economic, political, and occupational situation to the respective parliamentary authorities, yet no such information is passed on to the general public. Furthermore, the Catalan Parliament has until recently practised a culture of secrecy, treating all internal parliamentary business including details about the remuneration of its members or the support of parliamentary parties as confidential. This Spanish parliamentary tradition was originally meant to promote and protect parliament’s autonomy vis-à-vis the crown, yet has 12

13

One MCP commented on the working conditions at the beginning of the sixth legislature: ‘we had no tables, no computers, no phone. And when I came here, I said, look, I feel myself as a university student, when I was 20, when I came here with my folder. There is a meeting, well I go to the meeting, and after the meeting, where do I go? To the library as a student, to the park, home and come back? It is the first time in forty, thirty years of professional activity, that I came to a place to work and nobody said, this is your chair, this is your desk’ (interview Vallés). This claim was made in an interview by a socialist MCP. A look at the parliamentary budget strongly supports this statement. In the first full year of the Catalan Parliament (1981), the expenditures for the salaries of 135 members amounted to 242m pesetas. Salaries of the parliamentary service personnel were much less, at 89 million. However, parliamentary groups were given a total of 150m pesetas to support the work of MCPs (Parlament de Catalunya 1986: 314).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 173

20/8/09 11:51:04

174

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

since clearly contributed to the detachment between professional politicians and the citizenry. At the same time, though, this lack of transparency reflects a lack of self-confidence with regard to acknowledging their professionalisation. In a similar manner, members of the Catalan parliament may be seen to follow particular norms and standards,14 their institutionalisation, though, has not yet taken the form of a formal and binding code of conduct. Thus, while institutionalised practices (regular payments, behavioural norms etc.) clearly differentiate Catalan regional parliamentarians as a distinct kind of political professionals, any orientating function of the Leitbild of professionalisation is compromised by its official concealment. Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (III): modest institutional reform (1999–2005)

It was not before 1999 – and thus nearly 20 years after the inauguration of the Catalan Parliament – that this original institutionalisation of MCPs’ economic and working regime had become the object of any reform initiative. In the sixth legislature (1999–2003), however, parliamentarians eventually made deliberate attempts to improve their economic situation and working conditions. In this period, MCPs accomplished two important reforms with regard to their remuneration. The most important change was the introduction of complementary payments for the bearers of internal offices, replacing a system of uniform salaries. The new system consisted of seven salary bands plus four bands of travel allowances. The highest ‘complemento’ is, of course, paid to the Parliament’s president, followed by the vice-presidents and presidents of parliamentary groups, the Mesa secretaries and the group speakers, the deputy speakers, the committee presidents and finally the committee vice-presidents and committee secretaries. This new form of payment represented a marked differentiation of salary scales, as an ‘ordinary’ parliamentarian now earned just about two-thirds of the third category (mesa secretaries and group speakers) and less than half of the president’s salary. MCPs have thus erected an internal hierarchy of offices, establishing new prospects of career advancement within the legislature. However, as the number of additionally remunerated offices is very large, this also represents a considerable salary increase for the majority of parliamentarians.15 This new form of remuneration was of course 14

15

Those with experience at both levels portray the behaviour of members in the Catalan Parliament as more self-contained and civilised and less expressive and adversary than that in the Spanish Congress (interviews Rigol and Ribó). In March 2005 there were 7 offices in the presiding board of the parliament (1 president, 2 vice-presidents and 4 secretaries), 24 committees with a total of about

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 174

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

175

additional to the usual annual rise of salaries and allowances. Despite the rather inaccurate information with regard to the exact sums paid, it does seem fair to state that between the beginning of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh legislature MCPs granted themselves the biggest ever pay rise. Since then, salaries have further risen and salary scales have become even more differentiated.16 At the end of the sixth legislature MCPs also agreed to prolong the payment of their salaries from the end of the parliamentary activities to the actual election day. This agreement was taken by the Mesa of the Parliament and later unanimously ratified in the committee of internal government. It means that MCPs are paid two more months per legislature. However, the net-effect for most MCPs will probably be small, as some parties seem to have compensated them for their lack of parliamentary income during the final weeks of the election campaign (El País, 14 July 2003). Thus, what looks like another pay rise for parliamentarians in effect amounts to a welcome relief for overstrained party coffers at election times. A third attempt to reform the economic regime of MCPs was rejected in this legislature. In their aim to bring more transparency to the parliament, the MCPs of Ciutadans pel Canvi had asked the presiding board of the parliament to lift the veil of secrecy from the deliberations in the committee of

16

60 to 70 offices and 15 offices in parliamentary groups (5 parliamentary groups with 3 office bearers each). In contrast to the supplementary payments, these offices are not incompatible with each other. However, apart from the presiding officers of the mesa who also presided over the three non-legislative committees, there is very little office accumulation within the parliament. Given that some MCPs are also members of the government, the total of 80–90 parliamentary offices for 135 members should provide a majority of them with an internal office. According to El País (23 January 2000) salaries in 2000 were at 5.7m pesetas a year plus 100,000 on allowances a month. Converted to 12 months and into euros, this amounts to €2,855 plus €600 and thus to about €3,455 per month per member. Compared to later information in the same newspaper (see below) and to the first official information by the Generalitat (see also below) this figure almost certainly overestimated the fixed salary at the expense of the allowances. In 2003 El País (14 July 2003) wrote of sources that reported the fixed monthly salary at €2,250. In my own interviews, MCPs and experts spoke unanimously of about €3,000–3,500 per month (interviews Pau, Vendrell, Riera). In February 2004 the parliament made public its payments to MCPs for the first time ever. At that time the fixed basic salary per member was €2,728 paid for 14 months (thus €3,183 per 12 months), the travel allowances paid for 12 months were between €1,349 and €1,899, plus functional complements of between €332 and €2,437 (La Vanguardia, 5 February 2004). Converted to a 12-month payment regime, members thus received between €4,500 (back-bencher with no parliamentary office) and €9,567 (parliament president). In 2008 this wage band ranged from €5,441 to €15,280 (Parlament de Catalunya 2008) .

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 175

20/8/09 11:51:04

176

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

internal governance regarding parliamentary salaries. They were rebuffed twice on formal grounds. Instead of suspending this concrete provision on an individual basis (as had been done with other provisions), the presiding board put off changes until there was time for a thorough revision of the whole standing orders, effectively killing the initiative. According to one of the main protagonists in this debate, resistance to this reform had not been a strictly partisan matter, but had come from long-standing parliamentarians of all groups unwilling to have their internal regime changed by these smartalec outsiders (interview Vallés). As a consequence this anachronistic feature of Catalan parliamentarianism lasted for one more legislative period until, in 2004, a PSC/CpC-led parliament finally did away with it (La Vanguardia, 5 February 2004). Even more important than any changes to MCPs’ financial allocations, though, were the improvements in their working conditions. One crucial legal precondition for modifications in the internal architecture of the parliament was the transfer of the parliament building from the City of Barcelona to the parliament itself. When in the sixth legislature this stumbling block was finally moved out of the way, the building was adapted to increase the working space of MCPs and parliamentary groups. Each group was assigned another part of the building. For the first time MCPs got their own desk to work from. In general, three MCPs share one office, though leading members of the groups enjoy the privilege of their own private office. In addition to the newly assigned office space, the provision of additional infrastructure included mobile phones and portable computers for each member. Taken together, these reforms – realised within one single legislature – profoundly changed the way Catalan MCPs had worked ever since the inauguration of the parliament (as acknowledged by all MCPs interviewed). Another enhancement in terms of institutional professionalisation has come via a quite significant rise in the financial support for parliamentary groups. This rise has resulted in a much improved staff support for parliamentarians. In 2003 the PSC group employed between 12 and 14 staff (up from 2) (interview Vallés), CiU still only had 5–6 (interview Riera), while the smaller groups had only 2 or 3. Starting from next to no staff at all, this augmentation of staff support has been seen as a central aspect of the professionalisation of the Catalan Parliament (interview Ribó). Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (IV): explaining the diffident attitude of MCPs

From a political class perspective this result is clearly in need of explanation. After all, the analysis of Catalan political careers (see previous chapter) has

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 176

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

177

Table 4.1 Evaluation of remuneration, resources and support Q: According to your experience, how do you evaluate the following characteristics? Answers in %, n = 50–58 Too high Parliamentary salaries MCPs’ allowances Financial assistance to parliamentary groups Support by parliamentary staff Infrastructural provisions

Adequate

Too low

0 3.6 2

69 50 58

31 46.4 40

0 0

64.8 50

35.2 50

shown that there is a considerable share of full-time and long-term politicians among MCPs with an objective interest in adequate salary levels, social security, and other forms of office endowments. And indeed, in my survey of 2003 – and thus just after major improvements with regard to their social and occupational situation – there was still a significant level of discontent among MCPs: depending on which concrete aspect the question is aimed at, between a third and half of all respondents perceived their level of resource endowment as too low (see table 4.1). Even stronger levels of dissatisfaction have been shown in interviews with the more senior and experienced parliamentarians from all parties. The institutionalisation of the regime that governs the social and economic conditions of members of the Catalan Parliament is almost unanimously perceived as seriously flawed. Central representatives of all political formations – including the bearers of the highest political offices of the Catalan political system (such as President Pujol and the president of the parliament Rigol) – deplore the rather low level of professionalisation in the Catalan Parliament and beyond (especially with regard to local government). Evaluations range from general statements of discontent with the situation (Pujol, Rigol) to more explicit judgements such as ‘an error’ (Clotas), ‘a serious problem’ (Sirera), or ‘a badly solved issue’ (Huguet).17 Interestingly, the normative ideal from which the current situation is judged does not diverge that much between them. In contrast to their own situation as long-term parliamentarians, the critique is still based on the idea of the parliamentary mandate as a temporary position in an occupational career that is not necessarily dedicated exclusively to politics. Nevertheless, their approval of higher salaries, increased institutional support, full-time rather 17

Originally ‘un error’, ‘un problema grave’ and ‘un tema . . . mal solucionado’.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 177

20/8/09 11:51:04

178

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

than part-time dedication, and the introduction of social security schemes clearly amounts to a form of professionalisation. Such a professionalisation of the mandate is advocated mainly in general terms of democratic theory. Higher salaries are portrayed as a matter of reflecting and promoting the dignity of democratic politics (Rigol) as well as a matter of fairness to parliamentarians, whose job carries a higher responsibility and higher time-demands than many (other) professions. Higher salaries are also argued for in order to improve the social inclusiveness of political recruitment towards the upper end of the social and educational scale (Rigol), while measures to improve social security and to facilitate the return to non-political occupations would attract a broader share of the wage-earning population (Huguet). The latter are also seen to improve the social responsiveness of representatives, as it would make them less dependent on the continuation of their parliamentary career and thus more independent from their parties (Espasa, Ribó). The same overall purpose of enhancing the responsiveness of parliamentarians is ascribed to an increased full-time dedication of MCPs (Sirera) and to measures that are improving their institutional support (Rigol). Given the common discontent of MCPs – but also their high capacity for self-regulation and their ability to argue the case for professionalisation not only in terms of self-interest but also in terms of democratic theory – one has to ask: why is it that Catalan politicians have failed to institutionalise higher levels of professionalisation into their parliamentary regime? The most common explanations for this failure given by major political protagonists are the special circumstances in the young, post-dictatorial Spanish democracy and the fear of the mass media and the electorate. The apparent lack of democratic tradition and democratic culture (the argument goes) means that the public is extremely sceptical if not outright hostile to politicians in general and the concept of political professionalisation in particular (interviews Pujol, Rigol, Clotas, Huguet, Simó, etc.). However, while this argument is highly plausible, it can only be part of the explanation. After all, a critical public and hostile media are conditions that did not prevent farreaching professionalisation processes from happening in many other countries, while to argue that the transition stipulations have completely bound political actors for twenty years and more is taking the path dependency argument too far. After all, the Basque as well as the Andalusian parliament have recently decided to introduce pensions for their members (El País, 8 December 2004), and the Andalusian one has even forced its members to accept a full-time dedication to their mandate (El País, 9 February 2005). These general explanations, thus, have to be complemented by additional deliberations based on more specific aspects of Catalan politics and the Catalan political class. The first one is related to the career patterns of MCPs. As the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 178

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

179

empirical study in chapter 3 has shown, apart from a hard core of full-time and long-term parliamentarians the Catalan Parliament contains a significant share of short-term members (often serving just one legislature), while others hold political and even non-political occupations simultaneously to their mandate. With regard to the first group it seems obvious that those with a short-term perspective won’t be the ones with a strong vested interest in the long-term improvement of the economic regime in the parliament. This holds even more so for the part-timers with an outside occupation (whether political or not) which they do not want to give up. Any move towards a higher degree of professionalisation of the parliamentary mandate – whether in the form of higher salaries, pensions, increasing time demands etc. – would make their hybrid position decreasingly tenable. Similarly, an increasing professionalisation of the parliamentary mandate would deprive parties of large parts of their publicly paid personnel, since politicians who are fully professionalised as parliamentarians would have less time for party work than before. Thus, the heterogeneity of social positions and career expectations among MCPs seems to be obstructing any convergence of their self-interest with regard to the professionalisation of the mandate. A second, very important factor is the long-term embeddedness of the two main parties in the regional and local executives. The fact that the two main formations had reliable long-term access to executive power at different territorial levels has clearly further undermined the relatively weak position of the Catalan Parliament in a political system that had been executive dominated from the very start. The lack of government alternation between 1980 and 2003 had turned CDC and UDC into the parties of the Catalan state.18 With the whole Generalitat administration to back up their policy production, they simply had no strong interest in extending infrastructural and staff support for members of parliament and parliamentary groups, as this would only strengthen the opposition parties. The socialists on the other hand, as the main opposition party, were not going to invest too much effort into a parliament dominated by a government majority, especially as long as they could rely on their command of the large city halls – above all that of Barcelona, as a power and resource base. If the government was not going to lead in this question, clearly the socialists and other opposition parties were not that keen to take all the blame for such an initiative (interview Clotas, but also Sirera). The lack of any strong parliamentary actor to push for the professionalisation of the parliament as an institution has thus been partly the consequence of 18

In many respects the term ‘stateless nation’ is not correct. While Catalonia is no independent nation-state, it is difficult to perceive the Generalitat as anything other than a state institution.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 179

20/8/09 11:51:04

180

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the dyadic opportunity structure in Catalonia (see the second section of this chapter). It is thus no coincidence that the reforms of the sixth legislature which produced a modest professionalisation of both mandate and institution happened at a time when both these factors – the heterogeneity of career interests and the dyadic partisan division of opportunity structures – were in some form of decline. As discovered in the previous chapter, the level of individual political professionalisation of MCPs has been increasing since the establishment of the parliament. By 1999 a new generation of politicians had found their way into the parliament – politicians who had no experience of the clandestine struggle against the Franco regime and who had not made their name in some form of civic occupation but had rather pursued a predominantly, if not exclusively, political career since leaving university. Such an increase in the individual professionalisation of parliamentarians tends to lead towards a greater social and occupational homogeneity among them and to the convergence of their career interests. It thus represents a constant undercurrent in favour of institutional and office professionalisation. Arguably, the main trigger for the reforms, however, came from the electoral result of 1999. In a very close election the CiU parties beat the PSC in terms of seats won, yet on a lower share of votes than their rivals. For the first time since 1984 they had no parliamentary majority and had to form a minority government tolerated by the PP. This new situation changed parliamentary life profoundly. As legislative outcomes were far from predetermined, parliament had regained real decision-making capacity from the executive. In this situation the interest of the PSC in the Catalan Parliament grew considerably, as they were not only able to win votes against the government but also hoped to prepare for a change of government at the next election. Their demands for a more effective and professional institution were supported by a new breed of career politicians from across party groups (interviews Vallés, Sirera), who were interested in improving their own socio-economic position as well as their working conditions. Finally, an important impulse for the reforms is said to have come from two individual politicians who brought into their new career first-hand experience of institutional regimes with a much higher level of professionalisation: Pasqual Maragall, the 1999 candidate of the PSC and their new parliamentary leader, and Joan Rigol (UDC), the new president of the Catalan Parliament. As one of his allies pointed out, in his time as mayor of Barcelona Pasqual Maragall was accustomed to commanding a whole administration with no shortage of staff and infrastructure. When he arrived in an institution with nearly no resources, he immediately started a campaign to improve the working conditions and resource levels, knowing that both were necessary in

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 180

20/8/09 11:51:04

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

181

order to challenge the government effectively and to successfully promote the PSC as a government in waiting (interview Vallés). The other person credited with a pivotal role in this process was thethen-new president of the Catalan Parliament, Joan Rigol (interview Sirera). Having just arrived from serving as a vice-president in the Spanish Senate, he too had some first-hand experience of an organisation providing moreadequate support for its members. As a consensual type of politician, known for his conciliar character and public-mindedness rather than for aggressive partisanship (Bru de Sala 2003),19 his main intention as the parliament’s president was to improve the internal working of the institution and the relationship between parliament and society. For him, modern infrastructure and adequate staff support were means to improving the representative role of parliamentarians – i.e. their capacity to engage with the outside world (interview Rigol). Taken together, we may conclude that the institutionalisation of professional politics in the Catalan Parliament has been strongly conditioned by the specific circumstances of the transition period in the first place, and by the specific characteristics of Catalan career patterns and opportunity structures that have developed since. Together, this has resulted in a rather incomplete pattern of professionalisation. While the functional necessity to grant parliamentarians a living has been met from the beginning, it took twenty years before any significant changes to this rather rudimentary regime were made. Yet, even though the reforms of the sixth legislature have clearly enhanced the degree of professionalisation, they remain limited in many respects. Thus, despite the emergence of full-time and long-term career politicians (see previous chapter), reform measures still adhere to the orientating Leitbild of a temporary politician with an outside occupation to go back to (or even to pursue simultaneously). The main changes in terms of infrastructural and staff support represent a professionalisation of the institution (the Catalan Parliament) rather than the office (the parliamentary mandate). And even the measures that do represent a further professionalisation of the parliamentary mandate – the increase in and differentiation of remunerations and personal endowments – remain compatible with the Leitbild of a temporary parliamentarian: MCPs are still not paid according to the salary scales of comparable professions, there are still no formal regulations or informal conventions to rule out simultaneous outside employment, and there is still no proper 19

Rigol seems to have paid a price for his consensual interpretation of the president’s office. In 2003 he was eliminated from the CiU list (in 1999 he had been in third position), as his colleagues from within his own party have apparently interpreted his efforts to show the outmost partisan neutrality, as giving favours to their opponents (La Vanguardia, 22 June 2003).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 181

20/8/09 11:51:04

182

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

parliamentary social security system in terms of pensions or unemployment benefits. Furthermore, MCPs have not even been able to introduce severance payments, although these would fall completely in line with such a Leitbild. Securing career maintenance

In general, the theory of political class purports that professional politicians are striving to continue their political careers. As shown in chapter 2, this holds also for members of the Catalan Parliament. According to my survey only very few MCPs want to leave politics after completing their current mandate (8 per cent), while a large majority (more than 70 per cent) want to continue their career in the Catalan Parliament. However, this contrasts with the high turnover and a relatively high number of short-term members in the Catalan Parliament. Obviously there is a discrepancy between personal ambitions and the de-facto career opportunities of MCPs. Apparently this discrepancy is creating insecurity and anxiety among Catalan regional parliamentarians: 66.1 per cent of MCPs believe that the possibility of losing one’s mandate is a general concern to their colleagues, while 26.8 per cent even say this possibility concerns them greatly. Only 7 per cent stated that it is of little or no concern to them. Asked about the direction of the major threat to a continuation of their parliamentary career, MCPs make it quite clear that it is not public election but inner party selection they fear. One interviewee openly admitted that during the last weeks or even months before the completion of the party lists, the discussions among parliamentarians are dominated by speculations of who will be kept, who will be promoted, and who will be abandoned (interview C8). Of course, individual MCPs pursue their own strategies to safeguard their parliamentary careers. The two most important strategies seem to consist of either developing a strong policy expertise in a particular area or a strong local presence (in party and public) in order to secure a strong backing from a territorial sub-organisation of the party. Yet both these strategies have to be complemented by good relations and strict loyalty to the party leadership (interviews Campuzano, Espasa, Riera). Sometimes friends in high list positions – and with direct personal relations to the leadership – can be helpful. However, as the party leadership is deliberately replacing a fairly large part of its parliamentary contingent in order to allow for a certain renovation within its group,20 not all these individual strategies can be successful. Interview 20

According to the speaker of the socialist group, a long-term parliamentary career is only for ‘outstanding leaders’. By contrast, most ordinary MCPs in his group accept that they have entered into an unwritten compact with the party, which

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 182

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

183

partners from both of the major political forces in Catalonia have strongly stressed the element of arbitrariness and the highly personalised character of the candidate nomination process (interviews C4, C5, C6, C8). Following the political class theory, such a recurrent frustration of individual ambitions would cause incumbents to make collective attempts to change the rules of the game in order to introduce some safeguard to their careers or at least some mechanisms that favour them over challengers from the outside. Basically, there are two institutional mechanisms to look at in this respect: the electoral system and the intra-party selection process. In the following, they will be dealt with one after the other. Since their first celebration in 1980, elections to the Catalan Parliament have been based on the major parameters set out in the Spanish electoral law. While the respective transitional regulation in the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (Dispocicion Transitori Quarta) was meant to be superseded shortly by a proper electoral law for Catalonia, the system has not been changed since, nor has it been transferred into Catalan law. As a result, Catalonia remains the only Autonomous Community without its own electoral law. The major stumbling-block for a proper Catalan legislation has long been the partisan conflict over the distribution of seats to the four Catalan provinces. The current system favours the three rural provinces Girona, Lleida and Tarragona over the most highly populated province of Barcelona, and thus favours the nationalist parties (especially CiU) – with their stronghold in small towns – over the parties of the left which dominate the metropolitan conglomerate. However, since the 1999 elections, when CiU remained the strongest parliamentary group despite winning a lower share of votes than their socialist rivals, the reform debate has gained momentum. In terms of its content, the debate has clearly moved on since the transition: in spite of the deliberate decision for a closed list PR system in the late 1970, all serious reform proposals since the late 1990s include some form of direct election of candidates in single-member constituencies.21 From a political class perspective this development needs explanation, as the direct election of individual politicians (rather than a party list) represents an external challenge to its autonomy and its capacity for self-perpetuation. After all, the closed list system is in theory the one that comes closest to the

21

includes a tacit agreement that regional politics is only for one or two periods (interview Nadal). In article 27 of its party statutes, the PSC has even introduced the target of limiting all public offices and mandates to three consecutive periods (though this provision is not legally binding) (PSC 2000: 46). Cf. the unsuccessful PSC bill in the Catalan Parliament (La Vanguardia, 21 January 2003) and the CiU model – the first in 23 years of government – presented just before the 2003 elections (La Vanguardia, 10 October 2003)

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 183

20/8/09 11:51:05

184

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

collective interests of a political class, as parliamentarians can effectively be immunised from the unpredictable decisions of the voters, and the recruitment and selection of parliamentarians remains almost completely within the political class itself. However, with the way the system is operating in Spain and Catalonia, this immunisation from the public electorate is bought dearly by the almost complete dependence on a party selectorate that is not only much less predictable than the voters’ choice, but that is also routinely replacing parliamentarians – providing for highly insecure parliamentary careers. Clearly a direct relationship with the voters would strengthen the position of most incumbents when it comes to the re-selection procedure. However, as my interviews with MCPs have shown, the drive for such a reform has not come from the parliamentary base of the parties, where most members have resigned themselves to this system. Instead, the impetus for electoral reform has mainly come from outside the major political parties. In the light of a consolidated representative democracy, civic groups, academics and minor parties were starting to criticise an electoral system that had fulfilled its task of creating strong political parties, but was now seen to give undue control to parties and the party leadership in the selection of the political personnel.22 From this perspective, the widespread promotion of a mixed system, where some members of parliament are elected directly and others via a party list (drawing from the German model) by the party leaders, can be seen as an attempt to broaden the base of legitimacy without giving away too much control. As a result, we may witness the paradoxical outcome that the participatory demands of the general public are leading to an electoral system that might even strengthen the career security of a majority of incumbents.23 A second, more direct avenue for collective attempts to secure incumbents’ continuous career ambitions is directed to the parties’ internal system of candidate nominations. So, do we find any reforms in this respect, and can these reforms be traced back to an attempt of sitting MCPs to safeguard their career interests? To draw a detailed map of the selection and nomination procedures in each party is a highly complex task. The party statutes usually 22

23

Even Joaquim Molins (CC, CiU), who had been a member of the opposition committee that negotiated central constitutional planks – including the electoral system – with Suarez in the first place (1976), clearly recognises that the closed-list system had been a response to the specific demands of the transition period, and that it has to some extent lost its rationale today (interview Molins). Matland and Studlar (2004) have demonstrated that re-election rates are significantly higher in majoritarian than in proportional electoral systems. More recently, Philip Manow (2007) has shown that in the German Mixed Member System the direct constituency members stand a better re-election chance than their list colleagues. The best of all worlds, however, is for those standing both as direct consituency candidate and on the list.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 184

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

185

do not tell much about this process (for example CDC and ICV in their 1992 statutes do not mention this process at all, ICPS 1997) and if so, the formal procedures laid down in the statutes rarely correspond to the de-facto decision-making process behind them. Also, there is no academic literature on this question. A comprehensive analysis of procedures in all parties and the respective changes over time is therefore clearly beyond the scope of this study. Instead, I will concentrate on some recent changes to the nomination system within one of the two major political forces, the PSC, because this party has undergone the most extensive change of all. The most significant reforms of the selection process in the PSC were realised during the latter half of the 1990s. At that time the public image of the national party (PSOE) – discredited by a lost election and corruption scandals – was at its lowest. In Catalonia, where recurrent defeats at the autonomous elections had already stimulated a debate about how to broaden the electoral appeal of the party, some party intellectuals (notably Ernest Maragall, El País, 24 April 1998) began to promote a strategy to open up party structures in order to reach out into Catalan society. Various measures in this respect have been implemented since. The first was the introduction of primary elections among party members and supporters in the process of nominating front-runners for the provincial lists at regional and national elections as well as for mayoral candidates in major cities. A little later the successful top candidate for the Catalan elections, Pasqual Maragall, opened up party lists to independents of various professional and academic backgrounds. At the regional elections of 1999 he even toyed with the idea of abandoning the PSC label altogether. At the PSC Congress of 2000 the party finally introduced a gender quota for party offices and candidatures and (soft) term limits for parliamentary and executive mandates. Contrary to the political class theory, these reforms can hardly be seen as driven by the career interest of socialist parliamentarians. After all, the intrusion of outsiders and the introduction of primaries, gender quotas and term limits are challenging rather than securing the position of incumbents. Instead, they reflect general demands to be found in most other industrial societies as a reaction to the very detachment of the political process and the political class. At the time of transition, when Catalan parties were founded, these were not issues at all. But Spanish and Catalan society have changed. And these social changes have been able to challenge the old party-hierarchy-based Leitbild of personal recruitment. Due to the effort of some individuals with a genuine belief in them, but also very much due to their electoral appeal, some of these new values have found their way into the PSC recruitment process. However, a closer look at these ‘progressive’ reforms also reveals that they have neither ended the dominance of the party leadership in the recruitment

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 185

20/8/09 11:51:05

186

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

and selection process nor have incumbents been left totally unprotected. Thus, primaries are only held for top candidates (leaving almost all parliamentarians unaffected), they are indicative rather than binding in character, and, above all, they are not held if there is an incumbent in place. Similarly the introduced ‘term limit’ is rather soft as it is formulated as a general guideline rather than a strict and binding rule, and it amounts to three full consecutive terms. Furthermore, it applies only to mandates won after the rule was set in place – a clear concession to incumbents, who are effectively allowed three more terms in their respective post. Ironically, cross-over candidates from outside the party ranks – the very symbol of the renovation of the PSC lists – have remained completely dependent on the patronage of the party leadership (El País, 21 August 2003, 25 August 2003). And indeed, with the resignation of Maragall (in 2006), party hacks were already forcing out his non-party allies. Taken together, we may state that control over candidate nomination has not been dispersed from the political class into society. Yet neither have incumbent parliamentarians succeeded in protecting their career interests from the control of their own party leadership. So why is it that Catalan MCPs have not only failed to take the initiative in drawing up their own electoral law – with all the opportunities to weave in clauses favouring their own career interests – but also constantly failed to take greater advantage of their incumbency position within the inner party (re-)nomination process? One reason for this failure to pursue their collective professional self-interest may indeed be seen in the strength of the normative ideal of the non-professionalised temporary politician (as against a long-term professional politician with no outside occupation). Despite their own personal ambitions to the contrary, this ideal of the citizen politician may still be affecting their own self-consciousness and thus their capacity to institutionalise any mechanisms directed against them. However, perhaps more important in this respect is the fact that this ideal seems to be especially perpetuated by those who most clearly infringe upon it – i.e. party leaders (see above). Their interest in keeping control of the composition of their parliamentary groups coincides with their interest in enhancing the legitimisation of the political class vis-à-vis the general public by adherence to the citizen politician ideal and by demonstrating its capacity for (democratic) renewal. Another answer to this question may stress parliamentarians’ socialisation and their internalisation of the Leitbild of a strong party and a strong party leadership. While in my interviews MCPs sometimes deplored the lack of inner-party democracy as well as the arbitrariness of leadership decisions, most of them nevertheless accepted the validity of the principle. For some it is only ‘logical’ that the number 1 on the list gets to pick his team of confidants (interview Mejias) as he (indeed, there has never been a female number 1)

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 186

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

187

has to work with them for the rest of the parliamentary period. Others do not stress the functionality of the principle but its results in terms of representation. Young and female candidates, as well as non-party activists, would hardly get a chance on a list drawn up inside the party apparatus (interview Campuzano). Finally, some of the current incumbents feel much more secure with the leadership than with their party base. As one very experienced former parliamentarian remarked: ‘They have more confidence in the decision of Pujol, than in the decision of the party’ (interview Molins). And indeed any system based on local party control would see many incumbents challenged by local party leaders. The final, and arguably the most important reason why MCPs put up with their highly insecure parliamentary career, though, may be seen in their heterogeneous ambitions and opportunity structures (see previous chapter). While some MCPs feel quite secure in their parliamentary career because of the leadership-based nomination system, others do not mind leaving politics and going back to a private occupation (although both groups are a minority). The rest may be pretty insecure with regard to their parliamentary mandate yet, as a hard-working and loyal parliamentarian, chances to continue their political career, even in a professional capacity, are not that bad, as the party leadership disposes of a high number of elected and unelected positions at different territorial levels and in different organisations. Thus, the fact that so far there have been no collective attempts to establish institutional mechanisms that allow for the career maintenance of parliamentarians does not necessarily mean that there is no political class at work. In fact, as we will see in the following sections, this class has been quite successfully implanting powerful mechanisms of career maintenance, yet these mechanisms are focused on the political career in general and not on the career in one institution alone. The low priority of institutionalising secure parliamentary careers reflects to a large extent the fact that the Catalan political class consists of professional politicians with a much wider structure of opportunities than professional parliamentarians. Defending and expanding the institutional realm of the regional parliament

In contrast to the Scottish Parliament (see later in this chapter), the Catalan Parliament had been granted extensive powers over the regulation of its own institutional affairs from the very start. Despite these competencies, though, MCPs have voluntarily installed an executive-dominated parliamentary system highly similar to the model established at the Spanish level. In some areas, they have even failed altogether to make use of their autonomous

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 187

20/8/09 11:51:05

188

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

self-regulatory powers (e.g. with regard to the electoral law, see previous section). Nevertheless, when it comes to defending the parliament’s autonomy and competencies vis-à-vis the central state or to arguing for their expansion, Catalan regional parliamentarians show a remarkable unity: in my 2003 survey of MCPs, for example, only a tiny minority (less than 10 per cent) saw no need for an expansion of the parliament’s competencies. As their previous record in institutional imitation clearly suggests, this unity, is less driven by a collective self-interest of Catalan regional parliamentarians in enhancing their capacity to regulate their own opportunity structure (a capacity which has always been very extensive, yet has hardly been used creatively), than by an ambition to enhance the capacity to regulate Catalan society by its own system of self-government, the Generalitat, and to uphold this system within the Spanish polity. As the-then opposition politician Joaquim Nadal (PSC) frankly acknowledged, collective Catalan efforts to protect and strengthen its self-government were hardly ever concerned with the parliament. Instead, ‘parliament is only an instrument to arrive at more capacity for government’ (interview Nadal). What is at stake in the territorial politics with the Spanish state is the power of the Generalitat as a whole, and thus, given its internal power structure, mainly the power of the Catalan government. As such, this common objective is mainly a function of the widespread Catalanist creed among MCPs. After all, in Catalonia there is not only a strong contingent of nationalist parties (CiU and ERC together hold a majority of mandates), Catalanism is also fairly prevalent within the parties of the left – and even the PP has recently become less anti-Catalanist. However, this does not mean that such an objective is necessarily devoid of any professional self-interest. Instead, in the matter of defending and expanding Catalan selfgovernment, the general regionalist attitude of MCPs is neatly tying in with their professional self-interest (and that of other professional politicians in Catalonia): increasing the Catalan capacity for self-government is increasing the non-material rewards of a Catalan political career, i.e. power and status. Any increase in Catalan autonomy, though, has to be accomplished in a political and sometimes juridical process of conflict and in negotiations with central state institutions, most notably the Spanish Cortes and the Spanish government. This form of territorial politics, though, is highly politicised. Thus, any potential common self-interest among Catalan politicians is superimposed by strongly held beliefs with regard to the ideal power balance between the region and the central state, as well as by party political considerations and the need of party politicians to play to their constituencies. As said before, high-politics decisions are rarely the natural habitat of a political class, let alone a regional political class.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 188

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

189

The role of the Catalan parliament, and the form of Catalan interest representation in protecting and enhancing its system of self-government have varied considerably over time. The first phase of original institution-building consisted largely in implementing the statutory norms set out in the Spanish constitution and the Catalan statute of autonomy. Though accompanied by a joint commission (with an equal number of members nominated by the Catalan and central state government) this rolling transfer of competencies from the Spanish state to the Catalan autonomous community was marked by a high level of confrontation between the two levels of government.24 The strong consensus in the Catalan Parliament to establish a system of Catalan self-government that would be both extensive and unified was met by a rather reluctant centrist government at the Spanish level. Legislation and resolutions of the Catalan Parliament with the effect of expanding the institutional realm of the Generalitat contained such issues as the transfer of power from provincial authorities to the regional government, the request for Catalan representation in public enterprises owned or controlled by the Spanish state, the establishment of a Catalan public broadcasting company or disputing the right of central government to set electoral rules for local government elections in Catalonia. Though to the immediate benefit of the Catalan government rather than the parliament, these bills and motions had frequently been initiated by the opposition parties PSC and PSUC or by a common initiative of all parliamentary groups. They were often passed unanimously or almost unanimously. Thus far, this early phase could, indeed, be interpreted as a confrontation between the regional and the national political class. However, the boundaries between these two classes were not always that clear-cut. This became particularly obvious in the most famous dispute of this period of Spanish territorial politics: the case of the LOAPA. The Ley Orgánica por la Armonización del proceso Autonómico (LOAPA) was an organic law of the Spanish Parliament, passed in July 1982 by the UCD government in conjunction with the PSOE opposition in order to harmonise and to confine the Spanish process of regionalisation. As this law would have questioned central achievements relating to Catalan autonomy, including its special status vis-à-vis normal ACs, the Catalan Parliament reacted immediately with a resolution to refer the act to the constitutional court for judicial 24

The confrontational character of this period is perhaps best shown by looking at the number of conflicts in the constitutional court. In the first 10 years of its existence, the Catalan Autonomous Communities had referred 180 Spanish government decisions to the constitutional court for litigation. In the same time, there were 99 referrals from central government against Catalan decisions. Catalonia was thus the AC with by far the highest number of constitutional appeals in both directions (Sala 2005).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 189

20/8/09 11:51:05

190

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

review (Resolution 63/I of the Catalan Parliament, passed 31 of July 1982). The resolution had been initiated by the parliamentary groups of CiU, ERC and PSUC and was passed without dissenting votes, because PSC and CC–UCD – the sister parties of the Spanish parties responsible for LOAPA – abstained. In the Spanish Congress, however, PSC members had voted in favour of the law, although reluctantly. In compliance with the PSOE group, yet in explicit disobedience to the PSC party executive, the PSC Congress group leader, Ernest Lluch, had even failed to present critical amendments drafted by the PSC executive. This infamous public demonstration of the PSC’s division between Catalanism and loyalty to their socialist sister party became an important reference point in Catalan party politics – one which has deeply harmed the party’s credentials in the Catalan arena.25 Party political differences became more important during the second half of the 1980s. With the PSOE taking over the Spanish government at the end of 1982, the PSC moved on further from its Catalanist to its Spanish pole. A little later, in 1984, CiU won its first absolute majority in Catalonia. In this situation, the confrontation over Catalonia’s institutional autonomy took on the form of a confrontation between the two parties in government: CiU v. PSOE. This confrontation was prolonged into the Catalan Parliament, where CiU and the PSC were the main opponents. The defence and the projection of Catalan institutions vis-à-vis the Spanish state had ceased to be a collective project of the Catalan political class. Instead, by the end of the 1980s, CiU had taken on the role of the main protagonist in this battle. This new pattern had clearly been facilitated by the changes in government composition and the structure of electoral competition, yet it was hardly inevitable. In fact, high-ranking figures both from within CiU (e.g. Joan Rigol, UDC) and from the Catalan left (Rafael Ribó, PSUC/ICV) have repeatedly proposed forming a common Catalan front in negotiations with the Spanish state, but were rejected by president Pujol, who obviously feared the loss of CiU’s, and his own, hegemonic position (McRoberts 2001) . This tendency was even accelerated when another electoral outcome triggered a new phase in the territorial politics between Catalonia and Spanish central government. In the 1993 Spanish election the PSOE had lost its absolute majority and had become dependent on the support of Catalan and Basque nationalists to stay in government. This new pivotal role of CiU in 25

In 1983 the constitutional court finally ruled that LOAPA was unconstitutional, both in its character as organic law and in 14 of its 38 articles. The PSC’s complete loss of credibility over this question was demonstrated when the affirmation of the PSC spokesman – that his group had been pleased with this decision – was met by laughter and mutterings in the plenary of the Catalan Parliament (El País, 22 May 1984).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 190

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

191

the Spanish arena – that continued under the PP government of 1996 and to a lesser degree even after 2000 – allowed CiU to move on from a confrontational style to a strategy of pactism. In this phase, CiU – most notably the Catalan president Jordi Pujol in conjunction with his respective Congress group leaders – became virtually the sole interlocutor between Catalonia and the Spanish state. Publicly fought battles were replaced by behind-the-scenes negotiations. Due to CiUs comfortable position and the finesse of Pujol as negotiator, this strategy reaped considerable concessions from both socialist and conservative governments. The beginning of the latest phase in this relationship was marked by the outcome of the Catalan election of 2003 and the Spanish election of 2004. The investiture of a socialist government in Madrid and a socialist-led government in Barcelona – the first-ever party political concordance of the two governments – opened up a new window of opportunity for institutional politics. Keen to emphasise its Catalanist roots and to demonstrate the failures of the outgoing CiU government, the PSC – supported by its allies from ICV and ERC – embarked on an ambitious programme of institutional reform, culminating in the development of a new Statute of Autonomy. Although all parties except the PP agreed on the need to provide a new constitutional base for Catalan autonomy, the actual process of drafting a proposal in the Catalan Parliament proved highly controversial, with party political conflict putting the project repeatedly on the brink of collapse. Nevertheless, in November 2005 the parliament eventually approved a text that clearly represented an enhancement of the institutional, financial and symbolic base of Catalan self-government, and which was supported by more than 90 per cent of its members (all except the PP members). In the next stage of the legislative process, the text approved by the Catalan Parliament had to pass both the Spanish Congress and the Senate, where another round of party-political bickering began. Amendments presented by the PSOE government to water down the most excessive stipulations of the text soon provoked the crumbling of the common Catalan front (originally consisting of PSC, ERC, ICV and CiU). After complex inter-party negotiations (typically held outside the parliament), a compromise version was finally approved in Congress (March 2006) and Senate (May 2006). This was approved by PSC, ICV and CiU. ERC, the PSC’s coalition partner in Catalonia, however, rejected the new text, which in turn led to the downfall of the tripartite Catalan government. The new autonomy statute, though, was ratified by 74 per cent of the Catalan people in a referendum in June and finally came into force on 9 August 2006. This whole process, once again, could serve as a prime example of the party political nature of all high politics decisions concerning the territorial

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 191

20/8/09 11:51:05

192

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

order of the Spanish state and its autonomous communities. Instead of a coherent Catalan front pushing the Spanish state to its limits, the Congress stage of the process was marked by a tactical alliance between Catalan opposition (CiU) and Spanish government (PSOE), and the break-up of the Catalan government that initiated the reform process in the first place – surely not a display of a strong and coherent regional political class. However, the apparent gap between the version approved in the Catalan Parliament and the one finally passed in the Spanish Cortes indicates that even the contention over the central institutional parameters of Catalan autonomy is not exclusively down to party differences. After all, if it had not been for the intervention of central state actors during the Congress stage, the career politicians in the Catalan Parliament would have expanded the institutional realm of the Generalitat even further, providing Catalan careers with additional status and power. Political parties and the colonisation of state and society Regional party organisations and public party finance

Having been prohibited during the Franco dictatorship, political parties came to be seen in the transition period as the cornerstone of the newly established pluralist democracy in Spain and Catalonia. As a consequence, political parties were deliberately institutionalised as highly privileged actors in the political system turning Spain into ‘a textbook case of partitocracy’ (Matuschek 2003). As quasi-monopolists in the provision of political careers, they also represented the central instrument for a new group of professional politicians to pursue their individual (political careers) as well as collective interests (the expansion of their opportunity structure). In this context it seems obvious that one of the main collective interests of the newly emerging political class would rest in the maintenance and expansion of the organisational structure and resource base of political parties itself. And indeed a brief look at party organisation in Catalonia indicates that they have been rather successful. The main parties operating in Catalonia have all established rather differentiated organisational structures with democratically elected leadership bodies at the Catalan and various other territorial levels, as well as sectoral units, youth organisations and a number of auxiliary organisations (such as party foundations). On the ground, parties are run as voluntary organisations, yet their political leadership consists entirely of professional politicians – all but a few salaried via elected public offices. This pattern of office accumulation has severely blurred the institutional boundaries between the party and the public domain. Inside its own party organisation, the professionalised leadership is supported by an increasingly

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 192

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

193

professionalised party machine to be found in the well-staffed national party headquarters in Barcelona and even in some less-staffed branches around the country. Enhanced infrastructural and staff support represents a second dimension to the professionalisation of elected party offices (in addition to the full salary gained from public office). At the same time the jobs created are expanding the opportunity structure for professional politicians, providing some new recruits with an entry into the political profession and others with a fall-back position. This expansion of party organisation is most pronounced with regard to the two largest parties in Catalonia: CDC and PSC. Both of them had originated in clandestine oppositional groupings during the Franco regime and have developed since into formidable party machines. In 2003, the CDC was said to employ about 150 people (outside of electoral campaign times), about half of them working in the Barcelona headquarters and the rest in local and comarcal branch offices.26 About three-quarters of employees are cardcarrying members of the party. The business side of the party is run by a chief executive (with no political role) and a pool of technical and administrative staff. Employees with an overt political portfolio are often also party activists. For them this position provides the economic base of their political vocation in the party and sometimes also a stepping-stone to a career in elected politics. By contrast, elected party offices are generally unpaid, and, although there are no rules of incompatibility, they are rarely held by party staff. Instead leading party positions are mostly occupied by those holding a paid public office at the same time (as well as some economically independent individuals), effectively extending the party apparatus into the public domain. A rough estimate of parliamentarians, mayors, full-time councillors, party staff and staff within the higher administration of the Catalan executive puts the number of CDC party members who can actually live off politics – the professionalised section of the party – at an astonishing level of around 700 to 1,000 people. Given such a structure, the emphatic claim of party founder and long-term leader Jordi Pujol, that his party is neither a party of civil servants nor one of political professionals but the party of the people,27 could hardly be further from the truth. The CDC is a professional political party effectively run by professional politicians. Yet the CDC is not the only such party. The PSC apparatus shows a rather similar picture, though arguably on a slightly lesser scale. Here, too, 26

27

This description is based on information and estimates provided by a staff member of the CDC communications department. ‘Ni som un partit de funcionaris . . . Ni som un partit de professionals de la política. Nosaltres som un partit de gent.’ This passage of an address to the VIII CDC Congress in Barcelona 1989 is quoted from Calsina (2001: 239).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 193

20/8/09 11:51:05

194

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

infrastructure and staff levels have risen continuously, not only during the first years of democracy but also since then. Staff numbers in 2003 were reported to have reached about 100, with 50 being employed at its headquarters. Again roughly three-quarters are party members. While the type of public offices may differ (until taking over the Catalan government, the PSC leadership consisted mainly of parliamentarians and local government leaders), the political leadership is also recruited completely from among publicly salaried professional politicians. Adding them to the staff employed in the party organisation in 2003, a rough estimate of the number of party members who are able to live off politics amounted to about 500 persons.28 While the overall size of the respective party organisations of UDC, ERC, ICV and the PP in Catalonia are significantly smaller, their organisational structure seems to follow similar tendencies of expansion. In fact, due to these parties’ less-pronounced extension into public bodies (except former government party UDC) until 2003, the fortification and professionalisation of its core party apparatus may have served an even more important function with regard to the parties’ organisational clout, as well as to its role in the maintenance of professional political careers.29 But how could all these parties afford to expand in such a large way? The short answer is, because collectively political parties were in the position to grant themselves very generous public funding, while also allowing themselves to chase additional funds from all sorts of private sources. This process began during the transition as a pragmatic response to functional necessities. The new democracy needed the support of the parties and the parties needed financial support. As a consequence, a system of reimbursement for electoral expenses of parties had been introduced into the main act regulating the transition from the old regime to democracy (Real Decreto Ley 20/1977 of 18 March 1977). Once established as the central actors of the new parliament, political parties also assigned themselves the right to a public subsidy for the maintenance of their organisation, this was to be set in the annual 28 29

Information and estimates provided by PSC chief executive Xavier Inglada. In 2003 ERC employed 60 staff, 25 of them in their headquarters. A limited number of these positions may be used to provide elected party officials who do not draw a public salary with a proper economic base. However, party staff represents a much higher percentage of the overall number of full-time professional politicians in the party, that amounts to little more than 100 (information and estimations from the organisational secretary of the party, MCP Xavier Vendrell). The UDC leadership has recently been challenged by an internal faction explicitly emphasising their background in the voluntary wing of the party and their quality as non-professional politicians. Needless to say, that they had lost out against the established group of mostly parliamentarians led by Duran Lleida (see La Vanguardia, 1 October 2004).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 194

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

195

Congress budgets (Ley 54/1978 de Partidos Politicos). The reimbursement of electoral expenses for regional elections was to be regulated by the Autonomous Communities. In Catalonia, where the parliament did not pass a proper Catalan electoral law, electoral expenses were reimbursed according to the Spanish model of 1977. In addition to public funds, political parties in Spain and Catalonia relied heavily on private sources (mainly from banks, business associations and foreign parties), while membership fees represented only a minor part of their revenues (Del Castillo 1994: 97–8). From the very beginning of party finance regulation, the legislators paid little attention to their public disclosure.30 Despite these early arrangements for public funding, by the mid-1980s parties had already accumulated high debts. As alleged irregularities in the PSOE campaign funds led to the establishment of a parliamentary committee of investigation, politicians of all parties became increasingly aware of the need for a new, non-provisional normative base for their finance. This conviction found its expression in two organic laws. The first, the Ley Organica 5/1985 del Regimen Electoral General regulates the reimbursement of campaign expenditure; the second, the Ley Organica 3/1987 de Financiación de los Partidos Politicos covers the regular subsidies for the maintenance of party organisations. Together they not only elevated public party funding to unprecedented heights (subsidies more than doubled in that time), they also explicitly assigned a state responsibility for funding political parties in order to retain political pluralism. On the other hand, the law established some new limits with regard to private funding. Both these laws enjoyed the support of all the main Congress parties – the latter was even introduced collectively by five parliamentary groups. Drafted in a situation of crisis, the new normative base of party finance, did not however reflect any theoretical insight by legal experts into the subject matter. Instead, the various regulations were negotiated and fixed between the parties mainly outside the parliament, and passed with hardly any parliamentary debate (Puente 1992: 429). While they had to overcome by a sequence of compromises various controversial issues with diverging party interests, there was a strong consensus with regard to the central allocation base for the distribution of public subsidies: both electoral expenses and ordinary subsidies are only paid to parties with Congress representation and only for constituencies in which parties have won more than 3 per cent of the vote. Thus, the cartel 30

In fact, while drafting the article on political parties in the Spanish Constitution according to the German model, they conspicuously omitted the last sentence that obligates political parties to publicly disclose and account for the sources of their funds (Puente 1992: 427–8).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 195

20/8/09 11:51:05

196

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

of parties with Congress representation has effectively excluded all challengers from the outside – not only from the compensation of electoral expenses but also from the receipt of any public funds to maintain their party work. In May 1987 the party finance act was passed with two abstentions and only 16 votes against. The Catalan nationalists, like all other Catalan Congress members, had voted in favour.31 Unified by a common purpose, political parties in Spain have overcome minor internal conflicts of interests and managed to institutionalise public funding as the central way of funding political parties – and thus democratic politics more generally. As an in-group cartel of political parties, the Spanish political class has collectively seized considerable public resources in order to stabilise and expand their respective organisations. By excluding potential challengers from public funds, they have also stabilised their own position in the overall structure of political competition at the expense of possible competitors. In this process Catalan parties and politicians acted as an integral part of the Spanish political class. Apart from the sources explicitly provided for by the 1985 and 1987 legislation, political parties in Spain and Catalonia have also made innovative use of additional means of public funding. On the Spanish level, for example, the lowering of expense ceilings for political parties was accompanied by the simultaneous introduction of a new mailing subsidy, effectively augmenting the overall amount of public funding (Del Castillo 1994: 99). In Catalonia, youth organisations and cultural foundations of political parties are financially supported by departments of the Generalitat. All parties are also generally deducting a considerable share from the subsidies provided to their parliamentary groups and a (lower) share from the salaries of their members in the Spanish Cortes and the Catalan Parliament. An even more irregular – yet fairly common and important – form of public party finance consists of the subsidies paid to council groups in municipalities – a form of public funding not envisaged in any law.32 Despite the establishment of a new legal framework, party finance did not cease to be an issue of controversy and scandal. On the contrary, irregularities have remained an everyday issue, with Catalan parties, especially the 31

32

During the negotiations they had fought in vain over the issue of regional subsidies to political parties and against limiting private sources of party finance. With regard to the concrete allocation base of central state funding, though, they had won the concession to link subsidies not only to the number of Congress seats won, but also to the respective percentages of votes. However, contrary to demands from Catalan and Basque nationalists, the Senate (and thus the territorial chamber of the Spanish Cortes) remained outside the calculation. According to El País (5 March 2003) these municipal subsidies amount to more than half of the official subsidies parties receive from the central state.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 196

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

197

two major formations, frequently at the centre of allegations. Amongst other things they have been accused of overspending legally established campaign expense ceilings, hiding dealings from the audit office via vinculated companies, and depending to a high degree on questionable private sources, such as bank credits (PSC) or anonymous private donations (CiU) (El País, 12 August 2002, 20 August 2002; La Vanguardia, 19 July 2004; Schwartz 2005). On top of these day-to-day irregularities, politicians of the two major political forces in Catalonia have also been the object of several accusations and even convictions in major fraud and corruption affairs. A series of penal investigations into the conduct of the CiU parties (the Casino affair of the CDC and the Pallerols affair of the UDC) and the PSOE–PSC (the Filesa affair) eventually culminated in the imprisonment of two socialist politicians, one of them the PSC treasurer and former senator Josep Maria Sala. By the end of the 1990s this general misconduct had seriously diminished trust in political parties and professional politicians. Furthermore it had eroded much of the hard-won legitimacy of the democratic institutions in Spain and Catalonia. In the Catalan political class the Filesa sentence served as an important first signal. Immediately after the sentence, PSC politicians asked rival parties to close ranks with them. After all, the imprisoned politicians had not lined their own pockets, and their misconduct seemed hardly more severe than that of other politicians in similar affairs. General secretary Narcis Serra thus demanded that all parties recognised that they had been financing themselves illegally (El País, 2 December 1997), while Pasqual Maragall called upon other party leaders to express their sympathy with the two imprisoned socialists, as they were serving their sentence ‘also for them’ (El País 1 December 1997). While the other parties, unsurprisingly, denied any direct involvement in illegal conduct, their general attitude was one of professional solidarity. Thus, a PP representative spoke of a ‘monstrous’ sentence, and UDC general secretary Duran Lleida expressed his personal solidarity and called for a broad cross-party pact to demand an act of grace – but also to bring about fundamental change in the conduct of politics (El País, 1 December 1997). In the aftermath of the Filesa sentence, leading Catalan politicians seemed to have understood that any partisan finger-pointing would have further enhanced the public disrepute of the political profession as a whole. Furthermore, the shock of the imprisonment of two of their colleagues caused them to recognise how close they all were to being criminalised in the conduct of their common political profession. As a consequence they arrived at a tacit understanding that something had to change. However, attempts on the Spanish level to revise the law on party finance, some of which had been initiated or supported by Catalan parties (El País, 29 December 1996), got stuck in a Congress committee until Congress

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 197

20/8/09 11:51:05

198

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

was resolved. In the new Parliament, priorities had changed. Short-termism and petty party conflict had won the day (Sánchez 2000). This failure of the Spanish political class opened the way for Catalan politicians to go it alone. With another major corruption inquiry looming over the UDC (the so-called caso Pallerols), this party authorised the president of the Catalan Parliament, the UDC politician Joan Rigol, to take the initiative in searching for a Catalan solution to this state-wide problem. In an initial meeting under the auspices of the Catalan Parliament in May 2000, Catalan party leaders discussed reform proposals by the business association Circulo de Economía. Less than a year later they had elaborated their own resolution. In February 2001 the general secretaries of the six political parties with parliamentary representation in Catalonia signed a common agreement called Acord de transparència i autolimitació de despeses electorals i de finançament dels partits polítics. Taking the aborted Congress legislation as a starting point, the Catalan Acord envisaged a voluntary limitation of electoral expenses by parties of the Catalan Parliament as well as an extension of control and transparency of electoral budgets and regular party accounts. The former task was to be taken over by a working group of party representatives immediately after the next election was called. The latter remit was assigned to the Catalan audit office, the Sindicatura de Comptes, that was to be provided with extended control mechanisms additional to those legally assigned to the Spanish Tribunal de Cuentas. In exchange for these measures of self-limitation, control and transparency, however, the Catalan parties also granted themselves considerable additional public funds. As the funding of regular party work is beyond the legal competencies of the Generalitat, they had to use a rather complicated and highly questionable construction. In its annual budget the Generalitat was to include a specific part for the incorporation into the parliament’s budget to be allotted to the parliamentary groups. Parliamentary groups may assign them to their respective parties as a compensation for the support parties give to them in the exercise of their task of responding to the citizens. These extra funds were designed as an annual unconditional subsidy for the maintenance of ordinary party functions, and were to be distributed to political parties and electoral coalitions according to the number of votes and seats obtained in the Catalan Parliament (Acord 2001). This Acord between Catalan political parties, signed in the Catalan Parliament in the presence of a wide range of public office-holders,33 was in 33

Apart from the party representatives, the ceremony was attended by all the members of the Parliament’s presiding board, the president of the Catalan High Court, the dean of the Barcelona college of advocates, the president of the Council of Catalan broadcasting corporation, the general secretary of the Catalan TV-station, a member of the Consultative Council of the Generalitat, the members

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 198

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

199

clear defiance of the conventional reading of the Spanish party finance law, which regards any additional subsidy for the ordinary activities of parties (as opposed to the work of their parliamentary groups) as prohibited. From a political class perspective this collective action of Catalan political parties served three aims: first of all, it was to considerably increase the public funds transferred to the Catalan parties and thus the resource base of the Catalan political class. At the same time it was meant to counter its eroding base of legitimacy within Catalonia. And last but not least it could also be used to project Catalonia as a non-confrontational, consensus-based polity to the rest of Spain: the so called oasis Catalan.34 The agreement clearly achieved its first aim. In the first round, paid retroactively for the year 2000, the Generalitat dispensed €1.8m to Catalan parties. This sum increased to €3m in 2001, €4.5m in 2002 and €6m in 2003. Overall the additional subsidy of the Generalitat increased the regular state subsidies for Catalan parties by 74 per cent (El País, 28 August 2003). In its annual reports on party finance the Spanish Tribunal de Cuentas has regularly denounced these payments as contrary to the 1987 organic law. In spite of this judgement the CiU-led Generalitat defended payments with reference to the unanimous demand of the Catalan Parliament (El País, 29 August 2003). As the PSC-led government has continued to pay the controversial subsidies it becomes clear that it is not only nationalist parties which defy Spanish institutions. In the question of additional subsidies there seems to be a clear consensus among Catalan political parties. However, the second element of the agreement still awaits its implementation. Repeated efforts by the two small left parties ERC and ICV to reduce campaign expenses have been frustrated over and over again by the bigger formations (see for example El País, 21 August 2002, 1 February 2003, 15 April 2003). Similarly, the Catalan audit office had not yet been given any means of scrutinising party finance, that have not already been granted to its Spanish counterpart. Instead of a collective effort to regain public confidence, the standing of the Catalan political class and its internal relations had further deteriorated. They finally reached an unprecedented low in February 2005 when president Maragall

34

of the Catalan audit office as well as the president, vice president and speaker of the Circulo de Economía (Signatura de l’Acord 2001). The latter two aspects were specifically emphasised by Joan Rigol in his presentation of the agreement. According to him the Acord was meant as a measure against the current enemies of democracy, namely ‘the discredit of politics and the scepticism against politics as a civic activity’. He also hoped that it would be ‘an example for Spain’ and stressed that the ‘political catalanism must be an attitude of regeneration and should not convert into a corporatism of little value’ (Signatura de l’Acord 2001).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 199

20/8/09 11:51:05

200

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

accused his predecessor government in the Catalan Parliament of having filled their party coffers with commissions for public contracts (La Vanguardia, 26 February 2005). The Catalan oasis seemed to have dried out. Yet despite this serious blow to the common self-consciousness of politicians across the partisan divide, the seriousness of this crisis has already produced another effort towards the collective self-regulation of party finances in Catalonia. In an attempt to regain the confidence of the citizens in the political class and to show Spain the continuous existence and efficiency of the oasis Catalan, president Maragall quickly announced impending legislative measures.35 With the presence of ERC and ICV in the Catalan government the reform momentum was not to be lost.36 In March 2005 the new president of the parliament, the ERC member Ernest Benach, convened the first cross-party meeting to resume the issue. There, the organisational secretaries of the parties in parliament agreed on their intention to legally enforce the outstanding points of the 2001 agreement in a soon to be drafted electoral law for Catalonia and in a reform of the act on the Catalan audit office (La Vanguardia, 31 March 2005). So far, neither of these restated declarations of intent have been realised. The story of the development of Catalan party organisations and the extension of public funding clearly shows the double strategy of the Catalan political class. During the transition and in the first decade of democracy, Catalan politicians shared the problem of constructing new effective party organisations with their Spanish colleagues. As part of this wider Spanish group they have thus been actively seeking to secure public funds via the constitutionally prescribed way – that is, via legislation on the central state level. This strategy of participating in the collective action of a Spanish political class had been quite successful with regard to its immediate common interest (a high level of public funds). However, the legislative result did not stop Spanish or Catalan parties from seeking additional sources – often illegal or at least politically questionable. Furthermore, day-to-day irregularities and a series of corruption scandals were accelerating a process of delegitimisation of politics and the political profession. They had even put professional politicians in danger of being criminalised. Immediate action was needed, yet the Spanish political class was incapable of collective action. 35

36

With explicit reference to the ‘oasis’ concept, he stated that he wanted to offer an image of Catalonia of which ‘Spain can say that the oasis is not an oasis in which shame is concealed, but that it is an oasis because there is profoundness and transparency’ (La Vanguardia, 18 March 2005, my translation). In the election campaign ERC had demanded a thorough legislative reform of party finance regulations, including a ban on anonymous donations and a lowering of election expense ceilings as a pre-condition for any coalition pact (La Vanguardia, 27 October 2003).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 200

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

201

Challenged by this severe legitimisation crisis, the Catalan political class opted for a Catalan strategy. This legally questionable route served a clearly perceived financial need that could not have been satisfied by other means as long as parties at the Spanish level did not get their act together. However, this strategy also has some additional advantages. First of all, it corresponds with the self-conception and the basic political instinct of Catalan politicians. According to my survey of MCPs, they all think of themselves as Catalan rather than Spanish politicians (98 per cent; only one MCP marked both answers). Asked how best to combat the growing public perception of professional politicians as mainly self-interested, a majority (60 per cent) opted for collective, cross-party efforts on a Catalan level. Secondly, collective autonomous action of the Catalan political class ties in with the Catalan regionalism. Portraying Catalan politics as progressive and consensual and thus as ahead of the political game vis-à-vis Spain, the strong and widespread Catalan identity within the population may help to divert ill-feeling regarding the political profession towards Spanish politics. Professional politicians in Catalonia have thus clearly shown themselves capable of acting collectively in the pursuit of their common self-interest. Such action might be taken as an integral part of the Spanish political class. Yet even with regard to an issue that is regulated at the Spanish level, circumstances may occur where collective action on the Catalan level reduces co-ordination problems and reaps additional rewards. In the question of party finance and control, professional politicians in Catalonia have been clearly acting as a Catalan political class for itself, even though party political frictions have prevented a more successful collective pursuit of their common long-term interest. Regional administration and civil society (I): partisan patronage in and via the Generalitat

According to the Statute of Autonomy, the Generalitat is the institution that represents the political organisation of Catalan self-government in its totality (see Preamble and Article 1.2), consisting of Parliament, the Cabinet, the ministerial departments and other administrative and political bodies. In everyday language, however, the term Generalitat today refers mainly to the Catalan government and administration. This semantic change somehow reflects a political development that has seen the Catalan administration ‘converted into the key institution for the operation of the Catalan political system’ (Matas 2001a: 38, my translation). This conversion started in 1980 when Jordi Pujol, the first elected president of the Generalitat after the second republic, took over the provisional Generalitat (created three years prior by royal decree) from president

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 201

20/8/09 11:51:05

202

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Tarradellas. At this time it could not have been foreseen that Pujol and his CiU coalition would have 23 years of consecutive government in which they could shape the structure of this body. The immediate construction of a proper Catalan administration was seen both as a pressing functional need to tackle social problems, as well as a historic opportunity to re-establish the central institution of Catalan self-government (interviews Pujol, Rigol, Vidal). In the pursuit of this task, Pujol and his allies were constrained by the constitutional and legal norms of the Spanish state, the lack of experience of its personnel and other problems. Yet Pujol was driven by a strong vision of fer país (building the country) and a basic affection for Catalan self-government – an affection shared by all Catalan parties at that time. The main structural elements of the Catalan administration, including the regulatory framework for its personnel, are formalised in Law 3/1982 (del Parlament, del President i del Consell Executiu de la Generalitat), Law 17/1985 (de la funció pública de l’Administració de la Generalitat) and in Law 13/1989 (d’Organització, Procediment i Règim Jurídic de l’Administració de la Generalitat de Catalunya) of the Catalan Parliament. The way these three laws were passed reflects the highly consensual style in which the Catalan administration was re-built: There was not one vote against any of them. In 1982 only the 18 PSUC MCPs abstained; the 1985 law was passed unanimously and in 1989 there were 40 abstentions. The result was a very powerful administration headed by a powerful president, who together were clearly dominating the parliamentary system. However, the new administration has also been seen to be wanting in many respects. One of the central criticisms concerns the very lack of a modern and distinctive Catalan administrative structure and culture. Instead, the construction of the Catalan administration followed largely the already anachronistic model of the central Spanish administration (Matas 2001a: 41) and can even be seen as a form of ‘institutional isomorphism’ (Ramió 2003: 25). However, the surprising case of Catalan nationalists copying the Spanish central state has to be seen in context. With many of the institutional parameters set by Spanish laws, with lots of practical problems pending, with an administration in constant flux (as competencies were being transferred) and, last but not least, with a personnel that was either inexperienced or had just been transferred from the Spanish state’s administration in Catalonia, it might have been asking too much of the new political leaders to design and develop an alternative Catalan model of administration.37 It is perhaps indica37

Ramío (2003: 26) therefore argues that this kind of structural imitation had been inevitable, while Matas (2001a: 41) still sees a certain lack of imagination as an important part of the explanation.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 202

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

203

tive that all other autonomous communities with the exception of the Basque Country also followed the central state model (Font Lovet 1983: 224; Ramió and Subirats 1996: 169). Among the more concrete aspects criticised in the development of the Generalitat are three elements that, taken together, could be seen as the colonisation of the Catalan administration by its governing parties: the inflation of its organisational structure, a strongly centralised leadership and an immense politicisation (see amongst others Ramió 2003: 27). The processes of administrative inflation began immediately after the first Catalan election. In his first decree (1/1980) president Pujol increased the number of ministerial departments from 7 to 12. Oscillating between 12 and 15 departments, this new ministerial structure survived with only a few changes (mostly terminological) until the end of Pujol’s reign (for a more detailed analysis of the respective developments see Matas 1998 and 2001b). Underneath the departmental structure the organisation developed into a highly differentiated system with 15 general secretariats, 15 sectoral secretariats, 92 general directorates, 27 autonomous organisations and 27 public enterprises altogether employing 126,000 people directly and a further 60,000 indirectly (private businesses contracted in the health and education sector) (Ramió 2003: 23). This makes the Catalan administration one of the largest of all the Spanish autonomous communities (on a par with Andalusia yet behind the Basque Country, Matas 1998: 298) and the one with the highest number of departments and general directorates. Both its horizontal and its vertical differentiation have been described as ‘excessive’, exhibiting symptoms of fragmentation, multiplication and other dysfunctional aspects (Ramió 2003: 27). However, from the outset in 1980 the creation of an oversized organisation had been quite deliberate. The reason for this were the competencies that, according to the statute of autonomy, were to be transferred from the central state over time. Of course, an ambitious nationalist Catalan government trying to build its own Catalan state – supported by opposition parties with similar self-government leanings – was not going to fall short of such a target. Another reason for the large size of its structure, and especially the high number of its ministerial departments,38 comes from the fact that the Catalan government had always been a coalition (Matas 2001a: 38). While this term may seem far fetched for two parties who have never been in electoral competition, the competition for government positions does run along party lines. Bargaining for cabinet posts, CDC and UDC have expanded the structure by 38

The 14 ministerial departments Catalonia had in the mid-1990s is the highest number of all the autonomous communities in Spain (Ramió and Subirats 1996: 156).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 203

20/8/09 11:51:05

204

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

providing the smaller coalition partner with ‘its own’ ministries.39 And finally, the immense politicisation of the ministerial bureaucracy had created its own dynamic of organisational inflation. Not only did the government establish positions for its protégés that were not particularly needed. The existence of non-politically affiliated civil servants looking for a career yet being almost barred from the higher echelons of the administrative structure has also been a major driving force in the creation of autonomous organisations within the administrative system and thus, in many cases made for not only a fragmentation but also a duplication of the structure (Ramió 2003: 30–1). This inflation of the administrative structure went hand in hand with a strong centralisation of its leadership function in the hands of the political personnel. Despite a horizontal fragmentation into a large number of departments and other organisational units and a formal ‘decentralisation’ through a network of (rather powerless) peripheral offices (mainly in the four provinces) the power to promote and implement public policies still remained heavily concentrated with the political personnel (ministers and higher officials) in the head departments of the central administration (Ramió 2003: 31). There the long reign of the same political formation (CiU) – and even more so, the long reign of one charismatic president – produced a stable hierarchy with a clear apex in the President’s Department. According to a survey by Matas, more than 60 per cent of Catalonia’s ministers (1980–99) stated that the policies advanced in each department were influenced much (‘influeix molt’) by president Pujol (even more than by the administrative heads of the departments). Nearly all Catalan ministers stated that the most important function of their office was their relation with the president (ahead of their relation with parliament, the rest of the ministers or their higher officials). The importance of president Pujol with regard to political recruitment is reflected in the assessment of 40 per cent of Catalan ministers, who stated that his influence on the nomination of higher officials (which formally lies within their own competence) is strong or fairly strong (‘molt’ and ‘bastant’). Taken together, it is perhaps not surprising that nearly a third of all the ministers appointed by president Pujol think that this president has an ‘excessive leadership role’ (‘protagonisme excessiu’) (Matas 2001b: 107–8). The administrative system has even been considered as ‘presidentialist’ (Matas 2001a: 39). This political leadership exercised by president and government finds its most obvious expression in a strong politicisation of the personnel in the higher ranks of the Catalan administration. While the great majority of people working in the ministerial departments are career civil servants, the 39

Two of the ministries – Work and Justice – had been occupied by a UDC minister for the whole time from 1980 to 2003.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 204

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

205

legal framework established provides various positions that can be assigned according to political criteria. The most important of these positions are the two most senior ranks in the Catalan administrative hierarchy – the secretari general (general secretary) and the director general (director general) together known as the alts càrrecs (the high offices). The holders of these offices are nominated by ministers and formally appointed by the cabinet. They do not need to be career civil servants and can thus be chosen freely on personal, technical and political criteria. The next rank of the hierarchy is filled with llocs de lliure designació – positions whose office-holders have to come from the civil service, yet are freely assigned without consideration of general civil service promotion rules – again leaving room for political criteria to be applied. And finally there are the personal eventual (temporary personnel), most importantly the assessor (adviser). These positions are located outside the general structure of the departments: they are nominated by ministers from amongst persons they confide in – not necessarily civil servants. The opportunities provided by these recruitment regulations have been used extensively by the CiU governments between 1980 and 2003 and, indeed, by its successor governments since then. Again, this process started immediately after the first Pujol government took over the Generalitat. Only two years later a first academic analysis of the higher offices in the Generalitat detected a clear ‘overpoliticization’ of the bureaucracy and the use of a ‘spoils system’ for the nomination of its office-holders (Alfonso 1982: 99). However, at this time, there were only 50 high offices (Matas 1995: 4) and the spoils system was still used rather selectively. Alfonso (1982: 91) calculated the share of high officials with a political affiliation in 1981 at just 18 per cent. Since then, the administrative inflation mentioned above has not only produced a sharp increase in the number of leading administrative positions, the government has also clearly augmented the use of political criteria for their nomination. By 2000 the number of general-secretaries and director-generals had risen to 91. The creation of additional administrative entities headed by high officials added another 50 individuals to this category (Matas 2001b: 41). Together with the 199 temporary staff (Ridao 2001: 6) the government thus had 340 positions of a political nature at its disposal that were not necessarily to be filled by civil servants. On top of that, there were 141 positions to be assigned freely from within the civil service (Matas 2001a: 41). According to the most authoritative scholar on the Generalitat and its personnel, the role of the leaders of the political parties in the nomination of these positions has increased from legislative period to legislative period (Matas 2001a: 67). In 1999, two-thirds of all higher offices (secretari general and director general) were assigned to members of CDC or UCD. Only 40 per cent of these offices were occupied by civil servants, and 80 per cent of

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 205

20/8/09 11:51:05

206

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

these civil servants were affiliated to one of the two coalition parties (Matas 2001b: 111). With regard to government advisers, Matas (2003a: 108) detected an increasing tendency to employ ex-ministers and ex-higher officials in such a temporary position. In general, many of these assessores are paid, yet rarely advise, and of those who do work for their salary only very few have made a real impact on the policy production of their respective departments. The office could thus doubtlessly be considered a ‘cemetery of elephants’ (ibid.). And indeed in Matas’ survey, half of Catalan ministers (1980–2000) – the very people responsible for nominating them – agreed that ‘there is an excessive number of advisers in the Catalan administration’ (ibid.). Yet the politicisation of the Catalan administration is not restricted to the formally politicised positions. According to Ramió, the main problem is actually the high number of civil service positions that are effectively assigned according to political criteria. He detected negative tensions and pseudoclientelistic relations within the civil service, especially in the middle ranks, where it was difficult to obtain any managerial position without being part of the party political game (Ramió 2003: 32, similar statements can be found in Matas 1998: 312–13). Matas thus concludes that ‘there is a clear transfer of party elites into elite positions within the administration’ (Matas 2001b: 111, my translation). In other words: CDC and UDC have effectively colonised the higher Catalan administration. This colonisation has not stopped at the administrative boundaries of the Generalitat. Pursuing pro-active policies with regard to the development of Catalan culture and society, the Generalitat has fabricated a closely tied network of civic society organisations with close links to the regional administration. Such a relationship exists, for example, in the form of the C. 60 official consultative councils and committees established to involve citizens and civic organisations in public policy-making of, the Generalitat, which are mostly headed and staffed by personnel of the Generalitat (Font Fábregas and Blanco 2003). Some of the individual bodies involved have even been created by the Generalitat, others are largely funded by it. According to a study by McRoberts (2001: 116–26), not-for-profit organisations, foundations and other civic society organisations in the social, cultural and educational sector have proliferated since the re-establishment of democracy in Catalonia. However, at the same time their financial dependence on public funding from the Generalitat has also dramatically increased: ‘To that extent, the character of Catalan society has changed fundamentally’ (McRoberts 2001: 126). For experts on the Generalitat there is no doubt that this dependence relationship gives the Catalan administration influence also over many private organisations, in particular with regard to its personnel. Governing the Generalitat for more than twenty years, the CiU parties have managed to penetrate large parts of Catalan

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 206

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

207

society. By the end of their reign there existed a close network of people, linked by partisan ties, running through the Generalitat and civil society.40 But to what extent can this rather partisan colonisation of the administration and parts of civil society be seen as the product of a political class, an agent characterised by its very cross-party nature? Compared to the German or Italian party state, where state-wide parties seem to have divided up the state administration among themselves on a somewhat proportional basis (Beyme 1993), the Catalan case is clearly not a typical example of such a process. Here, the common regionalism of all Catalan parties in the transition period facilitated the erection of a rather huge and political Catalan administration as an expression of Catalan self-government vis-à-vis the Spanish State. CDC and UDC, due to their very long stay in power, were in a good position to take advantage of this situation. However, the establishment of an oversized and strongly politicised central administration in Catalonia is not necessarily contrary to the partisan self-interest of the other parties. It may only serve the interests of one government at a time, but, as the election of 2003 has eventually shown, the parties in government may change. Furthermore, the principle of politicised administration, once established, can be taken to other administrative levels, where it might favour other parties. And indeed, there was little protest or resistance to Pujol’s institutionalisation of the Generalitat. In the early days, the administration was hardly ever discussed in parliament, and even then the criticism was directed mostly at administrative inefficiency and structural disorder rather than at administrative inflation and politicisation (Matas 2001a: 37). Later the most consistent and vocal criticism has come from the smaller parties PSUC/ICV and ERC (Matas 2003a: 91). The strong consensus orientation of the major opposition party, the PSC, in matters of Catalan institution-building during the transition period and beyond has rightly been attributed to its democratic responsibility, its strong Catalanism and a certain lethargy caused by the frustration of losing the first elections (in 1980 the PSC certainly expected to win the Catalan elections). Yet from a political class perspective we may see also a clear aspect of self-interest in this behaviour. After all, as the party that expected to be in government in 1980, the PSC could confidently assume that the apparatus built by the nationalist coalition would sooner or later fall into their own hands – including the benefits of extensive patronage power. A brief look at the administrative take-over by the PSC-led government in 2003 confirms this speculation: despite some minor changes, the basic structure 40

Among the organisations alleged to be colonised by CiU were central cultural organisations such as Omnium Cultural and the Institut d’ Estudis Catalans, but also the savings bank La Caixa (Pasqual Maragall, in El País, 31 July 2002).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 207

20/8/09 11:51:05

208

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

has been kept in place. Due to the complicated negotiations in a tripartite coalition (PSC, ERC, ICV), the number of departments was slightly increased, while the new government managed to reduce the number of higher offices and temporary staff by 20 per cent. However, this looks like a measure of austerity rather than serious institutional reform, as the principle of political nominations remained untouched. Thus, in the first months of the new government, 375 CiU appointed higher officials and advisers were replaced by 305 new appointments from the tripartite coalition (see La Vanguardia, 13 March 2004). Many of the newly appointed leading administrators were long standing MCPs, mayors and party politicians. Yet, again, it is not only the formally politicised positions that are part of the system of party political patronage in the Catalan administration. In a secret annex to the official coalition agreement the three parties also agreed to make their own appointments to the freely assigned civil service posts, where the need for continuity did not prohibit such replacements (La Vanguardia, 16 January 2004). While the exact number of these positions is hard to tell, there is clear evidence that the new tripartite government has been following the model of the CiU-led administrations by excessively staffing the regional administration with its own people. The immense dimension of this patronage system was revealed, when the organisational secretary of ERC asked those administrative officials whom he considered to be dependent on his party’s nomination to pay a quota of their salaries to the party organisation: the junior partner of the Catalan government sent out letters to 1,500 officials (!) within the regional and local administration (La Vanguardia, 29 March 2006). Thus, the first government alternation in Catalonia reveals that what has looked like a purely partisan colonisation of the Catalan regional state, was in effect a patronage system of the whole political class, though one that is used by parties alternately rather than simultaneously. Local government

The re-institutionalisation of democratic local government in Catalonia took place in a much less consensual way than that of the Generalitat. Indeed, the structure of local government has been hard fought over, ever since the first local elections to the city halls took place in 1979. In the early days of Catalan autonomy, the battles were mainly between the Generalitat and the Spanish central state, often ending in the Constitutional Court. In those days the Catalan political class acted rather cohesively in defence of the competencies of the Generalitat. A prime example of such a collective action is the battle against the partitioning of Catalonia into four provinces (Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona). The province, a traditional structural feature of the Spanish

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 208

20/8/09 11:51:05

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

209

central state, was seen as alien to Catalanism and an anachronism in times of Catalan self-government. Thus, within its first year of existence the Catalan Parliament passed a law that regulated the transfer of the competencies and powers of the four province authorities, the diputacions, to the Generalitat. It is important to note that this law was proposed by the Catalan socialists (the strongest party at the provincial level, and thus the party that would actually lose power) and passed nearly unanimously, with only the Catalan centrists CC–UCD (governing the Spanish state at that time) against. In the following months all four diputacions ratified their integration into the Generalitat. However, the Spanish government appealed before the Constitutional Court, which finally suspended the law. In the mid-1980s important political parameters had changed, turning the common fight to keep the institutional competencies to define the structure of Catalan local government in Catalonia into a bitter inner-Catalan battle about the very structures to be established. The main protagonists in this battle were the Catalan socialists – the party that had been dominating Catalan local government since its democratisation – and the CiU government, now provided with an absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament. Since taking over the main city halls of Catalonia, the PSC had been converting their electoral dominance into an institutional power-base rivalling that of the regional government. In the urban conglomerate around Barcelona they were not only running the city councils, and the provincia authority, they also continuously increased the resources and competencies of a supra-municipal organisation, the Corporación Metropolitana de Barcelona (CMB) that incorporated Barcelona and its 26 surrounding municipalities, thus expanding their rule to an area of over three million people – half of the Catalan population. With their absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament, the CiU government was no longer willing to tolerate such a counter-power. During the second legislature (1984–88) it passed four laws re-structuring the territorial order of Catalonia – all of them against the votes of the parties of the left PSC and PSUC. In the first of these laws (Ley 5/1987) the provincial diputacions that had been saved from abolition by the Constitutional Court were severely weakened (though the diputacion of Barcelona remained still very well resourced). The second one (Ley 6/1987) added a new layer of local government, the comarques, to the existing structure. This additional supra-municipal layer was mainly introduced to counter the immense fragmentation of Catalan local government which had nearly a thousand separate municipalities. It also reflected much better than the province structure the traditional territorial subdivision of Catalonia. However, by founding the system of indirect election to the comarca councils on the number of elected municipal councillors within the comarca rather than on the number of votes,

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 209

20/8/09 11:51:06

210

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the introduction of comarques had the side effect of quasi-automatically producing CiU majorities.41 Law 8/1987, the least contested of the four laws, regulated the structure and conduct of the municipalities in Catalonia, filling the legislative space left by the central state organic law on local government (1985). Yet even this act contained articles that allowed the Generalitat to control the distribution of economic resources transferred from the central state to the municipalities. These articles were later (in 1993) invalidated by the Constitutional Court. Arguably the most partisan act, however, was the abolition of the CMB (a strong parallel to Margaret Thatcher’s infamous abolition of the Labourrun Greater London Council in 1986), the institutional bastion of the PSC in and around Barcelona in Ley 7/1987. This decision came despite long and extensive confidential negotiations between PSC and CiU leaders, at the end of which the former even offered to place the CMB under the tutelage of the Generalitat just to save the organisation. The abolition came close to the declaration of open warfare between the two parties, but particularly between the main protagonists: president Pujol and the-then mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall. Refraining from an appeal to the Constitutional Court,42 the socialists, together with their allies from the former communist party reacted with the creation of a new voluntary association of local entities in the Barcelona area, the so-called mancomunidad that was to assume many (though not all) of the competencies of the former CMB. Taken together, the highly contentious reforms of Catalonia’s internal territorial order left local government in Catalonia with an institutionally overcrowded, fragmented and, in part, dysfunctional three-tier system. It also created a major political schism between the Generalitat and nationalistgoverned local entities on the one hand, and local authorities ruled by the parties of the left on the other.43 While this situation has generally made for 41

42

43

Due to its electoral strength in the small rural municipalities, CiU had won a majority in 34 of the 38 newly established comarca councils. In April 2003 the opposition parties managed to pass a law against the CiU government that reformed this electoral system to make it more proportional. It is interesting to note that the decision to abstain from such a repeal was based on the notion (supported by a historical precedent in the second republic) that any partisan-motivated legal challenge to the president of the Generalitat would, in the longer run, impact negatively on the accusers. Thus, one could argue, that the special status of its ‘national’ institutions is deterring the Catalan political class from taking internal differences to its extremes. For a more detailed account of this episode, see Uría 1997. As a result, there are even two rivalling associations of local authorities, the PSC-led Federació de Municipis de Catalunya (FMC) and the association of CiU-run councils called Associació Catalana de Municipis (ACM).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 210

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

211

a highly tense relationship between the two main forces of Catalan politics, the confrontations between them have since taken a more routinised form, as both have accepted a system of ‘sphere separation’ where each of them exercises ‘continuous control of distinct resources’ (Pallares and Font 1995: 46). In the case of the PSC, and to a minor extent also PSUC/ICV, these resources were concentrated in Catalan local government. And again, party control of local government goes far beyond the abundant elected positions in the various representative bodies – e.g. local councils, comarca councils and the province diputacions. A look at the relationship between the political and the administrative ambit of Catalan local government reveals many parallels with regional and central state administration. Local administration, too, is run according to the Spanish model of civil service that strives for a balance between administrative professionalism and political control (Martínez-Alonso 1998: 349). And indeed, just like the administration of the Generalitat, local government administration turns out to be heavily politicised. Leading positions within the administration are frequently assigned according to the principle of lliure designació, which is usually a partisan assignation. In addition, the leading political personnel – the mayor, his deputies and sometimes even some councillors – is permitted to employ personal eventual o de confiança (political advisers). In the early 1990s, these non-civil-service temporary staff represented 1.5 per cent of all local government employees (Martínez-Alonso 1998: 337) and thus about 750 people – even more than in the Generalitat. Most of them are employed in the larger cities (with more than 20,000 inhabitants) and in the province authorities. In addition to the penetration of its own administration, local government also offers access to a wide range of non- or semi-public bodies. The most direct form of such an expansion into the realm of civic society is the creation of local autonomous bodies and private-municipal companies. These bodies are generally headed and staffed by local councillors and other local politicians. Many of these bodies are the product of an outsourcing of public service delivery and thus do not open additional fields of political control. Yet Catalan local politics reaches much deeper into Catalan society. Many of the larger authorities (e.g. Barcelona city and the province of Barcelona) maintain ties to and stakes in economically important private organisations, such as banks. Again, they hold rights of nominations and are often the crucial actor in the election of leadership and supervisory bodies. In a recent highly controversial ‘political’ nomination, the PSC-run Barcelona provincial authority de facto appointed the former mayor of Barcelona/former PSC general secretary/former Spanish government minister Narcis Serra to the board of directors, and a little later to the presidency of the Caixa Catalunya, the third-largest Spanish savings bank (see El País, 16 March 2005).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 211

20/8/09 11:51:06

212

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Thus, the colonisation of local administration and local civic society in Catalonia also follows a clear partisan pattern. Because of their electoral strength in the large cities, the parties of the left – mainly the PSC yet also PSUC/ICV – have been the main beneficiaries of patronage practices. However, local government is not exclusively their terrain. There are larger cities and provinces where CiU traditionally runs the administration (e.g. Tarragona) making use of the same instruments. And there is also a strong tradition of coalition government within many local authorities. Even the city of Barcelona – so far always headed by a PSC mayor – has frequently been run by a coalition government, sometimes also including CiU. Catalan local government thus provides access for politicians from all parties to its own administration (and to connected organisations). No wonder only the most excessive and blunt misuse of partisan patronage is criticised, since the principle of a politicised local administration is generally accepted.

The Scottish case

Regional parliamentarians and the institutionalisation of their professional self-interest in the parliamentary system Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (I): UK provisions and stipulations

In contrast to many institutional issues that had been discussed over and over again, the question of political professionalisation hardly ever featured in the debates during the campaign for Scottish self-government. However, when MSPs first met in their temporary home,44 the course to erect a fully professionalised Scottish Parliament with fully professionalised members had 44

The most important issue with regard to infrastructure was of course the erection of a new parliament building. Location and contract for the design were decided in the SO under SoS Donald Dewar well before the establishment of the parliament itself. Between its inauguration in 1999 and the completion of the building at the end of 2004 the parliament had to take temporary space in the Assembly Halls of the Church of Scotland. The parliament building project grew into a major scandal because its costs grew out of all proportion (at least with regard to the original estimates) and because of long delays in its completion. The mismanagement became subject to official investigation. However, as the main decisions with regard to the building were taken before MSPs came into office, and the building itself is hardly a central aspect of the parliament’s professionalisation, this rather complex story will not be told here. For a detailed account of the so-called Holyrood Saga, see SPCB 2004.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 212

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

213

already been set. This initial configuration had been accomplished by primary and secondary legislation from Westminster (the Scotland Act 1998 and its accompanying orders) but also by the deliberations of various other bodies in the run-up to the inauguration of the parliament. Despite MSPs possessing competencies to alter and change many of these original stipulations, the initial set-up has proved rather enduring. In the Scotland Act of 1998 the UK government explicitly left it to the so-called Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) – and thus to MSPs – to make provisions for the ‘property, staff and services required for the Parliament’s purposes’ (section 21). As this body was still to be created by the parliament, the initial budget, infrastructure, personnel, etc., had been set by the Scottish Office. Most of the detailed work was delegated by the Scottish Secretary of State Donald Dewar to a leading SO civil servant, Paul Grice, who later became the chief executive (clerk) of the Scottish Parliament. In doing so, the SoS had not placed any particular financial or other restrictions on him (interview Grice). As a consequence he drew up a generous scheme for a well-resourced parliament with its own parliamentary service of, initially, more than 300 staff. Thus, when the SPCB took over the management of the parliament the basic structures were already in place. While some figures of the budget had to be adjusted due to unforeseen needs, the first year’s running costs of the parliament were pretty close to the original estimates.45 The task of preparing initial rules for the internal working of the parliament had been delegated by the SoS to a Consultative Steering Group (CSG), made up of politicians from all parties, members of civic groups, academics and members of the Constitutional Convention. It was led by Devolution Minister Henry McLeish and supported by Scottish Office civil servants. The part of their remit that most clearly affected the professionalisation of MSPs were their deliberations on the working hours of MSPs and the days of sitting of the parliament. Here, they explicitly followed indications from the Constitutional Convention that the MSP mandate ‘should be considered a full-time appointment’ (Consultative Steering Group 1998a). Recommending a working schedule that spread out parliamentary business over the full day, the full week and the full year, they deliberately deviated from the traditional Westminster pattern – one that made for many late-night sittings while allowing members to attend their private business in the morning. Suggesting plenary sittings to take part between 9.30 and 5.30 and session breaks to correspond with Scottish school holidays, the CSG also adhered to a widespread expectation in 45

While the Scottish press, predictably, focused on the extra costs of £2m, these represented less than 7 per cent of the estimate costs for the year 1999–2000 (Scotsman, 13 August 1999).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 213

20/8/09 11:51:06

214

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the self-government movement, that the Scottish Parliament should be much more family friendly than Westminster (Consultative Steering Group 1998b: 3.3.12–13). Again, these CSG-suggestions have found their way directly into parliamentary practice. The CSG was also asked by the SoS to look after the development of a Code of Conduct for MSPs. Again, the original demand for such an endeavour had come from the deliberations with the self-government movement – especially within the Scottish Constitutional Convention and its attempt to distance a future Scottish Parliament from the perceived malpractice at Westminster (in this case the counterpoints were the Westminster ‘sleaze’ scandals in the early 1990s). However, by the time the CSG discussed this question, Westminster itself had already been putting arrangements in place to rectify its own problems with ethical standards, including a Code of Conduct. As a consequence Westminster now provided a positive role model. Thus, the nine key principles on which the CSG recommended basing a Scottish Code of Conduct were explicitly stated to reflect the deliberations of the recommendations of the respective Westminster Committee (the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life) and to be ‘broadly consistent with . . . the existing Code of Conduct for Westminster MPs’ (Consultative Steering Group 1998b: 3.2.4.2). The draftsmanship for a detailed Code was delegated to a small working group. Their final report eventually provided the basis for the deliberations when the Standards Committee of the Scottish Parliament produced its own Code of Conduct. This exercise of the CSG was flanked by a Westminster order that was to regulate the registration and declarations of MSPs interests until the Scottish Parliament made its own legislative provisions (The Scotland Act 1998 (Transitory and Transitional Provisions (Members’ Interests) Order 1999). With regard to the material professionalisation of the MSP mandate the Scotland Act left it completely to the Scottish Parliament to provide its members with the salaries, allowances and pensions it saw as adequate (section 81). However, before MSPs were able to make use of their self-regulatory power, the UK government had also employed the traditional Westminster device of effectively ‘outsourcing’ this task to the Review Body on Senior Salaries (SSRB). In March 1998 the Secretary of State for Scotland asked the SSRB to ‘make recommendation on the salaries, allowances and pension benefits which should be payable to members of the Scottish Parliament and members of the Scottish Executive’ (letter of SoS for Scotland in March 1998, reprinted in Review Body 1999b: 21). With political parties and civic organisations being asked to give evidence to the SSRB there was considerable input from Scotland on this question. This evidence clearly reflected a tacit understanding within Scottish society that the new parliament should be fully

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 214

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

215

professionalised along Westminster lines.46 With regard to the exact level, though, there appeared to be dissent. Voices from the Scottish business community (in particular the Institute of Directors Scotland) suggested paying MSPs less than Westminster MPs on the grounds of lower levels of responsibility and lower living costs in Edinburgh. The Scottish organisations of the three UK-wide parties Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, on the other hand, supported equal pay levels. The Scottish Labour Party explicitly argued for a ‘parity of pay’ in order to create ‘parity of esteem between the primary legislators at Westminster and at Holyrood’ (The Scotsman, 8 July 1998). While generally sharing this position, the SNP refrained from citing Westminster as the central point of reference and suggested instead linking MSPs’ pay to an unspecified grade in the Scottish civil service. Given these suggestions and given that the SSRB is also the body that draws up pay levels for the UK Parliament, it is no wonder that SSRB recommendations were explicitly made on the basis of the expected relative job weight ‘compared with “benchmark” posts at Westminster’ (Review Body 1999b: i). In March 1999 the SSRB published two reports. On the whole the SSRB suggested pay and allowance levels slightly below those of Westminster MPs, yet higher than those to be paid in the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Parliament. MSPs’ salaries were set at £39,000, effectively 86.5 per cent of the salary of a Westminster MP, with an annual up-rating mechanism based on senior civil service salary increases (Review Body 1999a). According to the report, MSPs should also receive pensions and resettlement grants similar to those at Westminster. Salaries of parliamentary and executive office-holders were set by linking them to what was seen as the most equivalent Westminster counterpart. Thus, the Scottish First Minister would earn the same as a UK cabinet minister, a Scottish Executive minister the same as a UK minister of state, etc. In terms of the endowment of the MSP mandate, the SSRB recommended the central provision of a fully equipped office in the parliament as well as the respective equipment for constituency offices. Allowances were to be paid at a level covering the cost of ‘the equivalent of two full-time staff’ (cost limit of £30,000 annually), the cost of running the constituency office, as well as a number of additional costs (travel etc.). Allowance levels, too, were to be automatically uprated on an annual basis (Review Body 1999b). The salaries and pensions scheme elaborated by the SSRB was initially implemented – without any major deviation – by 46

According to Jim Wallace (Scottish Liberal Democrat leader) and Kenyon Wright (Convener of the Scottish Constitutional Convention) the matter of political professionalisation was hardly discussed in the Consultative Steering Group. Nobody argued for an amateur parliament (interviews, Wallace, Wright).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 215

20/8/09 11:51:06

216

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

an Order of the UK government to be in force until the Scottish Parliament established its own legislation. The question of allowances was left for the Scottish Parliament to decide. The only aspect of parliamentary professionalisation that has remained under Westminster control is the funding of parliamentary parties. Following Westminster precedent, section 97 of the Scotland Act restricts such payments in principle to non-executive parties. It is made in order to help them perform their parliamentary duty of holding the government to account.47 The detailed regulation was to come from a UK Order in Council. The current order was passed by the UK Labour government in June 1999 just after the inauguration of the Scottish Parliament (The Scottish Parliament (Assistance for Registered Parties) Order 1999). In the event, it proved to be quite controversial. Scottish oppositions parties heavily protested about the process (hardly any consultation), the actual amount of funding (only about half of the equivalent funding for Westminster opposition parties) but primarily about the insertion of a special clause (3.2) that allowed payments to all parties holding not more than one-fifth of all executive positions, effectively treating Labour’s coalition partner in the first Scottish Executive, the Liberal Democrats, as an opposition party (see The Herald, 28 May 1999; 15 June 1999). The SNP business manager in the Scottish Parliament at that time even called the arrangements ‘sleazy and undemocratic’ (The Scotsman, 31 May 1999). However, the Scottish Parliament has no competencies to change these rules, nor to exceed fixed-payment levels. Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (II): the disaster of the allowance debate

The first question of collective self-regulation which the newly elected MSPs had to settle was the setting up of a Member’s Allowance Scheme. From a political class perspective one would have expected this to be a matter of cross-party interest that would be settled in a consensual and quiet way with an outcome favourable to all MSPs. However, instead of getting rid of an unpopular issue as soon and as quietly as possible, this question developed into a public relations nightmare for the newly established parliament and its members. On the whole the political parties in the Scottish Parliament had been quite content with the SSRB recommendations. However, one point that had only casually been raised during the SSRB evidence gathering was turned 47

These payments are known as ‘Short money’, named after the former Leader of the House of Commons, who initially devised the scheme in 1974.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 216

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

217

into a major party-political conflict by the election result of 1 May. Having won only three regional-list seats yet 53 of the 73 constituency seats, the governing Labour Party suddenly started to question whether list members should really be entitled to the same staff and office allowances as constituency members. Ironically, this issue had first been raised in early 1998 by the SNP; at that time they had been rebuked by both Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar and Devolution Minister Henry McLeish for suggesting a two-tier system of MSPs (The Herald, 18 May 1998). In fact, Donald Dewar had explicitly asked the SSRB to make no distinction between the two types of MSPs. Now, with most of the allowance for regional members going to the SNP and the Tories, the Labour Party feared that these members would use their fully staffed regional offices as base camp for party political fights against Labour’s own elected constituency members who were busy holding surgeries and doing case work. Despite the appointment of a special parliamentary sub-committee on MSP allowances and numerous private gatherings, the conflict could not be resolved, and, thus, had to be settled by a plenary vote. During the debate most MSPs regretted that they had to speak on such a trivial matter. The parliament nevertheless saw angry exchanges between its members, with mutual allegations of self-interested behaviour and hypocrisy. In the end, the Liberal Democrats won the day with a compromise amendment, which also served their own particular interest best. In contrast to the original motion supported by SNP and Tories that did not distinguish between regional and constituency member (and thus followed the SSRB recommendation) and to the Labour amendment that would have set regional members’ staff and office allowance at 60 per cent, the Liberal Democrat amendment provided all regional members with the full staff allowance, with one regional member per party getting the full office allowance. Office allowances for any additional MSP of a specific party in a particular region were set at 30 per cent, enabling them to run one regional office per party only. As staff allowances provide the great bulk of MSPs’ support, this settlement was far more generous to list MSPs than the Labour amendment. However, as the Liberal Democrats had not won more than one list seat in each region, it was particularly favourable to them. The sight of the newly elected representatives squabbling over their own expense levels was bound to have an effect on the general public and in particular on those parts of the Scottish press hostile to devolution. The high expectations about the parliament together with the extreme transparency of its procedures (which was of course part of these expectations) created a situation where an early house-keeping debate got into the media focus and into the focus of a society eager to see ‘new politics’ at work. Not only was the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 217

20/8/09 11:51:06

218

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

issue at stake concerned with the problems of professional politicians rather than the Scottish people, the way these politicians dealt with it was also far from the idealistic marks set in the self-government movement. Instead of a rational debate about principles with a consensual outcome, it was little more than party self-interest that dictated members’ behaviour. As a consequence, this rather minor issue became the first incident in a process of public disillusionment with parliament and its members. In the long run, though, this disillusionment was inevitable. The high expectations built up in Scotland in the run-up to the establishment of the parliament were bound to hamper the capacity of the Scottish public to come to terms with the realities of professional politics. From a political class perspective, this early incidence of MSPs’ collective self-regulation is quite revealing. In general, the course of action and overall outcome is in line with theory. Having been endowed with a full professional salary by a UK government order, MSPs quickly used their self-regulating power to further professionalise their mandate by granting themselves appropriate allowances for staff and infrastructural support. In doing so they largely followed the SSRB recommendations, reducing the scope for a conflict with the general public. Apart from the deduction of a very small share of the overall package for a very small group of list MSPs, the final settlement fully served the collective self-interest of MSPs. However, the in-fighting between different types of MSPs about their allowances cast some doubt on their capacity to act as a political class. And indeed, the working of the Scottish electoral system – that provided the governing Labour Party with hardly any list MSP, while the two major opposition parties were heavily (SNP) or even completely (Tories) dependent on them – introduced an objective cleavage of interest into this group of political professionals that coincided with the existing party cleavage. This rather minor division in the structural base of the political class in itself had a disproportionately negative effect on its capacity to act for itself. Instead of perceiving allowances for list MSPs as a welcome state subsidy for Scottish politics that, in the long run, would be beneficial to all parties (as the number of list MSPs per party might change over time), partisan distrust turned it into a matter of party conflict and rivalry. In allowing this to happen MSPs not only forewent potential material benefits (which in the end were rather small anyway), they also compromised quite important immaterial rewards for them all. Putting petty party interest before the collective reputation of professional politicians and professional politics in Scotland48 reflected a lack of collective conscious48

In December 1999 the then SNP leader John Swinney regretted that these housekeeping matters had undermined the public confidence in the parliament and even

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 218

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

219

ness among Scottish regional parliamentarians that hampered their capacity to act as a political class for itself. Professionalising the regional mandate and the regional parliament (III): the difficulties of increasing parliamentary salaries

The next test of MSPs’ capacity to defend their interest as political professionals against an increasingly critical public and a hostile media came when the pre-devolution UK government order was due to be replaced by a proper salaries scheme of the parliament itself. In preparation for the elaboration of this scheme the-then First Minister and then Presiding Officer again asked the SSRB to review parliamentary salaries and allowances in Scotland. In its report (Review Body on Senior Salaries 2001) the SSRB noted that MSPs salaries had fallen below the recommended pay level relative to Westminster MPs because the latter had received several additional payments on top of the annual uprating mechanism. At the same time the SSRB revised their original job-weight estimate for MSPs upward, though without reaching parity with MPs. As a result they recommended rectifying the increase in the disparity that had occurred and setting the new salary of MSPs at 87.5 per cent of the MP salary (instead of 86.5). In addition, SSRB recommended increasing the salaries of deputy ministers and deputy presiding officers and to introduce a special salary for the leader of the largest non-executive party (similar to that of the Leader of the Opposition at Westminster). Again, the implementation of SSRB recommendations did not run smoothly. While they were broadly supported by party leaders in the Parliament (Scottish Parliament 2001), there was considerable discontent among the back-benches (The Herald, 27 January 2001). In fact, the positions of MSPs on their salaries diverged even more than on the allowance question. However, in contrast to the latter, it was not marked by a clear party cleavage. The most radical of those who rejected the increase was Tommy Sheridan from the Scottish Socialist party, who – on a point of principle – took only the average salary of a skilled worker in Scotland (the rest going to his party). Others from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and also the SNP argued that in the light of low inflation and low pay-rises for other public employees (eg, nurses) the salary increase was too high. This position was strongly related to the clearly felt public animosity towards such a pay rise. Shona Robison argued that they should have been discussed in secret: ‘I wish these had been kept out of the public domain’ (The Scotsman, 1 December 1999). The negative consequences of the allowance debate have also been acknowledged by most MSPs in my interviews.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 219

20/8/09 11:51:06

220

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

(SNP) even cited public opinion polls, declaring: ‘We should listen to the public mood on this issue’ (SPOR 21 March 2002, col. 10579). And finally, there was the argument that by accepting this salary package MSPs were formally accepting the basic premise that their work was worth only 87.5 per cent of that of their Westminster colleagues (George Lyon, Liberal Democrat, SPOR 21 March 2002, col. 10586). Those who defended accepting the pay rise did so on different grounds. One argument emphasised the hard work and the long hours MSPs have to cope with (John Young, Conservative, SPOR 21 March 2002, col 10577). Another argument stressed the need to attract top-quality people to the parliament who already lose out in terms of remuneration by accepting a Scottish mandate (Ian Hamilton, SNP and Des McNulty, Labour, The Herald, 20 December 2001). However, many of those who ended up voting in favour of the recommended pay rise did not do so because they supported the actual salary rate fixed. On the contrary, there appeared to be strong support for the notion that wages should be equal to those of Westminster MPs. What they strongly supported, though, was the principle of following the recommendation of an independent body and linking their own pay to that of Westminster MPs, effectively relieving them of the burden setting their own salary levels (Margo MacDonald, SNP, Patricia Ferguson, Labour, SPOR 21 March 2002, cols 10584–6). In March 2002 a majority of MSPs (89) voted in favour of the SPCB motion based on the SSRB recommendations, while 15 voted against, 15 abstained and 10 did not take part in the vote at all. As was to be expected, the establishment of the Scottish Parliament Salaries Scheme, again, provoked a hostile reaction amongst the Scottish public and the Scottish media. The focus of contention was not the absolute level of salaries, but mainly the extraordinary pay-rise MSPs were seen to grant themselves. Hardly mentioning the explicit recommendations of the SSRB and generally disregarding the fact that MSPs’ salaries had effectively fallen in relation to the Westminster benchmark, the Scottish press largely treated the parliament’s decision as a self-awarded 13.5 per cent pay increase (The Scotsman, 22 March 2002). Thus, in this case the blow to the reputation of the Scottish Parliament was not self-inflicted. It was deliberately delivered by a hostile press whose criticisms resonated with a public that had not yet come to terms with the realities of professional politics. From a political class perspective, the outcome of the salaries debate is quite consistent with theory. MSPs did not get their preferred rate (parity with Westminster MPs), as they clearly recognised that any attempt to increase their salaries even further than the SSRB had recommended would seriously harm their credibility. Yet despite public hostility, they ended up with a significant

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 220

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

221

increase and a salary most MSPs were quite content with.49 Furthermore, by accepting the linkage to Westminster salaries and placing any review of this scheme into the hands of the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body, they did away with the awkward situation of having to vote on their salaries – an experience one leading MSP remembers as a ‘nightmare’ (interview Jim Wallace). With regard to the clear divisions within parliament one could be tempted to see the salary debate as another example of the lack of collective consciousness among MSPs. However, a closer look at the debate suggests a different interpretation. In contrast to the allowance debate, there was not only no partisan cleavage running through parliament, there was also hardly any real discrepancy with regard to their self-perception and their favoured outcome. With the exception of Tommy Sheridan, MSPs generally recognised themselves (across party lines) as hard-working parliamentarians who were entitled to an appropriate remuneration, comparable to that of similar professionals. There was even a large consensus on which particular profession would best serve defining their salary rates (Westminster MPs). The difference amongst MSPs was over the course of action that would be most prudent for them to follow in the light of a general public unsympathetic to professional politicians and seriously hostile to any pay increases for them. Thus, divisions in parliament were not caused by different interests or a diverging consciousness but by differing assessments of how best to solve this common problem.50 Securing career maintenance

As we have seen, MSPs have institutionalised their mandate into a well-paid and well-resourced office that allows for – and even requires – their full-time commitment. Apart from the few exceptions mentioned above, it is impossible for MSPs to pursue their former occupational career simultaneously. As a consequence, any return into such a prior occupation after four or more years in parliament would generally be very difficult. Indeed, according to my 49

50

In my survey, conducted just a few month after the establishment of the salaries scheme, three-quarters of MSPs (76.6 per cent) stated that salaries were about right, 6.4 per cent thought them to be too high, and 17 per cent thought them too low. This reading of the debate is strongly supported by MSPs’ behaviour on the floor (see SPOR 21 March 2002, cols 10577–88). They largely agreed that this was a complex and difficult issue, and that no one had the ideal answer. Apart from exchanges with Tommy Sheridan, they did not attack each other personally. On the contrary, advocates of a particular position explicitly stated that they could understand the position of their opponents (MacDonald on Gorrie), had no ill-feeling for anybody ‘who comes to a different conclusion’ (Gorrie) or even paid tribute to the work of those who had been elaborating rival schemes (Robison on Young).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 221

20/8/09 11:51:06

222

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

survey only about a third of all MSPs (34.9 per cent) considered returning to their previous occupation if they lost their seat, nearly half of them (40 per cent) despite expecting disadvantages caused by their career interruption. As most MSPs acknowledged in individual interviews, they quite knowingly embarked on a new, and rather risky professional career.51 In the survey 55.6 per cent of all MSPs stated that losing their seat was a general concern to MSPs, 37.8 per cent even stating that this concerned MSPs greatly, while only 7 per cent thought this issue rarely concerned MSPs. The risk involved in this career, obviously, derives from the quality of the mandate as a democratically elected position open to inter-party as well as intra-party competition. In other words, MSPs might lose their mandate either by de-selection in the inner-party nomination process or by electoral defeat at the polls. With regard to the latter many MSPs may seem comparatively secure. Despite general tendencies of voter de-alignment, the Scottish electorate has not so far proved to be exceptionally volatile (see previous chapter). Hence, until 2007 many Labour seats in the west of Scotland have been regard as ‘safe’. Similarly, the top positions on the regional lists will all but guarantee re-election for Tory, SNP and in most regions also for Liberal Democrat candidates. As the Scottish electoral system allows individual MSPs to stand in both parts of the election, this may allow some MSPs to reduce their risk even further. Yet as the stakes are quite high (losing a professional career), even an objectively low risk may lead to great anxiety. The far greater threat to their career maintenance, though, derives from inner-party competition. This is less so for constituency candidates, as traditionally de-selection has been a rather rare phenomenon in the UK. By contrast, the party list may provide for a more open competition between various contenders for a small number of positions with good prospects. In addition, as there has not been any experience with party lists in the UK, there was no tradition to follow and MSPs did not know what to expect. While inner-party selection processes as well as general elections represent a threat to their parliamentary careers, MSPs also follow individual as well as collective strategies to minimise this threat. We would expect them as professional politicians to pursue the former. It is the recourse to the latter that would point to their formation into a class for itself. MSPs’ institutional politics to pursue their self-interest in career maintenance may be divided into two stages. At the most general level, the very material professionalisation of their mandate depicted in the last section at some length can be interpreted as a collective effort of professionalised 51

This ambition for a long-term career, rather than a transitory occupation, is further reflected in the fact that only 10 per cent stood down voluntarily at the second Scottish election.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 222

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

223

insiders to shape their institutional context according to their advantage and against the interest of potential challengers from the outside. Amply endowed incumbents can not only campaign from a position of high visibility, they can also use staff, infrastructural and also time resources given to them as members of parliament (although, of course technically they would not be allowed to do so). This is of particular importance in the process of inner-party candidate selection and list nomination. There, grassroots activists and local councillors are set against well-known, fully professionalised politicians, commanding their own re-election machine.52 It may seem unfair to insinuate that MSPs have deliberately professionalised their mandate as a means of facilitating their own career maintenance. After all, as we have seen above, the general framework of their material endowment is largely derived from Westminster and fits according to the SSRB their actual job weight. Nevertheless, given their own perception of risk, it would be strange if MSPs had not taken these considerations into account. At the very least they can be seen to profit from the successful institutional politics of their colleagues at Westminster. However, the effectiveness of this immense competitive edge depends largely on the respective mechanisms applied by each party to nominating and ranking their candidates. In general it can be stated that the larger the selectorate the bigger the incumbency advantage. This is because a smaller number of people can be lobbied and influenced more easily on a personal basis (or may indeed possess its own agenda), whereas for a larger and more atomised group name-recognition would appear to be of much greater importance. In order to really enhance their career security the professionalised MSP mandate has to be complemented by an appropriate system of candidate selection. At the first election to the Scottish Parliament parties had to respond to a number of challenges with regard to candidate selection. First of all, the new electoral system with the addition of regional lists to first-past-the-post constituencies in itself required the introduction of new selection mechanisms. Secondly, recruitment started from a blank sheet, as there were no incumbents. And thirdly, devolution had brought about expectations of a ‘new politics’, which meant that parties were under pressure to open out their recruitment process and to democratise and decentralise it (Bradbury et al. 2000a). To what extent party efforts really produced ‘new politicians’ has been analysed in the previous chapter. Notwithstanding the actual outcome, there was a considerable amount of discontent with the newly adopted procedures in nearly all parties. In the Scottish Labour Party there were widespread 52

While most parties prohibit any active canvassing in the candidate nomination process, MSP staff have already been shown to offer their masters exactly this kind of service (Sunday Herald, 12 March 2006).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 223

20/8/09 11:51:06

224

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

allegations of central party control in order to block well-known nationalists and dissidents; the Liberal Democrats were criticised for their failure to select enough women in winnable positions; the Tory selection process was widely seen as undemocratic; and even in the SNP conflicting demands for gender equality and internal party democracy led to some discontent.53 Given the exceptional nature of the first elections and given this level of controversy, it was to be expected that selection mechanisms would be adapted in time for future elections (as described later). This time, however, a highly influential group with a strong self-interest in selection mechanisms was in place: incumbent MSPs. As selection mechanisms of parties differed widely with respect to incumbents’ reselection prospects, MSPs from different parties pursued markedly different strategies of career maintenance. While some could be confident that their incumbency position would give them the required edge over outside challengers, others had to engage in different forms of institutional politics within their own party. The Scottish Labour Party had announced very early that it would not repeat its successful policy of constituency twinning that had produced a gender-balanced Labour group in the first parliament. Instead each constituency MSP was to be approved by their constituency party. This had spread insecurity amongst women MSPs who feared a backlash against women candidates in some strongly male-dominated constituencies which were not happy with the twinning policy in the first place (see The Herald, 2 April 2001).54 However, under Labour Party rules a formal reselection process was only triggered if the incumbent didn’t hold a majority among the branches and affiliated organisations in their constituency party. Under this rule, incumbency advantage is clearly pivotal. As a consequence all Labour constituency MSPs who wanted to continue were reselected without a formal procedure. With regard to the ranking of candidates on the regional party lists, the Scottish Labour Party changed its process. Instead of deliberations within an electoral board comprising Scottish and regional party leaders, the ranking was left to the regional membership in a postal ballot using an STV system of election. This was a clear concession to the democratisation demands from within and outside the party. However, there was one exception to this open competition of candidates for list positions: the party executive had decided to give the three incumbent list MSPs of the Labour Party (all three in the Highlands and Islands region) a free run (meaning they were given the same positions they had last time) to set them on a par with their constituency 53

54

For details of the 1999 candidate selection process and its perception among candidates, see Bradbury et al. (2000a, 2000b). This insecurity was also confirmed in an interview with a female Labour MSP.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 224

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

225

colleagues who were also selected unopposed (interview Labour staff). Two of the three finally got elected. The Scottish Liberal Democrats, too, had been discussing possible changes to their candidate selection process in the run-up to the second Scottish elections. However, reform proposals to restrict postal voting (by sending ballot papers out only on request) and to enhance female representation through gender-balanced regional lists – both of which could have been detrimental to the interests of the majority of incumbents – had been voted down in party conferences (see The Herald, 3 February 2000 and The Scotsman, 13 February 2002). In contrast to the Labour Party, there was also never any question of protecting incumbent list MSPs. And indeed, the Liberal Democrats’ selection process for 2003 turned out to be the best evidence that such measures are hardly needed if selection is left to the membership at large. While, unsurprisingly, all constituency members were reselected by their constituency party, the one-member-one-vote (OMOV) postal ballot for list rankings also effectively ensured the re-selection of all list MSPs. In fact, not only did all incumbent MSPs reach exactly the same list position as four years before, all of them also increased their share of the vote! (The Scotsman, 18 October 2003). What the party interpreted as a strong vote of confidence for its sitting MSPs was clearly a reflection of incumbency advantage in such a member-wide poll. Any notion that such an advantage could be counterbalanced by the explicit permission for candidates to canvass party members (interview Derek Barrie) can thus be refuted. After all, many MSPs were also seen to be canvassing, and not many challengers would be able to match their resources. The most significant changes in the selection process occurred in the Scottish Conservative Party. There the heavy internal criticism of the nomination and ranking procedure of regional list candidates had never really calmed down. At the time of the 1999 selection, the system where joint councils dominated by the Scottish party hierarchy ‘hand-picked’ their favourites without any grassroots participation was largely perceived as unfair and lacking democratic legitimacy (Bradbury et al. 2000a: 68–9). During the first legislative period this discontent with the selection process was complemented by a growing disaffection with its actual result. Within the party there was concern with regard to the quality and activity of its MSPs. As one journalist with well-known conservative leanings put it: ‘some of them have made less impact than a wet fish’ (Katie Grant 2002).55 Reformist circles within the 55

An even more vivid picture of Katie Grant’s view of the Tory group in the Scottish Parliament can be gathered from her praising of one of the reformers: ‘Fraser [a new Tory MSP] is a tall, slim reformer with a full head of hair and a brain. Let us hope his fellow MSPs don’t hold this against him’ (Grant 2002).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 225

20/8/09 11:51:06

226

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

party thus saw the 2003 election and the nomination of list candidates as a chance to remove ‘dead wood’ from the ranks of their MSPs (Sunday Herald, 10 June 2001). For MSPs, however, all but one of whom had been elected from the party list, the system of nomination was a matter of survival in their newly started professional career. As early as June 2001 – just after the rather bad Westminster result of the Tories in Scotland – some Tory MSPs thus floated the idea protecting their own political careers by allocating the top list positions amongst themselves. In a defence of this proposal, Murray Tosh MSP explicitly referred to career interests of newly recruited professional politicians: ‘The people who come in give up jobs and careers. If you chuck out these people and get new ones, and then chuck out the new ones after four years, we won’t get people to stand’ (Sunday Herald, 10 June 2001). However, others were more concerned with a potential backlash among party activists, if such a measure of positive discrimination were to be installed. Altogether MSPs remained split over the issue and the initiative did not go any further. In December 2001, Tory MSPs collectively (with only one MSP against) backed a reform proposal to move the ranking procedure to a secret postal ballot of all party members in the respective region. Their argument was based on grounds of internal party democracy. Interviews with Tory MSPs, however, clearly showed their awareness of a strong incumbency advantage in such a poll. In fact, one of them openly stated: ‘we were helped in coming to this decision by a clear recognition that incumbency would be very powerful’ (interview with Tory MSP, Murray Tosh). Yet this proposal did not meet the approval of all sections of the party. The fiercest opponents were to be found in the Scottish central office of the party. Party officials there had been quite critical of their elected representatives in the Scottish Parliament for some time. Then party chairman David Mitchell also clearly saw the strategic motivation behind the MSPs’ move. While he favoured public hustings, where MSPs would actively have to convince the audience of their qualities, MSPs (according to Mitchell) preferred postal ballots, ‘because they would be able to get their CVs, with all their parliamentary achievements as they wish to define them, circulated to all members’. Given that no other campaigning would be allowed, this system was seen as a recipe to return MSPs irrespective of their actual performance (interview David Mitchell). The deep split between MSPs, party officials and parts of the voluntary party was further highlighted in the following reform process. In April 2002 the Scottish Executive Committee rejected the OMOV proposal and decided instead for a system with hustings meetings. Yet this top-down decision was not accepted by the party. After bitter inner-party battles, described by the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 226

20/8/09 11:51:06

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

227

conservative-friendly Scotsman as ‘a state of open civil war’ (The Scotsman, 26 March 2002), the matter was deferred to a specially arranged constitutional conference. In the run-up to this event leading reformers claimed to have been intimidated: ‘Supportive MSPs have been bullied, associations have been intimidated and individuals ostracised for going for the postal ballot’ (The Scotsman, 15 June 2002). In June 2002 party members nevertheless voted for the reform proposal. At the meeting this option was supported not only by MSPs but also by a vocal minority of constituency parties and even by non-incumbent candidates. As all incumbent MSPs owed their seat to the old, centralised system, many new candidates actually saw the extension of the selectorate as a precondition to ousting any of them. However, as one MSP later put it, ‘they misjudged it. Where they might have had a chance was a delegates vote with hustings’ (interview Murray Tosh). And indeed, in October 2002 the postal ballot returned all but two MSPs to the top list positions in their region. Many of the hopeful challengers were frustrated, and there was again a series of allegations against individual constituency parties as well as against central office for breaking the rules and supporting incumbent MSPs (The Herald, 28 October 2002, 31 October 2002). Notwithstanding individual irregularities, there was clearly no general stitch-up in support of MSPs. This was hardly necessary. Changing the nomination system MSPs had made sure that their superior resource base would give them the edge needed to maintain their career. ‘It is relatively easy to defend your position as an incumbent. The people who have lost out on this were those who, for various reasons, failed to build a power base from their incumbency’ (interview Tory MSP, Murray Tosh). How important this change in the selection process really was is probably best shown by a look at the list nominations in the Scottish National Party. There the belief that it is a social movement rather than just a political party has made for a strong position in the party organisation for local activists, with candidate selection being one of their main domains. The selection system used for the first election to the Scottish Parliament reflected this kind of activist democracy: constituency candidates were selected by members of the respective party branch, and where there was more than one party branch in the constituency, by an equal number of delegates for each of them. List positions were assigned in special regional selection conferences, where an equal number of delegates from each branch of the region voted using the STV system. The strong grassroots element within the SNP also means that there is almost an in-built scepticism against party office-bearers and parliamentary representatives. With devolution the numerical strength and the presence of these groups has increased tremendously. With the election of 35 additional parliamentarians (as against 5 Westminster MPs), additional researchers, and

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 227

20/8/09 11:51:07

228

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

increasing staff levels at the Edinburgh headquarters, the party had become more and more dominated by political professionals. While this might be taken as an expression of the success of the SNP, it has clearly also provoked some resentment within the party. This resentment is particularly directed against MSPs. Detached from their social base, they are seen to be in danger compromising their commitment to the cause (independence) by their own career interest.56 As one long-time activist put it: ‘for a long time membership of the SNP was seen as damaging to your career. Now it is seen as a career in itself’ (The Herald, 7 May 2001). Given the strengthening of this inner-party cleavage, it was to be expected that the nomination of regional list candidates for the second Scottish elections would inflict some casualties on the parliamentary group. However, as nobody knew who would lose out and as nobody was brave enough to take the lead against activists’ power, there was no collective attempt to change this system towards one that would be more favourable to incumbents. Instead, MSPs resorted to individual strategies. Their in-party campaigning was so intense that SNP leader Swinney complained that members of his parliamentary group were concentrating more on their re-election than on their actual parliamentary duties (The Herald, 6 June 2002). Yet not all MSPs put in the same effort and not all of their efforts met with the same success. Those with a high parliamentary and media profile had fewer opportunities and perhaps also less inclination to do the rounds among local activists. In addition to the general scepticism vis-à-vis MSPs detached from their activist base, there were also clearly targeted campaigns to oust or to promote specific candidates. The selection battle was fought along cleavages between left and right, gradualists and fundamentalists, and perhaps most importantly between leadership loyalists and so-called dissidents. It also allowed delegates to settle personal scores. Thus, the list nomination was conducted in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, with allegations of entryism and backroom deals. Even before the results were known, the process was widely perceived as a disaster and a disgrace for the party (The Herald, 13 June 2002). And the actual result did nothing to re-establish its credibility. More than a quarter of SNP MSPs were effectively de-selected by local activists: two constituency members lost their nomination and seven list MSPs were down-ranked into unwinnable positions.57 This result was not only a blow 56

57

This evaluation is strongly supported by conversations held with SNP activists at the 2002 party conference in Inverness. Two of them nevertheless did get returned. The former list MSP George Reid, who was down-ranked from second to fifth position, was directly elected as a constituency MSP; and Margo MacDonald – down-ranked by SNP delegates of Lothian region – won a list mandate standing as an independent candidate.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 228

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

229

to large sections of the parliamentary group but also to the party leadership. Among those who had fallen out of favour with delegates were some of then leader John Swinney’s closest political allies – and some of the SNP’s finest parliamentary performers.58 With such a result it was only a matter of time until the selection system was the next casualty. And indeed after John Swinney had repeatedly stated that he was going to scrap the system, the delegate-based selection system was finally abolished at a party conference in April 2004. As part of a wider-reaching modernisation of the party’s constitution that basically strengthened the leadership at the expense of local activists, the SNP introduced a system of postal vote (by STV) for the ranking of its list candidates. In contrast to the events in the Conservative party, the reform was driven by the party leadership and went through rather smoothly. Yet again, the vast majority of MSPs did not object to handing over their fate from a small group of delegates to the wider selectorate of the full membership. All in all we may thus state that the collective institutional politics of MSPs trying to safeguard their parliamentary careers has been rather successful. By sanctioning the generous allowance and salaries recommendations of the Consultative Steering Committee and Review Body on Senior Salaries, they had put themselves into a unique competitive position vis-à-vis any challenger from outside the parliament. This promising starting position has since been complemented by the creation of more convenient reselection mechanisms for those with the most vulnerable status: regional list MSPs. In the run-up to the first Scottish election the four main parties in Scotland had established vastly different mechanisms to rank their regional list candidates, reflecting very different party traditions. Since then procedures have converged into one single system: a postal ballot of all members on the basis of OMOV and STV. At first sight this might reflect a process of innerparty democratisation. Yet while it is hard to argue against this interpretation, it should be kept in mind that the demands for these reforms hardly ever came from the disenfranchised membership. Instead the changes that did occur were either collectively proposed by the respective parliamentary group or they were proposed by the parliamentary leadership with the broad support of their parliamentary group. My analysis of the respective reform processes thus suggests a somewhat different picture: by appealing to the wider party membership list, MSPs have quite consciously played the democratisation 58

The two best-known casualties were economic spokesman Andrew Wilson, a Swinney loyalist and rising star in the party hierarchy, and Michael Russell, former general secretary of the party, widely held to be one of the best speakers and sharpest minds in the parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 229

20/8/09 11:51:07

230

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

card in order to enhance their re-selection chances and to strengthen their autonomy from party activists. This interpretation gains further credibility from the fact that it is not merely deduced from the retrospective ascription of objective career interests, but is also confirmed by the actors themselves. With respect to their career maintenance Scottish MSPs seem to be acting as a class for itself. Defending and expanding the institutional realm of the regional parliament

One of the characteristics of a political class is its self-regulatory power – in other words, its extensive control over the structures of opportunity that shape their political careers. In Scotland, however, this power remains largely reserved to politicians at the UK level. This unitary aspect of the UK constitution is much more than a mere formality. The Scotland Act of 1998 not only defines Scotland’s place within the territorial order of the UK, it also determines large parts of the internal rules of democracy in Scotland. The scope of these provisions ranges from the electoral system to questions of government formation, and legislative–executive relations to prescribing details of the parliament’s internal structure. A regional political class with its own distinct career interests is not likely to be content with such a situation. Instead, it would be expected to act for itself, either by trying to adapt individual parts of the given set-up, or by a more general drive to reclaim institutional selfregulatory power from Westminster. And indeed, from the very start, MSPs have been unhappy with their institutional restrictions. In my survey from 2002, 5 out of 6 MSPs supported an increase in the parliament’s autonomy. While there were clear majorities with regard to economic, social and even fiscal policy, the largest share of support concerned ‘institutionals matters’: two-thirds of MSPs were in favour of greater control over their own institutional structures (examples given were the number of seats in the Scottish Parliament and the electoral system). This interest in expanding their self-regulatory autonomy has also been raised publicly very early in the life of the parliament, most vocally by the first presiding officer David Steel (Lib–Dem).59 At the end of the first legislative period the Parliament’s Procedural Committee issued a report criticising many of the shortcomings of the Scotland Act. In their view these problems could 59

Steel criticised the lack of leeway for the parliament to adapt procedural details to changing and unforeseen situations, as well as criticising the ‘bizarre’ titles of ‘First Minister’, ‘Presiding Officer’, etc. (The Herald, 21 November 2001). He even took up discussions with then SoS Helen Liddell in a search for possible legislative remedies (The Herald, 31 October 2002).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 230

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

231

not be overcome by any piecemeal solution. Instead they stated: ‘We believe that the time is ripe for the Parliament to take control of its own proceedings, and we recommend that the Scottish Executive should invite the UK Government to investigate methods by which this might be accomplished’ (Scottish Parliament Procedures Committee 2003: Recommendation 106). One example of where a collective self-interest has already led MSPs to exert sufficient influence on the Westminster colleagues to reform UK legislation can be seen in their battle against the reduction of the number of parliamentary seats in the Scottish Parliament. This story also reveals that the Scottish career orientation of MSPs, detected as a central characteristic of MSPs as a class in itself (see chapter 3), also informs their collective action as a class for itself. According to the Scotland Act the creation of the Scottish Parliament was to lead to a reduction of Scottish representation at Westminster. With its own parliament in place, the argument for Scottish over-representation was simply no longer valid. Thus, the Scottish Boundary Commission was asked to bring the size of Scottish constituencies in line with those south of the border. At the same time, though, the Scotland Act also provided for the congruence of Westminster and Holyrood constituencies (Schedule 1, clause 1). As a consequence, any reduction of Scotland’s Westminster representation would have simultaneously affected the number of constituency seats in the Scottish Parliament. Furthermore, as the ratio between constituency and list seats in the Scottish Parliament had also been codified in the Scotland Act (Schedule 1, clause 7), any such reduction would have entailed even a reduction of list seats. Following the stipulations of the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Parliament would have been quickly reduced from its current 129 to a little more than 100 MSPs. The provisions linking Scottish representation at Westminster with that in the Scottish Parliament had already led to controversy at the time of the passage of the Scotland Bill. In the House of Lords, Tories and Liberal Democrats had won an amendment that would have fixed the number of seats in the Scottish Parliament at 129. At that time the Tories had argued in terms of fairness (newly elected MSPs would have to retire) and out of anxiety not to play into the hands of the SNP, while the Liberal Democrats considered the size of the Scottish Parliament as part of the deal they had done with Labour in the Scottish Constitutional Convention (The Scotsman, 23 November 1998). And indeed, in the run-up to the Lords’ debate even Scottish Office ministers (including SoS Donald Dewar) had favoured such an amendment. According to reports in the Scottish press, it had been the Prime Minister Tony Blair himself who ordered his ministers to withdraw their own amendment and ordered his parliamentary party to overturn the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 231

20/8/09 11:51:07

232

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Lords’ vote when the bill came back to the Commons. Blair’s central motive was seen to be preserving a clear constitutional link between Westminster and the Scottish Parliament that would help to strengthen the Union (The Scotsman, 22 October 1998). Yet criticism did not wither away with the successful passage of the Scotland Act into the statutory books. Indeed, with the election of the first round of MSPs, a new actor with a close self-interest in this issue had been born. The closer the report of the Boundary Commission came, the more MSPs demanded a clarification or indeed a withdrawal of the clause, causing the then SoS Helen Liddell to ask the Scottish Parliament to come up with suggestions and to initiate a formal consultation process. This process began in December 2001 and was to last until the end of March 2002. During this time the Scottish Parliament held a debate about the matter, at the end of which it overwhelmingly voted in favour of preserving its original constituencies and thus its original number of seats (only the Tory group voted against the motion). This vote was supported by a clear majority of Scottish responses to the consultation paper. However, being a reserved matter, the outcome of the decision-making at Westminster was far from guaranteed by this Scottish consensus. In fact, the following months also showed signs of resentment within the UK government and in particular among Scottish Labour MPs against such a move. After heated parliamentary debates, legislation to the effect of preserving the number of seats in the Scottish Parliament was finally passed at Westminster in July 2004. The apparent conflict in this decision was between maintaining the Scottish Parliament’s capacity to fulfil its legislative tasks properly and the desire to maintain some form of institutional coherence by keeping one of the few institutional links between central and devolved parliament. Supporters of preserving the 129 seats convincingly argued that any reduction would not allow the Scottish Parliament to perform its various functions and to uphold its founding principles. Opponents, though, claimed that the decoupling of constituencies would lead to complete confusion amongst voters (Scotland Office 2002, The Herald, 12 December 2002, 5 May 2004). However, whatever the arguments deployed in the public debate, the conflict was also a conflict of interests. The alternative solutions proposed to the problem entailed vastly different consequences for the career prospects of the respective groups of politicians involved in the debate. The reduction of seats according to the Scotland Act would have rendered the parliamentary mandate of incumbent MSPs in the Scottish Parliament both less attractive and less secure. The first point concerned the rising individual workload and a declining overall institutional capacity of the parliament that would almost automatically follow from such a reduction.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 232

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

233

Both these developments would be very likely to increase future frustration levels of MSPs (I would suspect in particular the latter, as it is directly linked to status and power). However, a more immediate discomfort for MSPs would have been the threat to their career security. Although the number of seats in the Scottish Parliament were only to be cut by less than 20 per cent, any such reduction would have put the careers of a much larger share of MSPs at risk. This is, first of all, because, at the time of the consultation, the report of the Boundary Commission was still to come and thus no constituency MSP could have been secure about their constituency; and, secondly, because the corresponding reduction of list seats would have further hampered the chances gaining one of the secure list positions in the already heavily contested innerparty nomination battles (see above). Taking both these points together, the career interest of professional politicians who had just embarked on a long term-career in the Scottish Parliament would certainly have pointed to the preservation of the 129 seats. However, this maintenance of career attractiveness and security was to come at a price: one of the last institutional gateways for a career path from the Scottish Parliament to Westminster (and vice versa) was being closed, or at least considerably narrowed. As one of two representatives of the same constituency, MSPs had been addressing the same inner-party selectorate and the same electorate as their Westminster counterparts. They were part of the same close-knit network and they were in a similarly prominent position. Thus, in any case of exit or retirement of the incumbent MP, the respective MSP in the constituency would move into the position of their quasi-natural successor (should he or she want to make such a career move). The decoupling of constituencies has clearly deprived MSPs of their pole position for such a direct transfer of candidacies. In a regional parliament that basically functions as a springboard to the national level, we would expect not much sympathy for such a move, as regional parliamentarians would hardly voluntary give up their institutional opportunity for career advancement. Furthermore, for parliamentarians who were set to move on as soon as possible, neither the loss of career security nor a decline in working conditions, status and power would be a real worry. As stated above, only the Conservative group voted against amending the Scotland Act. Recalling the empirical analysis of chapter 3, this behaviour could be interpreted as a reflection of the less clear-cut Scottish career ambition of Conservative MSPs. However, empirical evidence points to another interpretation. In an interview for this study two Tory MSPs openly admitted that the Conservatives never really intended to reduce the size of the Scottish Parliament, as they knew perfectly well that this would go against their own career interest. Instead, they described the opposition of their group as a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 233

20/8/09 11:51:07

234

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

‘cheap populist shot’ (interview S16, Tory MSP) and a ‘cynical exercise’60 taking advantage of the opportunity to project themselves as the advocate of the people against a self-interested political class, knowing quite well that it would not change the overall outcome.61 With regard to their actual career interest in this issue the Scottish political class was thus quite unified . In addition, the battle to keep the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament is also the issue where the institutional cleavage between MSPs and Scottish Westminster MPs has been displayed most openly, especially within the Labour Party. For, while in Scotland a cross-party initiative of MSPs mobilised support to defend their institution and their careers therein, a group of Labour MPs south of the border were actively undermining their colleagues’ attempts. During the long legislative decision-making process, they repeatedly attacked their own government’s legislative steps in the most strident terms (see debates on 18 December 2002, 9 February 2004 and 4 May 2004 in the Westminster Parliament). Always referring to the sacrosanct imperative of co-terminous constituency boundaries, various Scottish Labour MPs argued on different occasions for quite different models. For some it served as an argument to preserve their own numbers, others argued for a reduction of seats in the Scottish Parliament, and finally the argument of co-terminosity was used to recommend a complete change of the Scottish electoral system (for details see Stolz 2006: 280–1). In winter 2004 a special group meeting of Scottish Labour MPs as well as the Labour-dominated House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee (2004) strongly recommended keeping the principle of co-terminosity. This internal opposition was seriously threatening the Labour government’s attempt to settle the matter in favour of the Scottish consensus. Another heated exchange took place at the committee stage just before the third and final reading in May 2004. It was only when it became clear that the government would not back down on the issue that the rebels eventually gave in, leaving another sour note on the relationship between Scotland’s MPs and MSPs. MPs’ stand against giving up co-terminosity was mainly made on the basis of an expected confusion of voters. However, this argument can hardly 60

61

‘I think, the way it was argued, we knew that everybody else wanted 129, and therefore to an extent it was a cynical exercise, but it was also that we felt that actually promoting a smaller parliament would be a popular policy, and what we hoped for was, by taking a popular stance, we would actually improve our position and therefore we would get more people re-elected’ (interview S18, Tory MSP). This only confirms what MSPs from other parties already suspected at that time. See for example Liberal Democrat MSP Robert Brown calling the Tories’ opposition to the motion a bluff: ‘I support the motion and the reasoning behind it, because it expresses the view of an overwhelming number of members of the Scottish Parliament, including Conservative members, and the view of civic Scotland’ (SPOR 27 March 2002, col. 10662)

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 234

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

235

explain the deep division between MSPs and a considerable share of MPs, many of them from the same party. Yet neither can the behaviour of MPs be attributed to career interests alone. Apart from the suggestion of maintaining co-terminosity by preserving the number of Scottish Westminster MPs – which had been flawed from the very start – they didn’t have a direct career interest in this question at all. Instead the institutional cleavage between both sets of parliamentarians has been deepened by their different composition, their rather dissimilar parliamentary socialisation and a noticeable institutional rivalry between members of the two groups. To begin with, it seems quite obvious that those MPs with the strongest pro-devolution leanings would have left Westminster when the opportunity arose at the first election to the Scottish Parliament. Those who did stay thus included a fair number of staunch opponents of devolution and proportional representation to begin with. Yet even for those Labour MPs who had been campaigning for devolution at the time, the establishment of the Scottish Parliament entailed a number of serious disadvantages. This starts with the loss of policy competencies to their Holyrood colleagues, but goes far beyond. In terms of MPs’ self-confidence, the establishment of institutional structures in Scotland that had been designed in explicit opposition to Westminster (in conjunction with the corresponding rhetoric of ‘new politics’) clearly constituted another constant thorn in the flesh of those representing the traditional Westminster system. The feeling is further intensified by the fact that MSPs have actually stolen the media limelight from their Westminster colleagues. And finally, one should not underestimate the fact that it is due to the very existence of MSPs that the number of MPs was to be cut. No wonder, former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish identified an ‘anti-devolution sentiment among Westminster MPs’ (McLeish 2004: 127). From this point of view the issue of co-terminosity and the Scottish electoral system is far more than a mere technicality. As one of the most perceptive Scottish journalists recognised at that time, Westminster MPs were seeing this issue as ‘an opportunity to clip Holyrood wings’ and to exert some form of revenge: ‘If they go down, they will take up to 20 of the Holyrood upstarts with them’ (Macwhirter 2001). The role of personal rivalry and envy becomes of even stronger importance once we start to regard the co-terminosity clause in the Scotland Act as a central expression of the unequal power relations of the devolution settlement. From this point of view, imposing their own basic representational unit on the Scottish Parliament may be seen not only as maintaining a direct linkage between the two institutions but also as the very symbol of Westminster supremacy. Asserting their position against a strongly voiced Scottish consensus would have demonstrated Westminster’s capability to unilaterally determine Scottish internal structures. Exercising the formal

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 235

20/8/09 11:51:07

236

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

claim of Westminster sovereignty would have also restated their perceived (yet constantly challenged) superiority over MSPs. At the same time MSPs’ opposition to the automatic implementation of the Scotland Act was not only a defence of their careers and their institution. It was also a rejection of the principle of unilateral determination of Scottish institutions by Westminster. This position was made clear by former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish in his speech at the Scottish Parliament debate on the size of the Scottish Parliament, when he said that ‘any decision on the number of MSPs in this house should be a decision for this Parliament and for Scotland. That is not a narrow, nationalist perspective, but a commonsense approach’ (SPOR 27 March 2002, col. 10665). A largely united Scottish political class in conjunction with a supportive civil society had thus won a battle against Westminster. The formal principle, however, was still in place. A related and arguably even more important institutional debate that had commenced at the same time, though, is, thus, still to be fought: the debate about the legislative competence for the Scottish electoral system. Double-challenged by then SNP group leader Alex Salmond to repatriate the question to the Scottish Parliament (Hansard HC deb 9 February 2004, col. 1154) and by his own back-benchers to enforce Westminster’s legal authority in reserved matters, the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Darling, in 2004 reverted to the traditional British concept of self-imposed moderation. The decision will be taken at Westminster (‘it is for us in this parliament to decide’) the SoS assured his MPs, yet for any change of the Scottish electoral system ‘there must be a degree of consensus throughout Scotland’ (Hansard HC deb 9 February 2004, col. 1152). In order to find out about this consensus he set up an independent commission (headed by Sir John Arbuthnott) that was to examine the consequences of boundary differences and the existence of different voting systems in Scotland. The commission then reported back, recommending a number of changes to the electoral systems at work in Scotland (Commission on Boundary Differences 2006: 6). Any attempt to reform the Scottish electoral system, though, will be again a test for the capacity of the Scottish political class to assert and possibly enhance its self-regulatory power. As any UK government should know, any open confrontation with this political class plays into the hands of the nationalists. Thus, Westminster’s only chance of upholding its formal sovereignty over Scotland’s internal institutional structure may well be to refrain from unilaterally exercising any powers deriving from it. With the victory of the SNP at the 2007 Scottish election, the constitutional debate is firmly back on the agenda: the SNP started its time in office with a call for a ‘National Conversation’ about Scotland’s future, no doubt with the aim of mobilising support for its flagship policy of Scottish

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 236

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

237

independence. The unionist parties led by Labour have since reacted with the establishment of a Scottish Constitutional Commission with the remit of discussing possible extensions to the powers of the Scottish Parliament. Thus, there is no important political actor left in Scotland that has not yet accepted the desirability of a further extension of Scotland’s institutional autonomy. While these high politics debates are nevertheless shaped by ideological and partisan differences rather than by any collective class interest, the general shift in the debate has at least been supported by such a collective interest. More concrete repercussions of the existence of such a collective interest may arise in future. One highly symbolic battle has already been won by the new Scottish administration. In autumn 2007 First Minister Alex Salmond unilaterally rebranded the Scottish Executive ‘Scottish Government’. This was something one of his Labour predecessor, Henry McLeish, had already tried in his time as First Minister. In the event though, McLeish was left on his own and had to give in to pressures from his London party. This time, as to be expected, the UK Labour government again reacted with immediate attacks. However, the SNP’s political opponents in Scotland (including Labour) clearly accepted and even welcomed the change (not without criticising the lack of consultation, the cost and other details, though). Thus, again, the competence of Westminster to define basic norms of Scottish politics is formally still in place (as legally the Scottish government is still called ‘the Executive’), yet the initiative of a nationalist First Minister and the behavioural acceptance by the rest of Scotland’s politicians have de facto led to a re-institutionalisation of the original normative framework. In this case, the subject matter was mainly symbolic (though hardly unimportant), yet it clearly follows the pattern revealed above. Political parties and the colonisation of state and society Regional party organisations and public party finance

In this section the basic assumption that devolution would bring about the regionalisation and professionalisation of politics in Scotland – reinforced and expanded by an emergent Scottish political class – will have to be reviewed with regard to political parties. At first sight, the empirical analysis seems not to support such a hypothesis, or at least not unequivocally. With regard to the territorial balance of power the formal organisational structure of the four main parties in Scotland has not changed much. This is less surprising for the only exclusively Scottish party, the SNP, and for the completely federalised Liberal Democrats. In both these parties there has already been a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 237

20/8/09 11:51:07

238

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

distinctly Scottish organisational and leadership structure.62 What is surprising though, is the low extent to which both major UK parties, Labour and the Conservatives have adapted their party structures in Scotland. In both these parties the fairly unified and centralised organisational structure had been challenged by demands for more internal autonomy of its Scottish party organisation in the run-up to devolution and also since. In the Labour Party an internal faction called Scottish Labour Action had not only been active in mobilising pro-devolution support in the Scottish Labour Party, but also supported strong devolution within the party to reflect constitutional change. In the run-up to the first Scottish election, the former treasurer Bob Thomson, speaking for an increasingly marginalised nationalist wing in the Scottish Labour Party, again demanded greater autonomy with regard to candidate selection, finances as well as the power to staff the leading personnel at the Scottish headquarters (Scotsman, 5 March 1999). In the case of the Scottish Tory party demands went even further. There, a group of prodevolutionists had long supported the separation of the Scottish Tories from the UK party, along the lines of the German CDU/CSU.63 This idea (mainly associated with the late Edinburgh councillor Brian Meek) was first aired in the wake of the disastrous election results in 1997. Since then it has been on and off the agenda (The Herald, 4 June 2001, 25 February 2003), yet it seems to have worked itself from the periphery into the centre of the Scottish Party, as it has been taken up by some MSPs, including Murdo Fraser, one of the rising stars in its parliamentary group (The Herald, 23 May 2005). Despite the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and despite these inner-party challenges the basic structure of both these parties has remained largely unchanged since devolution. Both parties are managed in Scotland by a Scottish Executive committee and maintain a Scottish headquarters. Yet both Scottish organisations are strongly dependent on the national party executive with regard to central resources such as funding and staff. The Scottish Labour Party is said to be heavily subsidised (at least in its campaigning) by central Labour, as most donations from trade unions and individual donators go there (Lynch and Birrell 2004: 179/80). Its leading personnel at its Scottish headquarters, including the general secretary of the Labour Party in Scotland, are appointed and paid by UK Labour. In a similar vein, the Scottish Tory chairperson, who chairs the Scottish Executive of the party as well as running its central office, is still appointed by the UK leader of 62

63

Though in terms of its finances the Scottish Liberal Democrats were and still are highly dependent on the UK party. The ‘state-wide’ CDU (Christian Democratic Union) does not contest elections in Bavaria, leaving this terrain for its Bavarian sister party, the CSU (Christian Social Union), in return for the CSU’s support at the federal level.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 238

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

239

the Conservatives (in conjunction with the Scottish Executive). With regard to party finance, the Tories remain the only major party that does not even compile separate accounts for Scotland. But surely, since devolution, both Labour and the Conservatives in Scotland are headed by their own Scottish leader, elected by the respective Scottish party? Well, yes and no. Indeed, both parties have been electing a political figure-head that is generally known to be their Scottish leader. In the Labour Party this leader is to be elected by a specifically convened electoral college. This body comprises Labour’s elected representatives in Scotland (MSPs, MPs and MEPs), individual members of the Labour Party in Scotland, and the affiliated trade unions, each of the three groups commanding a third of the vote. In the Conservative Party a similar electoral college consisting of its candidates for the Scottish elections, constituency party chairmen and other party officials meets in order to elect what is commonly known as the Scottish Tory Leader. However, in both cases the common label is formally incorrect. Despite a party electorate expanding the realms of their MSPs, both these so-called party leaders are nothing more than leaders of the respective parliamentary parties in the Scottish Parliament, with no formal role in the party organisation. Both parties have remained essentially unitary organisations headed by one UK leader only. Their organisational hierarchy in Scotland is headed by the respective Scottish Executive Committee and its chairperson. In the case of the Conservative party this chairperson is even appointed by the central leadership, while the Labour SEC is allowed to elect its own chairperson. In both parties, the so-called Scottish leaders have been merely ordinary members of their parties’ SECs (the Tory one ex-officio, the Labour one as part of an MSP contingent). Thus, the power balance between Scottish and UK party units seems conspicuously little altered. But what about Scottish party organisations themselves? Have they been expanded and professionalised considerably since and because of devolution? With regard to the headquarters and the staff of political parties in Scotland, the immediate pre-devolution period has seen considerable changes, yet hardly a pattern of expansion. The most perplexing developments happened within the Scottish Labour Party, which less than a year before the first Scottish elections had to sell its Scottish headquarter in Glasgow in order to finance the election deficits of the UK party (The Sunday Times, 1 November 1998). Instead of moving to Edinburgh, and thus into the city of the new parliament, the party executive decided to stay in Glasgow, though moving its central office closer to the railway station. This decision reflects the fact that the office has traditionally fulfilled an administrative rather than a policy-making function (Lynch and Birrell 2004: 178). It is also

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 239

20/8/09 11:51:07

240

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

a reminder that the office is meant to serve all groups of the party, most of which are still clustered in the west of Scotland (councillors, MPs, affiliated trade unions).64 With regard to the staffing of the central office, devolution has not really made any significant difference. If at all, it seems to have reduced rather than increased the actual demand. While staff levels are reported to have been expanded pre-devolution towards 25 full-time employees (Lynch and Birrell 2004: 179), in 2002 a member of the team at Labour’s Scottish headquarters spoke of a core staff of about 14–15 (increasing at election times) (interview Matheson). On the local level the Scottish Labour Party operates completely on a voluntary basis, with no paid staff. In contrast to Labour, the Scottish Tories deliberately relocated their premises from the periphery of Edinburgh to the city centre in order to be closer to the parliament (interview David Mitchell). However, this is no reflection of an increasing workload caused by the parliament. After all, due to decreasing funds, the Scottish Tory headquarters had to manage in 2002 – despite devolution – with no more than 10 staff – only half of what they had 10 years before (interview David Mitchell). One way they have coped with this is by drastically reducing the number of policy officers (by 2002 there were only two of them left), effectively outsourcing this function to the parliamentary party in the Scottish Parliament. The Liberal Democrats are the only major party in Scotland who have not moved their headquarters in recent times. The same stability seems also to go for its core staff of roughly 14 employees (interview Barrie). However, the role of its central office has changed dramatically. Before devolution it ‘used to be the political centre of the party’ (interview Barrie). Now the policy unit as well as the party’s press office is at the Scottish Parliament, with salaries largely paid by the parliamentary group. By contrast, the SNP is the only major party in Scotland that has recently expanded its central office, selling their inner-city property in order to move to larger and more modern out-of-centre premises. The 12 staff working there in 2005 are nearly double the figure of the party’s workforce 10 years before (Lynch 1996: 231), though financial restrictions seem to have brought this development to a halt (Edinburgh Evening News, 7 June 2005). However, the SNP’s expansion of its staff and infrastructure must be seen as part of a general drive to professionalise and modernise the party’s fundraising and campaigning capacity – a process that had started in the 1990s (Lynch 1996). While the establishment of the Scottish Parliament may have accelerated this process, it was not caused by devolution (interview Hosie). 64

Of course, soaring property prices in Edinburgh, in part due to the new parliament, may also have played a role.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 240

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

241

Altogether, the erection of a completely new electoral, campaigning and policy-making arena in Scotland has surprisingly not generated an expansion of the organisational structure of political parties. Similarly, devolution has only slightly increased professionalisation among the parties’ political office-bearers in Scotland. In all four main parties, elected party offices have remained unpaid and staff members are generally excluded from standing for such an office. The share of professional politicians within the respective Scottish executive committees varies between parties. The most obvious professionalisation of its political leadership has occurred in the Scottish National Party. Since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament full-time parliamentarians have become the dominating force within its National Executive Committee. This is a clear and dramatic change from pre-devolution times when the relatively low overall number of SNP MPs and MEPs had provided unpaid party activists with a secure majority in the party’s ruling body. By contrast, among the 30-odd members of the Scottish Executive Committee of the Labour Party there are only 7 fulltime parliamentarians (4 seats are assigned for MSPs, 2 for MPs and 1 for MEPs). This body, however, also contains 10 trade union representatives, who are in general fully paid union officials with a clear-cut political remit, while 2 posts are reserved for local councillors, who may also be full-time politicians. A much lower percentage of political professionals is found in the leading bodies of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. In the Executive of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, parliamentarians are clearly outnumbered by a high share of local councillors and an even higher share of other delegates from regional and functional party units. The Scottish Executive of the Tory party – with only 3 ex-officio parliamentarians (1 from each parliament) – remains the leadership structure most clearly dominated by the voluntary party. However, if we broaden our view from the narrow look at party organisations and its formal leadership structures to the party as a broader social institution, we will see significant changes in the inner-party power structure as well as a tremendous professionalisation of the Scottish party; this has changed some of the parties beyond recognition. As we have seen, the parties’ MSPs have not taken over formal party structures in Scotland (except for the SNP), yet they have sidelined them to an extent Westminster MPs had never been able to do. Before devolution, parties in Scotland were used to power struggles between its elected full-time parliamentarians in London, the elected office bearers and officials of the party in the Scottish headquarters, and the party on the ground (members, activists, local councillors). With devolution, the centre of gravity in all parties has now clearly shifted towards the Scottish Parliament.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 241

20/8/09 11:51:07

242

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

This has, first of all, to do with its policy-making capacity. In all parties policy-making for devolved matters is now de facto located in the respective parliamentary group of the Scottish parliament. In some parties (the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) this development has been marked by the transfer of their policy units from the parties’ headquarters to the Parliament with a much increased level of staff support. For the Tories this move was accompanied by the first-ever real devolution of policy autonomy to a part of the Scottish party. In the Labour Party a so-called Scottish Policy Forum was to make sure that ordinary members would be able engage in the process of policy-making. However, this form of decentralisation arguably allows party leaders – and in particular ministers and their advisers – a much better control of the process than an activist-based structure (Hassan 2002: 32; Lynch and Birrel 2004: 183–4). In the SNP, once known to be the most activist-based party, parliamentarians are clearly dominating the policy process. A second element in this general development is the public status of MSPs. As publicly elected representatives they carry a legitimacy not available to party officials or even elected office-bearers of the party. Leading MSPs are the recognised and recognisable faces of their parties in Scotland. With the formal franchise for the election of the parliamentary group leaders in all parties now extending to the ordinary member (though not necessarily with one member, one vote), they clearly have some claim to the title of Scottish party leaders.65 Even though formal party structures say differently, these status advantages are duly reflected in their standing and their role within the party. Yet arguably the most important aspect is the new resource balance that accrues from the existence of the large and heavily professsionalised contingent of full-time parliamentarians fully equipped with staff and infrastructure in the Scottish Parliament. Headquarters run by 10 to 20 staff are simply outstripped by parliamentary parties with roughly the same size and double the staff support (as in the case of the Tories and the Liberal Democrats), not to speak of the 2 biggest parliamentary groups of Labour and the SNP. In all the Scottish parties except Labour (where the number of MPs and MSPs does not diverge dramatically), MSPs plus their research staff strongly outweigh any other group of full-timers. Legislative competencies (exceeding levels of legitimacy) combined with 65

When Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray was elected in September 2008 he explicitly made this claim: ‘The job I’ve been elected to has the title of Leader in the Scottish Parliament but the mandate of this election is a wider one than that.’ On the very same day, his Labour Party colleagues in the UK government rebuked him, insisting that party structures were still in place (The Herald, 13 September 2008).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 242

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

243

a superior resource endowment has thus caused the parliamentary parties in the Scottish Parliament to become the new power bases within political parties in Scotland. Despite the continuing predominance of centralist tendencies within the formal party structure of UK parties (Labour, Tories and to some extent also the Liberal Democrats) and despite the remnants of activist democracy in the SNP, the creation of the Scottish Parliament has clearly strengthened the Scottish level in the inner-party territorial power balance. The regionalisation of the British state has thus given rise to a regionalisation within political parties, yet one that is not (yet) reflected in its extra-parliamentary structures. A similar picture emerges with regard to the second macro-process: political professionalisation. Despite the fairly limited changes with regard to the infrastructure and staffing of formal party organisations as described above, political parties in Scotland are, of course, heavily affected by the professionalisation of the parliamentary sphere. The first and most important aspect in this respect is the sheer number of people in all parties who can now live off politics. Although they are paid exclusively to conduct their parliamentary tasks, MSPs and their research assistants do provide political parties with a backbone of full-time political professionals, completely changing inner-party power relations as well as the parties’ position in Scottish society. The most significant change has probably occurred for the small parties. Before devolution, parties like the Greens or the Scottish Socialist Party had been completely amateur organisations run by devoted voluntary and parttime activists with hardly any resources.66 With the election of their own MSPs (between 2003 and 2007 there were six SSP and seven Greens MSPs in the parliament) fully endowed with support staff, these parties had at their disposal (at least temporarily) a critical mass of professional personnel that helped them to build up a rudimentary party organisation as well as build more continuous electoral support (though the SSP has since given up this advantage, as internal warfare has almost wiped this party out). But even for the four established parties in Scotland the effect has been dramatic. Asked for an educated guess of the number of political professionals in each party (including full-time elected representatives as well as party staff and parliamentary assistants) leading party officials revealed a tremendous development: just three years into the first legislative period, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats seem to have roughly trebled their numbers to about 50 and 100 persons respectively, while the SNP has nearly doubled their 66

Similar to the literature on the main parties, academic accounts of the new small parties of Scotland (Bennie 2000, 2002, 2004) offer little with regard to their organisational structure.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 243

20/8/09 11:51:07

244

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

full-time contingent to roughly 200. For the Labour Party – the party that had dominated Scottish politics until 2007 – this development is less pronounced. Though even with the largest Westminster contingent (1997: 56; 2001: 46; 2005: 41), plus still a high number of full-time councillors, plus a considerable number of activists and office bearers in paid political positions as trade union officials, the additional 150 full-time political professionals in the Scottish Parliament mark a considerable increase in their overall numbers, estimated at about 400.67 This analysis of the professionalisation of political parties via parliamentary representatives and their staff is based on an understanding that goes beyond a narrow organisational view of political parties. It neither rests on a claim that the respective party organisations are in control of MSPs and their staff nor on a claim that the party organisation is necessarily the beneficiary of all their work. Instead, it simply puts forward the argument that members or supporters of a certain party who make a living out of politics, will have an impact on their party (whether in matters of internal organisation, strategy, public perception, etc.). If we take a closer look at the activities of the parties’ political professionals in parliament, we will see that they have also been actively engaged in institutionalising more direct forms of material support for their parties. The most important scheme in this respect, though, is still based on UK legislation: the financial assistance to ‘non-executive parties’ (‘Short money’, see third section of this chapter). The payment administered by the SPCB is based on the number of MSPs of each non-executive party. It amounts to £6,217 per seat and thus currently to a total of almost £500,000 (Earle 2007: 8). This money is generally spent on central activities of the parliamentary parties such as research, policy and press relations, and it thus allows them to take over the leading role in this respect from the extra-parliamentary organisation of their parties. Ever since its implementation, opposition parties have complained that these payments are far too low to enable them to fully perform their parliamentary tasks. In this complaint they have been supported by the Review Body on Senior Salaries (2001) which recommended a review of ‘Short Money’ arrangements as well as the payment of a salary to the leader of the largest opposition party. While MSPs are incapable solving the first issue, they have reacted to the second recommendation. Instead of paying a salary to one party leader they have opted to reimburse parliamentary leaders of substantial 67

Figures derive from interviews with David Mitchell (Con), Derek Barrie (Lib– Dem), Stewart Hosie (SNP) and Murdo Matheson (Labour) in conjunction with my own estimations.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 244

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

245

oppositions parties (more than 15 MSPs) for the additional expenses that arise from their task in the so-called Scottish Parliament party leaders’ allowance scheme. Opposition parties with 15–29 MSPs (currently the Tories and the Lib–Dems) are currently entitled to £13,094 from this scheme, party groups with 30 MSPs or more (currently the Labour Party) to £24,959 (Earle 2007: 9). In addition to official schemes, parties have also developed their own ways to help themselves. Since the first legislative year, business managers of all parliamentary parties have requested a share of MSPs’ personal allowances for the common purposes of the parliamentary group. Depending on the party, MSPs must hand over between £1,700 and £9,000 a year into a pool that funds activities of the parliamentary parties, especially in support of the leadership (which, of course, can hardly be separated from party activities in general).68 This practice has been criticised by the SSRB for having a distorting effect on the individual MSP’s capacity to fulfil his or her role as constituency representative (Review Body on Senior Salaries 2001: 10–11). Publicly, however, parties have shown conspicuously little inclination to mutually denigrate themselves for their behaviour. On the contrary, faced with heavy criticism from the Scottish media, business managers decided to continue the practice. Any final decision was delayed until the outcome of the general review of state funding for parties in the UK (which has not yet been finalised). While these forms of public funding for the parliamentary parties can be seen as an externalisation of costs from extra-parliamentary party organisations, political parties have also institutionalised more direct ways of transferring resources from its parliamentary to its extra-parliamentary units. The most common mechanism in this respect are the donations that all the parties represented in the Scottish Parliament receive from their MSPs. Although legally not enforceable, in most parties these payments take the form of a general salary deduction – a party levy rather than a voluntary donation by individuals. Labour MSPs have to sign a special code of conduct which, among other things, requires them to pay 3 per cent of their salary to the party.69 In the SNP, representatives had paid rather varying amounts to different units of the party. In 2003 the party conference set the expected contribution of MSPs to the central party at £3,000, the equivalent of 9 per cent of 68

69

In fact, in a memo to her MSPs (leaked to the press) the SNP business manager Shona Robison made it clear that the group’s pooled support team would not be available to individual MSPs, and that they, in turn, should use their personal funds to attack the executive parties (Sunday Herald, 8 December 2002). This caused a major uproar because MSPs pay one per cent more than Westminster MPs who also earn a slightly higher salary (The Scotsman, 30 July 1999).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 245

20/8/09 11:51:07

246

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

their salary. However, one year later, less than half of them were reported to have paid up in full (The Herald, 27 July 2004). MSPs of the Scottish Socialist party made a political point in accepting only half of their salary – donating the other half, and thus roughly £25,000 a year each, to their party (The Herald, 14 July 2003). Another quite profitable transfer route reported to be used by all parties is the practice of sub-letting party-owned premises to MSPs (The Herald, 12 July 2004). This way, the party is paid directly out of the MSPs support allowance, while it is generally hard to assess whether he or she gets market value in return. We may thus conclude that the establishment of the Scottish Parliament has indeed entailed a professionalisation of the Scottish parties and a strengthening of them vis-à-vis the central party organisations in London. Political parties in Scotland have been quick to make use of the additional opportunity provided by the Scottish Parliament. The first step in this respect – the adoption of their own version of Short money for the Scottish Parliament – had still been initiated by Westminster legislation. Since then, though, they have been smoothly operating the scheme and have quietly institutionalised further channels of parliamentary funding for political parties. These current practices seem to reveal the emergence of a Scottish political class acting for itself. Regional administration and civil society

In Scotland, the colonisation of state and society by individual parties or by the collective political class remains strongly limited by a number of institutional features of the British state, the most important of them being the non-partisan nature of the UK civil service. As devolution has not entailed the establishment of a separate Scottish civil service, the new Scottish administration has been subject to both the general attempts of the UK government at modernising the civil service structures and the specific organisational demands of the Scottish Executive. As a result, the changes that have occurred since the old Scottish Office was transferred to the Scottish Executive have remained largely in line with UK developments. ‘None of the First Ministers has tried to impose a structure at variance with civil service norms’ (Parry 2002: 148). Thus, while the Scottish civil service has generally become more permeable with regard to cross-over careers from other public sector bodies, its non-partisan ethos is still preventing any form of colonisation by professional politicians. By creating a distinct politicised structure, consisting of growing numbers of non-civil-servant special advisers within its inner core, the British government has developed its own strategy to circumvent these limitations, especially

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 246

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

247

since Tony Blair’s assumption of office.70 By comparison, and in contrast to hostile reports in the Scottish media, the number of appointments of special advisers to the Scottish Executive has remained rather modest. Instead of a back-up team of more than 70 (as in the UK), the Scottish Executive’s policy unit has fluctuated between 7 and 10 policy and communication specialists (Sunday Herald, 20 June 1999, 20 July 2003; The Herald, 27 January 2000). However, a look at the career paths of some of those advisers clearly shows that this unit can indeed be considered a rather tiny, though highly active component of the Scottish political class. Apart from their experience in journalism, PR and other relevant spheres, most of them have been politically active before and/or after their employment in the Scottish Executive (Stolz 2006: 309). Compared to this rather small ‘outlet’ into the core of the Scottish administration a potential expansion of the Scottish political class into the wide and complex network of ‘Quasi Government in Scotland’ (Lloyd 2000) – which includes a wide range of non-departmental public bodies (NDPB) as well as other, more remote, public organisations and positions – would be far more significant and problematic. Grievances about the ‘rise of quangocracy’ (Smith 1999: 255) and allegations of cronyism and partisan patronage in its appointment system are hardly new. On the local level, the dominance of the Labour Party in large parts of west-central Scotland has long provoked charges of a one-party state, where positions well beyond elected offices of local government were seen to be distributed mainly according to party political credentials. With the sourcing out of central government tasks to next-steps agencies during the 1980s and early 1990s, the Conservative UK government had established a new generation of Scotland-wide Quangos, which had allegedly been staffed mainly with business elites and their own party supporters. At that time, the Labour Party in Scotland – via its then Shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson – promised a ‘bonfire of quangos’ should they return to government. In this context, devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament were perceived as an opportunity to bring back democratic accountability and democratic scrutiny to the Scottish public sector (Smith 1999). In the Scotland Act the UK government has transferred the supervisory function for Scottish NDPBs from the old Scottish Office to the Scottish Executive. Within the first legislature the Scottish Executive launched a major review of these bodies, resulting in some abolitions and some restructuring 70

According to the Neill Report, which criticised this practice, Tony Blair had elevated the numbers of special advisers from 38 to 74 in the first two years of his office (Committee on Standards in Public Life 2000: 69).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 247

20/8/09 11:51:07

248

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

measures (Scottish Executive 2001), yet in very little overall reform, let alone any ‘bonfire’. This exercise proved once more that it is very difficult to get rid of these bodies, once they are created (Flinders 2004: 897). Since then, the Scottish Parliament has even set up a number of new regulatory and investigatory posts and bodies (Public Service Ombudsman, Information Commissioner, Water Industry Commission etc.) (Burnside and Dewar 2006). Calls to halt this new wave of creationism and to merge some of the newly established bodies soon emerged (The Herald, 24 February 2006, 13 March 2006). In April 2006 the Scottish Executive was responsible for 140 different NDPBs and the appointment of 102 chairs, 647 board members and many more non-executive positions.71 Of course, the transfer of responsibility from the UK to the Scottish government has not ended the public controversy around these public appointments. On the contrary, allegations of a system of partisan patronage run by the Scottish Labour Party remained quite frequent both with regard to local government nominations and to the Scottish Executive’s appointments. In the first devolution years opposition politicians and newspapers have criticised individual incidents where former parliamentarians, unsuccessful parliamentary candidates or local councillors from the Labour Party had been appointed to highly paid and/or powerful posts in various agencies and commissions (see among others The Herald, 20 August 1999, 28 February 2003, 24 August 2004). Confirmation of a general tendency to favour candidates with Labour links seems to have come – of all places – from the Scottish Executive’s directory of public appointments. In 2004 this directory showed 70 per cent of those 148 appointees who stated a party allegiance to have links to the Labour Party, while 16 per cent were affiliated to its Scottish coalition partner the Liberal Democrats; only 5 per cent claimed links with the major Scottish opposition party, the SNP. This rather awkward result prompted Alex Neil, an SNP MSP well known as ‘one of quangoland’s more passionate critics’ (Rosie 2002: 128), to liken Labour’s rule of Scotland to the communist rule of the Kremlin (Sunday Herald, 24 October 2004). However, this appointment system, and thus the patronage power of the political class, has already been the object of institutional reform initiatives. Very early in the life of the new Scottish Parliament, this same Alex Neil introduced a bill to the effect that appointments to quangos would be scrutinised by a specially established parliamentary committee. While his bill 71

The first two figures are from the Scottish Executive web-page (accessed in April 2006). In an answer to a parliamentary question in February 2000, the-then Scottish Finance Minister claimed responsibility for nearly 3,900 public appointments to 187 bodies (The Herald, 10 February 2000, S1W-22423).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 248

20/8/09 11:51:07

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

249

was voted down, the Executive nevertheless acknowledged the public concern and loss of confidence with regard to quango appointments and started its own legislative initiative.72 In its own Public Appointments and Public Bodies etc. (Scotland) Bill, finally passed in February 2003, it created the post of a Scottish Commissioner for Public Appointments to prepare a special code of practice for ministerial appointments and to oversee compliance with its norms in Scotland. This was against the advice of the UK Commissioner for Public Appointments who ‘expressed concern that a separate Commissioner may lead to a fragmented approach’ (SPICe 2002: 8). Taking up her office in June 2004, the Scottish Commissioner has already changed procedures for quango nominations. In the new system, applications will be proceeded anonymously until the interview stage. Furthermore, instead of applicants having to declare any political activities of the past five years in their application, this information is now only requested of successful candidates (Office of the Commissioner 2006). On the whole its seems as if these new procedures overseen by the Commissioner and her 15 assessors leaves little room for a system of partisan patronage. Altogether we may conclude that the system of quango appointments in Scotland pre- and post-devolution has been prone to some party political influence. While the beneficiaries of this influence have rarely been frontline professional politicians, access to quango positions seems to have been much easier for activists and supporters of the governing party (i.e. the Labour Party). In order to evaluate the extent of any partisan patronage we should, however, consider the wide range of public appointments, the majority of which come with very little political power and without a salary. Furthermore, even before the new Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies in Scotland came into practice in 2006, less than 10 per cent of public appointees had been politically active before their appointment.73 While the concurrent processes of regionalisation and political professionalisation have produced a Scottish political class in charge of the Scottish public sector, these processes have not caused any significant expansion of this class into state and society. On the contrary, with the promised radical overhaul of the Scottish system of quasi-government still looming, this class has nevertheless reformed its appointment system to the effect that any partisan patronage has been made more difficult than before. The institutionalisation of the post-devolution public sector in Scotland is following general UK 72

73

This loss of public confidence has been stated as the main reason for the legislation by the sponsoring minister Jack McConnell, then Finance Minister of the Scottish Executive (SPOR 30 March 2000, col. 1240) Information from Scottish Executive Public Bodies FAQ page, accessed in March 2006.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 249

20/8/09 11:51:07

250

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

regulations and traditions with regard to the partisan neutrality of its public service. However, this kind of self-restraint has also to be seen as a direct result of the new transparency and democratic scrutiny established with the erection of the Scottish Parliament. Faced with high public expectations with regard to the new parliament and a drastic disillusionment with politics in general, the separate modernisation of the public appointments system in Scotland is part of a distinctive Scottish strategy to regain public legitimacy for representative politics in Scotland. From a political class point of view these measures are about self-preservation rather than expansion. The following case study of the reform of Scottish local government shows that both these goals may indeed be pursued at the same time. Local government

The potential relationship between the regional level of government and local government in Scotland has been the subject of heated discussions ever since devolution became part of the political agenda. During the debates of the 1970s, representatives of Scottish local government perceived the establishment of an assembly mainly as a centralising force and a threat to their autonomy. By the mid-1980s though, mainly due to the devastating experience of Thatcherism, this stance had completely changed. A future Scottish Parliament was now expected to be much more sympathetic than any central government in London. Yet, while notions of local democracy, subsidiarity, etc. resonated well with the ‘new politics’ rhetoric of the Scottish self-government movement, specific conditions and concrete performances of Scottish local government really did not. As stated above, Scottish local politics has undergone a notable partisan politicisation since the 1970s, with a clear tendency for Labour Party control since the 1980s. West of Scotland councils have been said to be oneparty states, with Labour’s majority at the polls being hugely exaggerated by the first-past-the-post electoral system. Labour councillors have been portrayed as party machine politicians, macho and adversary in their political style, if not incompetent and corrupt.74 These features of Scottish local government can be seen as the very opposite of the reformist agenda pursued in large parts of a self-government movement. The following case study shows the newly emerging Scottish political class pursuing two analytically distinct yet empirically closely connected 74

A conservative author on Scottish local democracy: ‘On the evidence of some of Labour’s one-party states in the West, they are about as democratically accountable as the Mafia’ (Massie 1999).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 250

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

251

aspects of local government reform: the introduction of a more proportional electoral system and attempts to professionalise local politics. Opportunity and responsibility for such a reform initiative derived from the Scotland Act which stipulates a transfer of competencies for Scottish local government from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament. In order to examine the implications of this transfer and to make reform recommendations, the Secretary of State for Scotland had set up the McIntosh Commission. Once the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive had taken over, a number of follow-up working groups were established. The most important with regard to political careers was the Renewing Local Democracy Working Group (known after its chairman as the Kerley group). Its remit was to come up with some ideas to make active participation in councils more attractive and to make them more representative. More particularly the Kerley group was to advise on the electoral system, appropriate size of councils, and the system of remuneration for councillors. The central and by far the most controversial issue in this modernisation debate was the electoral system. Both McIntosh and Kerley recommended the introduction of a proportional representation system instead of the traditional FPTP, with the latter specifying STV as the preferred model. Within the Scottish Parliament these radical recommendations fell on some rather sympathetic ears as both the Liberal Democrats and the SNP had been long-standing supporters of PR. As coalition partner of the Labour Party in the Scottish Executive, the Liberal Democrats had even secured a general – though rather vague – commitment to ‘progress on electoral reform’ in their first partnership agreement. Many observers, including many Labour councillors, expected this to remain a token concession that would not be acted upon in the immediate future. In December 2001, however, the newly elected First Minister, Jack McConnell, a former council leader with modernising credentials, announced the imminent publication of a White Paper on proportional representation for local government elections. While this announcement was not accompanied by any statement as to which particular model of PR would be implemented, McConnell stated that he was setting out his legislative programme ‘on the basis of Kerley’, pointing to STV, and thus to the preferred option of the Liberal Democrats (see The Herald, 19 December 2001). McConnell’s commitment became one of the cornerstones of the new coalition agreement between the two parties following the second Scottish Parliament election in 2003. Roughly one year later, in June 2004, the Scottish Parliament passed the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill with a strong majority of 96 to 18 and 2 abstentions. Only the Conservative group and 2 Labour backbenchers voted against, while 2 Labour MSPs abstained. The new act provided for elections

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 251

20/8/09 11:51:08

252

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

to Scottish local councils to be conducted under the STV electoral system in 3- and 4-member wards, replacing the traditional FPTP system. It also enabled the Scottish Executive to pay salaries and pensions to councillors as well as providing for severance payments for those retiring. This fundamental change to the way local politics is conducted in Scotland arguably represents the most important shift in the opportunity structure for future generations of Scottish politicians (and further distinguishes these structures from those that English would-be politicians are faced with). The increased proportionality of the new electoral system75 vastly opens up political competition. As predicted, the 2007 council election saw large losses of council seats for the Labour Party (lost 161). Its complete control of some councils in the west of Scotland with less than a majority of the votes was a thing of the past. The main beneficiary though was not the Liberal Democrat party but the SNP, which gained 182 seats. In May 2007 the SNP not only became the strongest party in the Scottish Parliament, they also took over as the party with the largest number of local councillors in Scotland. Electoral reform has clearly broken the dominance of the Labour Party in Scotland. Also predictably, the 2007 local election has established a new power balance within councils. Of the 32 councils in Scotland only 5 are now in the control of one single party group (3 Independent, 2 Labour), the rest are run on a coalition or minority basis. Under STV this is likely to remain so. As a consequence Scottish local politicians will have to learn new forms of cross-party co-operation, if not continental-style coalition politics. Furthermore, councillors socialised in such an institutional context are likely to behave differently when they ascend to a parliamentary mandate. Arguably, the reproduction of the institutional modernisation of Scottish government on the local level, prove more effective with regard to the long-term change of Scottish politics than any early evidence of ‘new politics’ inside the Scottish Parliament. While it can be argued that this move will eventually revive local democracy in Scotland, from the perspective of the Scottish Labour Party this scenario looks rather bleak. Not only has the party lost control and influence in many councils: a considerable number of councillors, many of whom who have been pursuing a rather long-term and full-time career in local politics (despite the rather low level of general allowances) have also lost their jobs. So, why did a Labour-run Scottish government actually implement a reform 75

Of course, the proportionality of STV depends on the number of seats per constituency. Whether STV in 3 to 4 member wards really constitutes a proportional electoral system is a matter of debate. However, in this context it is important that the proportionality is vastly increased compared to the majoritarian first-past-thepost-system.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 252

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

253

that was so blatantly against the immediate party interest and the career interests of its elected politicians? One answer points again to the strong institutional boundaries that seem to shape the behaviour of Scottish politicians. Indeed, the almost unanimous support for local government electoral reform in the Scottish Parliament contrasts quite strongly with the vocal opposition from both the Scottish Westminster contingency and Scottish local government. While this is partly due to the different partisan composition of the Scottish Parliament (and the fact that the Labour Party has no overall majority), with its stronger contingent of pro-PR parties, a more direct effect of these institutional boundaries on individual politicians may be recognised with regard to the MSPs of the Labour group, who, in the end, sided almost entirely with their non-Labour colleagues against the general position held within their own party. In their highly publicised submission to the Scottish Executive (in 2002) the Scottish Labour Party strongly endorsed the status quo and rejected PR in principle, though leaving some leeway (as a concession to First Minister McConnell). Much stronger opposition to the Scottish Executive’s reform proposals came from Scottish Labour’s Westminster group. In fact, they used their formal competence over Holyrood’s electoral system to threaten their MSPs that an imposition of PR on local government by the Scottish Parliament might well tip the scales for a similar imposition of the FPTP system on Holyrood by the Westminster Parliament (Scotland on Sunday, 25 May 2003). Individual Labour-run local councils as well as CoSLA also protested strongly against the reform plans (The Herald, 25 March 2004). These statements were accompanied by remarks of some council heavyweights who reminded MSPs of their accountability to the local party and about their own strong position within local party organisations, amounting to nothing less than a de-selection threat.76 From a career perspective the loyalty of Labour MSPs to its parliamentary leadership – and thus their opposition to the rest of Scottish Labour – can be explained by focusing on three aspects: their recruitment, their socialisation and – arguably most importantly – their future career ambitions. As to the recruitment aspect, it may be argued that those who were shortly to stand for the Scottish Parliament – in itself the very symbol of institutional modernisation of Scotland – would be much more inclined to support such modernisation efforts (including PR) than representatives of the traditional institutions on the local and UK level. Even those who had come from Westminster or 76

See for example the statements of Charles Gordon, leader of Glasgow City Council, and Jim McCabe, leader of North Lanarkshire Council, reported in The Herald, 15 May 2003 and 25 March 2004.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 253

20/8/09 11:51:08

254

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

local councils (about half of all MSPs) may have done so precisely because they wanted to be part of this modernisation process. According to a survey at the time, the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament had been fairly divided about PR for local government to begin with (McGarvey 2002). Contrasted with the clear majorities in other sections of the party, this evaluation confirms that the Labour Party group in the Scottish Parliament indeed contains a higher share of genuine PR supporters. The most obvious example in this respect is, of course, First Minister Jack McConnell, who had been a local council leader well known for his modernising tendencies before he became an MSP. Secondly, those who have come directly into the Scottish Parliament, without any prior experience in elected politics, will have been socialised in a legislative body elected by a PR system and with a clear majority of members who genuinely believe PR to be a fairer electoral system. While this experience may not be enough to reverse strongly held opinions, it might nevertheless weaken the resistance to such a reform. Furthermore, as the MSP mandate is generally not combined with another concurrently held political position (see previous chapter) this pro-PR body remains the sole socialisation agency. The complete absence of concurrently held offices also strongly affects the interest structure of MSPs. Had chairpersons of local Labour parties, Labour councillors, and Labour council leaders been sitting in the Scottish Parliament (as is quite common in other parliaments such as the Catalan one), such a reform against the vested interest of these groups hardly would have been conceivable. The final point in this argument refers to the future career interest of MSPs. In this respect their almost exclusive ambition for the continuation and advancement of their political career inside the Scottish Parliament (again, see previous chapter) can be seen to have two important implications. First, the reduction of Labour councillors does not impair on MSPs’ career opportunities, as they neither hold simultaneous council mandates nor do they aim to move to this level. In a similar vein their opposition to the mainstream position in the party organisation and in the Scottish Labour group at Westminster does not harm their career prospects, as promotions within the Scottish Parliament and the Executive are exclusively a matter for party leaders inside the Scottish Parliament. Instead, voting in favour of the Executive’s PR bill had the double advantage of securing a Labour-led Executive, and thus maintaining promotion opportunities for the whole group, while simultaneously showing loyalty to the leadership and thus enhancing (or at least maintaining) individual prospects of getting promotion. However, having emphasised the institutional boundedness of MSPs, we should be careful not to overestimate its extent. A closer look at the second

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 254

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

255

element of this reform legislation, i.e. the professionalisation of local government, clearly shows these boundaries to be perforated as well as at least partly superposed by common interests. In the various approaches towards the modernisation of Scottish local government since devolution, the question of professionalisation of local councillors has been a constant feature. Up to Scottish Parliament legislation, the remuneration of local councillors was based on a fairly low general allowance (£6,000 to £7,300) topped up by a special responsibility allowance granted to almost two-thirds of all councillors. The average income of Scottish councillors in 2005 was about £14,000 (Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee (SLARC) 2006: 3.1). As this system had been found wanting by almost all actors involved in local politics, the McIntosh Commission recommended an independent review into this issue. The new regulatory framework set out in the Local Governance (Scotland) Act of 2004 was based on the recommendations of the McIntosh Commission and the Kerley group as well as on a separate consultation process by the Scottish Executive. The stipulations of the Act allow the Scottish Executive to make provisions for the remunerations, allowances and expenses to be paid by local authorities to councillors, to provide for a pensions scheme for local councillors, and also to provide for severance payments to be paid to local councillors wanting to retire at the next local elections. A detailed specification of the new remuneration system was to come from subsequent Scottish Executive regulations on the basis of advice from the newly established Councillors’ Remuneration Progress Group (Sewel group) and SLARC. The regulations put into effect in 2007 largely followed the SLARC report which in effect found a compromise between McIntosh and Kerley on the one hand – both arguing for a continuation of part-time councillors – and the Sewel group that was recommending something close to full-blown professionalisation. All councillors elected in 2007 are granted a basic annual salary of £15,452, while a limited number of senior councillors as well as council leaders will be entitled to significantly higher salaries, ranging from £15,452 up to £46,357. In addition, a benefit pension scheme has been made available to all councillors. Thus, by the time the first local elections under STV were held in Scotland, ordinary councillors had been granted a significant pay rise and an incorporation into the social security system. Together these measures amount to a significant professionalisation of the councillor mandate. Despite the appointment of several independent working groups and despite their best efforts to base their recommendations on independent criteria – such as job size, job responsibility, and attractiveness for a wider range of people – the question of local government remuneration remained a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 255

24/9/09 17:15:28

256

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

highly political issue with vested interests at stake. Professionalisation has been a long-standing demand from within local government. Pressure for such a move came from the National Association of Councillors and from CoSLA, as well as from individual councils. And it had the backing of the Scottish Labour Party Executive. All these organisations were not only lobbying the Scottish Executive from the outside, they were also directly involved in various working groups.77 And they were more or less identical with those who had been fighting to keep the traditional FPTP electoral system. Considering the enormous irritations and the bad blood that this battle had caused between local Labour politicians and their Holyrood counterparts, the proposed professionalisation of local government – however justified it might be on other grounds – also clearly functioned as a compensation for the diminished re-election chances of Labour councillors. After all, while some Labour incumbents lost their mandate, others would now continue on much improved terms. A much more direct compensatory measure is to be seen in the severance package of between £10,000 and £20,000 (depending on the length of their service) provided to those councillors who were to retire at the 2007 local election (Scottish Executive 2006). The legislative basis for these payments was set out in the Local Governance (Scotland) Act, despite a clear rejection of such a proposition in the White Paper (Scottish Executive 2002). Portrayed by its supporters as a well-deserved recognition of councillors’ long-time public service and a device to introduce new people into politics, its restrictive application gives away the real target group of this measure: at the passage of the bill, the executive parties had made sure (defeating an opposition amendment) that only those standing down before the election – not those who fought and lost – would be entitled to such a payment. The Executive has since also made it clear that this scheme was restricted to the 2007 election. The severance payment has thus eased the way for long-term Labour councillor into retirement, effectively ‘buying off’ resistance against an electoral reform that would have cost some of them their future career anyway. ‘Persuading’ (opposition politicians actually speak of ‘bribery’) some incumbent councillors to stand down voluntarily also drastically reduced the innerparty competition for the remaining Labour candidatures preventing the expected infighting among Labour councillors. A severance scheme designed to reward public service rather than adherence to party considerations would have looked rather different. 77

The Councillors’ Remuneration Progress Group, and thus the group that came up with the most favourable recommendations, was not only chaired by a Labour politician (Lord Sewel), it also contained the president of CoSLA (Pat Watters) and a representative from the National Association of Councillors (Ruth Simpson).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 256

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

257

This case study of Scottish local government reform tells a rather complex tale about the internal structure and the external boundaries of the Scottish political class. The professionalisation of local government demonstrates that such a class actually extends the institutional boundaries of the Scottish Parliament. The compensatory aspect of the professionalisation settlement reveals that the self-interest of other groups of semi-professional and professional politicians may also find their way into the institutional politics of MSPs. Despite their lack of career ambition in the local sphere, MSPs nevertheless remain tied to these interests via inner-party linkages. In the case of the Scottish Labour Party a head-on collision with the strong local government element in the party and with the institutional arm of the party in Scottish local government would have made life for the leadership in the Scottish Executive very difficult. Given the strength of local barons in many constituency parties, back-bench MSPs might have also rightly feared for the future of their parliamentary career.78 Yet by professionalising Scottish local government, MSPs should not simply be seen as the compliable executors of councillors’ self-interest. Instead, expanding political professionalisation further into society (in this case into local government) is a genuinely common interest of professional and semi-professional politicians across institutional boundaries as such a move increases the general supply of professional positions and reduces competition for them. Especially the much more generous endowment of council leaders (on a level similar to that of MSPs) in conjunction with the move towards cabinet-style leadership structures (also recently introduced in some Scottish councils) might improve the attractiveness of these positions to MPs or MSPs. Leadership positions in the large Scottish councils may provide fall-back positions for parliamentarians failing to be re-elected, or even a genuine career advancement for discontented back-benchers. Taken together, this case study of Scottish local government reform shows MSPs capable of asserting their own collective self-interest in the development of Scottish political institutions against that of political professionals and semi-professionals from other institutions. However, it also shows them to be tied up with these interests, inseparably linked by party organisations, and thus to be engaged in compromise-building across these institutional boundaries. Finally, MSPs have been shown to represent and execute a genuinely common interest of professional politicians to expand 78

It is perhaps indicative that seven out of the eight Labour MSPs who dissented during the passage of the bill came from west of Scotland constituencies, where the effects of the electoral reform were to be felt most severely.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 257

20/8/09 11:51:08

258

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

political professionalisation into the local arena. Institutionally bounded, yet far from completely self-contained, MSPs may thus be seen as the core or the ‘executive committee’ of a Scottish political class that reaches beyond the institutional boundaries of the Scottish Parliament.

Comparison: a tale of two regional political classes

In this chapter, I have presented case studies of institutionalisation and institutional change from both regions of this study. While the two cases under observation differ widely in many respects, the analysis has shown professional politics becoming institutionalised in both of the newly established regional polities. Processes and results have been shown to be affected by a complex interaction of various factors, including regionalist ideals, longestablished national institutions, competing interests of rivalling political parties as well as more short-term and circumstantial factors. In addition to these factors, though, the political class perspective applied in this study has directed the attention to a central actor that seems indispensable in explaining these processes: in both regions we have encountered regionally oriented professional politicians attempting to institutionalise opportunity structures in line with their collective self-interest. In revealing the existence of a regional political class acting for itself – at least in its most rudimentary form – the study neither claims the inevitability of its emergence (i.e. a general causal relationship between regionalisation, professionalisation and the formation of a regional political class) nor does it propose the suspension of all other explanatory efforts. However, this finding proves that the theoretical construct of a regional political class as set out in chapter 1 has some empirical validity and that it makes sense to look at professional politicians not exclusively as representing competing party interests (or competing social constituencies) but also as endowed with a collective selfinterest that may transcend party conflict and forge co-ordinated cross-party activity. The focus of these case studies has been on the question of how this newly forged collective actor engages in the process of regional institution-building. There, the examples presented above have clearly revealed that professional politicians from both regions pursue their collective interest in a vastly different institutional setting, with rather diverging institutional objectives, with varying degrees of internal coherence and external boundedness vis-à-vis local and national politicians and with rather diverse levels of success. Indeed, the institutionalisation of their collective professional interests seems to have taken two completely different routes and forms.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 258

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

259

Focused v. diffused patterns of political professionalisation Scotland: political professionalisation focused to the regional parliamentary arena

In Scotland a parliament-dominated political class is defining, defending and expanding its professional status and its career opportunities in and around the Scottish Parliament. They have successfully institutionalised their mandate as a highly professional political office in a highly professional political institution. Legislating for high levels of pay, infrastructure and staff support (almost equalling levels at Westminster) they have installed favourable working conditions and an attractive remuneration. Their generous resource endowment allows them to engage frequently with the public and the media, enhancing not only their democratic responsiveness, but also their opportunities to build up status and prestige. All in all they have thus established the parliamentary mandate as an attractive professional career. With regard to the security of their parliamentary career, granting themselves such a superior resource endowment has placed MSPs quasi-naturally above any potential challenger in the inner-party candidate selection process, which in many constituencies is enough to get re-elected. MSPs from the Conservatives and the SNP have since even been seen to further strengthen this inbuilt incumbency advantage by successfully reforming their parties’ list selection mechanisms towards a one-member-one-vote postal ballot, which inevitably favours the better-known incumbents. And finally, MSPs of all parties (with the exception of the Tories) stood together and mobilised public support when the size of their parliament was under threat from the implementation of the Scotland Act. The successful amendment at Westminster has secured the careers of about 20 MSPs (and saved many more from extreme career insecurity) and preserved the functioning of the parliament’s committee system – an important asset of the Parliament in terms of its attractiveness to back-benchers. From the perspective of career advancement prospects, it is notable that MSPs collectively resisted the reduction of seats in the regional parliament provided for in the Scotland Act, trading their most direct access route to a Westminster career (via the co-terminous constituency boundaries that were finally abolished in the amendment) for the preservation of career opportunities inside their own parliament’s committee system. Their determination to follow a career path inside the Scottish Parliament is also expressed in their collective intention to expand Scotland’s institutional autonomy. MSPs have not only voiced cross-party demands for an upgrade in the self-regulatory powers of the parliament; more recently MSPs from all parties have also increasingly spoken out in favour of additional policy competencies.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 259

20/8/09 11:51:08

260

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

With regard to any potential colonisation of state and society, the Scottish political class has remained much less active. In fact, institutional barriers of the UK state in conjunction with the high expectations of the Scottish polity have prohibited any significant partisan patronage in the wide realm of Scottish public bodies. Professional politicians thus remain dependent on elected positions to make their living. The only move that could be interpreted as an act of self-interested institutional politics of MSPs beyond their own parliamentary arena was their attempt at modernising Scottish local politics. The reform of the electoral system has shown Labour MSPs willing to sacrifice the career interest of their party’s current councillors in favour of their own short-term gains (upholding the coalition with the Liberal Democrats and thus securing continuing access to the Scottish Executive) that just happened to coincide with the long-term interest of the political class in self-preservation (by enhancing the general legitimacy of representative politics). From this perspective the professionalisation of local politics has to be seen less as a direct material compensation for this unpopular move, and more as a general extension of career opportunities for professional politicians in Scotland, and thus as an improvement of their own opportunity structures. Finally, the Scottish political class has also to some extent strengthened its structural basis within political parties. Restricted in their legal competencies, politicians in Scotland were not in a position to legislate for a regional system of public funding for political parties. Instead, though, they have institutionalised a system of formal and informal transfers from the parliamentary budget. Creating strongly professionalised parliamentary parties in the Scottish Parliament, they strengthened the Scottish arm of UK-based parties, and established themselves within strengthened Scottish party organisations. This process of professionalising the Scottish Parliament and turning it into a collective organ of its professionalised members has not always been without partisan divisions. In fact, the highly publicised quarrels about MSPs’ allowances and opposition party funding have shown some partisan cleavages at work that might appear to contradict the very notion of a political class with a collective self-interest. And indeed, party interests do sometimes override the common consciousness arising from their common occupational position. Not all decisions of self-regulation have been taken unanimously and some might be seen to benefit one party more than another. Yet if we broaden our perspective to look at the general thrust of these decisions rather than their details, we can see that despite existing party divisions the arrangements that have actually been established are quite favourable for MSPs from all parties. The strong form of professionalisation MSPs have collectively granted themselves clearly contributes to their process of social differentiation not only from the general public, but also from non-professional political activists.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 260

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

261

Pursuing an institutional politics that is first and foremost based on a collective interest in their own institution – as has been shown with regard to the size of the parliament, as well as with regard to local government reform – they have also in their collective action distinguished themselves from Scottish professional politicians on other territorial levels. MSPs are acting as the nucleus of a Scottish political class that is institutionally separated from the political class at Westminster, and whose professional self-interest is often opposed to that of the latter. As a result, they have installed a pattern of political professionalisation that is strongly focused on the Scottish parliamentary arena. Catalonia: institutionally and territorially diffused political professionalisation

In Catalonia a much wider, yet also much more loosely structured, political class is pursuing an almost opposite route in institutionalising its collective professional interest. The organisational base of this class are the Catalan political parties rather than the Catalan Parliament. In the Catalan Parliament, the development of a collective consciousness among its members has until recently been seriously hampered by a number of structural factors. The most important of them are the heterogeneous occupational situations and career interests of MSPs (i.e. the low percentage of professional parliamentarians) and the almost ‘frozen’ antagonism and distrust between parties, produced by a system where government and opposition did only change after 23 years. As a consequence MCPs have looked to their respective parties rather than to any collective body for the provision of professional careers. Divided by occupational position, career interest and party allegiance, MCPs have failed to act as a distinct group of professional politicians pushing for the professionalisation of their mandate and its institutional context. Faint-hearted attempts to increase payments, improve working conditions and institutionalise the mandate as a full-time occupation with its own professional status have only gained some momentum since 1999 – a process that is still far from completed. In more than twenty years MCPs have not managed to install a combination of electoral system and inner-party selection mechanisms that would guarantee a majority of them an undisturbed long-term parliamentary career. Instead they remain highly dependent on inner-party power struggles and the sometimes arbitrary decisions of the party leadership. In contrast to the situation in Scotland, the Catalan political class has neither been able to establish its regional parliament as the major provider for its material livelihood, nor as an effective vehicle for its collective self-regulation. On the other hand, the political class has been much more successful in ‘colonising’ state and society in Catalonia, as well as in expanding into the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 261

20/8/09 11:51:08

262

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

Spanish arena. They have established systems of partisan control with extensive patronage power over local and regional administrations as well as over many organisations of civil society. A considerable number of well-endowed and highly attractive executive positions have been created providing an elite within the political class with a generous material maintenance plus control over a multitude of other fully professional politicised positions that function as stepping-stones, fall-back or retiring positions for professional politicians at different stages of their career. This colonisation of the local and regional administration has been pursued by the individual parties in control of the respective executives rather than by a collective effort of the Catalan political class. However, as both major political camps benefit from this dyadic system, the establishment of politicised and partisan-controlled higher administrative echelons have never been challenged in principle. Instead, after fierce power battles and hostilities between the regional government and local authorities in the early days, a tacit understanding emerged that allowed each camp to expand their spheres of influence in parallel. What has been challenged, though, is the pre-eminent influence of the regional government over a large number of bodies within civil society and their top personnel. But rather than ending partisan colonisation altogether, the parties have shifted the patronage system towards a more proportional allocation of positions – a system run collectively by the political class via the Catalan Parliament. Yet Catalan political parties are not only actively colonising state and society, they have also managed to extract considerable public resources to build highly professional party-machines. These machines are the real coordinating bodies of a Catalan political class, whose members are spread out over a number of public institutions and private organisations at the local, Catalan, Spanish and even European level. Cross-party initiatives – and thus any collective action of the political class for itself – are usually initiated by the party leadership and not by any institutionally defined party group. In general these initiatives transcend institutional boundaries. Dealing with the Spanish central state, the Catalan political class has pursued two different strategies to institutionalise its collective interests. With regard to all-Spanish matters concerning the interests of professional politicians in general, the Catalan political class can operate as an integral part of the Spanish political class. Thus, Catalan members were at the forefront of debates in the Spanish Congress on political professionalisation and public funding of political parties. With regard to the regulation of their own Catalan institutional context, or when there was a specific interest of Catalan professional politicians at stake, the Catalan political class has attempted to implement its collective interest on its own, sometimes in open conflict with the central government in Madrid. This had been a common feature in the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 262

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

263

process of re-establishing Catalan institutions, when there was a cross-party consensus in Catalonia for strong and highly autonomous bodies, yet the Spanish government referred their decisions to the constitutional court for judicial review. As the more recent example of the Catalan funding of political parties has shown, this confrontational strategy is neither restricted to the early years nor to regionalist parties. Taken together, the capacity of a Catalan political class to act collectively has clearly been hampered by partisan conflict, especially by the dyadic structure of the administrative system (local vs. regional administration) and the antagonism between the main political forces (CiU v. PSC). However, once Catalan parties recognised a common interest, their profound grip on their representatives and their common identity as Catalan politicians generally allows for strongly co-ordinated action of Catalan politicians, despite their dispersal in a multitude of different political institutions on several territorial levels.79 Thus, driven by the co-operations of parties, rather than party representatives in a particular institution, political professionalisation in Catalonia (rather than being focused on the regional parliamentary system as in Scotland) is following an institutionally and territorially diffused pattern. Explanations: regional institution-building and national path dependency

This brief summary of the institutional politics of the regional political class in Scotland and Catalonia has shown them to be vastly different from each other. Yet, what is more, both the highly focused, parliamentary dominated pattern in Scotland and the more diffuse party colonisation model in Catalonia closely resemble the patterns of political professionalisation to be found on their respective central state level. So, why are both these distinctly regional political classes apparently reproducing national patterns? The theoretical approach that seems best suited to account for this result is the neo-institutionalistinspired notion of path dependency. According to one of its main proponents, path dependent processes are ‘causal processes that are highly sensitive to events that take place in the early stages of an overall historical sequence’ (Mahoney 2000: 510). Stressing the importance of timing and sequence, this theory disects social processes into two distinct stages. In a first stage of relative contingency, several different paths of development are open. However, decisions taken in such a phase, 79

The most notable exception to this rule being the behaviour of the PSC Congress group during the passage of the LOAPA legislation (see corresponding discussion above).

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 263

20/8/09 11:51:08

264

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

known as ‘critical juncture’ or ‘turning point’, are highly consequential. The development in the second, much longer phase – the so-called ‘trajectory’ – remains then restricted by the institutional logic implanted in the earlier stage. This does not claim that the trajectory is defined by stagnancy and standstill, but rather that any development instead of going back behind the ‘turning point’ is reproducing the dynamics of institutional development installed at this earlier phase. And indeed, the seemingly paradoxical empirical finding that two regional political classes have been institutionalising professional politics in rather different ways – each closely reproducing the pattern of political professionalisation established at an earlier time at the national level – clearly points to the relevance of the path dependency argument. But how exactly may established institutions lead political actors into reproducing their institutional logic. As path dependency should not be confused with determinism, the following sections are meant to demonstrate how the regional political class in its efforts to institutionalise its collective self-interest came to reproduce national patterns of political professionalisation, but also to what extent it has deviated from them and what other explanations can be found for their behaviour. Again we can trace considerable differences between the two regions. Regionalisation as critical juncture

In Spain and in the UK the regionalisation of the central state – i.e. the establishment of political institutions on the regional level – can be seen as a major deviation from their traditional unitary trajectory. Furthermore, in both cases this regionalisation has also been closely related to a democratisation process, opening up a window of opportunity to establish highly distinct patterns of regional democracy in both Catalonia and Scotland. Thus, the original act of regionalisation clearly represents a critical juncture in the institutional development of both cases. However, as a process shaped by national actors together with regional actors who have largely been socialised in a national institutional framework, even this original act of regionalisation is not free from path dependent elements; it merely provides higher levels of contingency than before and afterwards. In Spain and Catalonia this critical juncture was characterised by the breakdown of a dictatorial regime and concurrent, highly interrelated processes of democratisation at the regional and the national level. In this democratisation process many (though not all) features of Franco’s institutional heritage have been destroyed, allowing Catalonia to distance itself from a distinctly Spanish path. However, Catalonia took largely the same democratic turn as the rest of Spain. The institutionalisation of democratic politics began at the central

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 264

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

265

state level, and thus national institutions were both regulating the parameters of regional institution-building as well as fulfilling an orientation function as potential role model. The installation of a party democracy model in Catalonia thus had its basis in some major central state regulations (such as the partylist-based electoral system and the public funding of political parties) and in a common normative ideal of democracy that was first institutionalised at the Spanish level. Yet this model was far from ‘foreign’ to Catalonia, as Catalan politicians had been actively engaged in shaping it. After all, Catalan parties were not only formed before their counterparts at the Spanish level, they also played an important role in building Spanish democracy. It is this commonly established model of Spanish party democracy that largely defines the trajectory in which professional politics has been institutionalised in Catalonia. In the UK, regionalisation – or devolution as it is known there – can also be seen as a critical juncture in the course of state modernisation and the democratisation of government in Scotland. While the break with the past was obviously far less radical than in the Spanish case, it entailed an explicit divergence of regional democracy from the national model. The Scottish selfgovernment movement not only demanded regional autonomy, its impetus was very much directed against the Westminster model of democracy, which was perceived as highly unrepresentative, anachronistic and detached from ordinary citizens. Scottish democracy, by contrast, was to be based on a consensual rather than a majoritarian model, with a strong undercurrent favouring the introduction of participatory elements. Pushed by Scottish civic society, yet also by professional politicians who later became part of the Scottish political class, these normative ideals found their expression, to varying degrees, in the institutional set-up provided by the Scotland Act, most markedly (but not exclusively) in the electoral system. For Scotland, thus, regionalisation entails a significant deviation from the Westminster path. However, devolution can also be seen to represent a distinctly British path of regionalisation. This regards first and foremost the territorial order of the state (Stolz 1999). The unaltered validity of the constitutional principle of parliamentary sovereignty is leaving the newly established regional institutions without any effective legal entrenchment, thus reproducing the strong unitary element in the British state. Arguably even more important, the Scotland Act provides for the regulation of much of the internal structure of Scottish democracy by the Westminster Parliament. While this legislation is reflecting some deviating normative ideals in Scotland, it has also, consciously and unconsciously, reproduced many of the traditional institutional pillars of Westminster democracy. These include, for example, the centrality of parliament and parliamentary government in the political system, the private nature of political parties and the subsequent denial of public funding, and

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 265

20/8/09 11:51:08

266

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

the neutrality of the civil service and public administration. Together, these distinctly British institutional features have defined much of the Scottish institutional trajectory with regard to political professionalisation. Starting from this general interpretation of regionalisation as a critical juncture, the following analysis will compare the institutionalisation of professional politics in Catalonia and Scotland at this critical juncture and the following trajectory in more detail. Institutionalising professional politics at the critical juncture

The installation of political parties as the central actors in the Spanish and Catalan political system and thus as the central vehicles for the pursuit of the self-interest of professional politicians has much to do with timing. In Catalonia the emergence of democratic political parties and, indeed, crossparty co-operation pre-dated the establishment of democratic political institutions both on the Catalan and on the Spanish level. As Genieys correctly states, the Catalan political elite that had gained its legitimacy from its mobilisation against the Franco regime used the transition period to monopolise the resources of political parties, facilitating their subsequent access to the representative institutions of the newly established democratic system (Genieys 1997: 249). In doing so, this Catalan counter-elite had turned into a political class for itself. As such, they were the first to get involved in shaping the Spanish institutional system, because it was at the Spanish level that the basic compromises with regard to the future political order – and thus with regard to their future structure of opportunities – were made. When it came to building the new Catalan democracy, there was considerable centre–periphery conflict over the scope of Catalan institutions and intra-Catalan conflict over who was to run them. However, the structural features that had been allowing political parties to monopolise access to public positions at the Spanish level were consensually adopted by the political parties in Catalonia. This was done by non-decisions, as in the case of the electoral law, where the favourable Spanish regulations with closed party lists and the payment of campaign expenses were simply imported into the Catalan system, voluntarily foregoing the legal competence to rule these matters autonomously and differently. Other central features of Spanish party democracy were actively reproduced by highly consensual autonomous legislation. This included both the establishment of an executive-dominated, party-group-based parliamentary system and the development of an oversized, highly politicised regional administration. With regard to political professionalisation too, the emerging Catalan political class voluntarily reproduced the Spanish pattern. Free to install their

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 266

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

267

own professional regime, members of the Catalan Parliament nevertheless copied the rather low levels of salaries, infrastructure and staff support with no elements of social security – arrangements found in the Spanish Congress. In fact, their salaries were set at exactly the same amount as that of their Congress counterparts, and the wording of the standing orders regulating their financial provisions (like the wording of many other stipulations of the standing orders) matched exactly the wording of the respective Congress documents. As the only model at hand, central state institutions had obviously developed their path generating quality by way of their orientation function. With general public apprehensive of politicians’ remunerations and privileges – yet one that was also disinclined to go for a subordination of members of the Catalan Parliament to those in the Spanish Congress – it was perhaps the easiest option for regional politicians to follow the national lead. Of course, this almost exact reproduction had been facilitated by an important feature in the career paths of crucial actors in this process, as all relevant internal committees of the Catalan Parliament had been staffed by former Congress members. However, the failure to introduce more generous arrangements was also due to the lack of concern for these questions within a Catalan political class that was still in the process of formation. While opposition to Franco and the fight for regional democracy had established a tradition of cross-party co-operation (e.g. in the Assemblea de Catalunya) and a common sense of purpose, this common consciousness did not yet include an understanding of their occupational position as professional politicians. In fact with very little prior experience in professional politics (three years in the Spanish Congress at the most) and with a considerable percentage of MSPs who had at that time not yet developed ambitions for such a professional career, questions of remuneration and the material endowment were not at the heart of their collective interest. Furthermore, for those who did hold such ambitions, parliament was not necessarily the main career focus. The Spanish tradition of executive domination had already been inscribed into the normative mindset of Catalan career politicians. In this respect, the reproduction of the Spanish model of a highly politicised administration at the regional level did not only serve the functional need for reliable, democratically sound, administrative personnel and the political parties’ interest in political control, it also reflected the self-interest of those embarking on a professional political career. By contrast, in Scotland path dependent development is much more due to the continuing validity of central state institutions and their regulative function. After all, the Scotland Act had mainly provided for the devolution of legislative competencies to a regional parliament. This concentration on the parliamentary system clearly reflects the central role of parliament in the Westminster model –

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 267

20/8/09 11:51:08

268

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

a central feature of this model thereby reproduced into Scottish democracy. Constitutional matters – and thus the basic features of the opportunity structure – remained under central state provisions. Thus, the administration serving the Scottish Executive remained part of the unitary Home Civil Service and had to follow its management code, including its non-partisan structure. Political parties in Scotland remained basically private, non-statutory organisations rather loosely regulated by UK legislation (in the Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 later to be amended by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000) with hardly any direct public funding. With regard to the electoral system and to the internal structure of the parliament itself, the Scottish self-government movement had achieved major deviations from the Westminster path. The most important one in this respect – the introduction of a proportional element into the electoral system – had been set out in the Scotland Act. Others, such as the establishment of all-purpose ‘subject’ committees instead of Westminster’s dual structure of legislative (standing) and scrutiny (select) committees had been deliberated in the so-called Consultative Steering Group and are now part of the parliament’s own standing orders. However, the regulative framework of the Scottish Parliament nevertheless contains a high number of central elements of the Westminster system that have never been debated. This includes what Bagehot once called the ‘efficient secret’ of the English Constitution, i.e. the fusion of legislative and executive power in a cabinet exclusively staffed by parliament members (Bagehot 1963 [1867]). This provision of the Scotland Act (section 47) is not only rather rare by international comparison, it is also a very important feature of the opportunity structure for career politicians, explaining why in the UK (including Scotland) a political career is basically a parliamentary career. In a similar fashion, the original socio-economic regime controlling MSPs and the Scottish Parliament was drafted by UK bodies and actors and was closely modelled on Westminster practice, making for a highly professionalised regional mandate and parliament. However, Scottish MPs who were later to become MSPs had been part of the British political class that had secured these arrangements for Westminster. Furthermore, some of them had even been actively involved in the procedures that resulted in the transitional provisions for the Scottish Parliament.80 All the newly elected MSPs had to do 80

Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar (later to become Scotland’s first First Minister) was the UK cabinet minister responsible for referring the remuneration matter to the UK Senior Salaries Review Body. His Scottish Office minister Henry McLeish (later to become the second First Minister of Scotland) had been chair of the Consultative Steering Group; along with other senior politicians later to become MSPs, he also gave evidence to this body.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 268

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

269

in order to ‘inherit’ this highly generous material endowment was to follow the independent recommendations and to confirm the arrangements that had been set in various provisional statutory instruments. And by and large that is what they did. However, this process was less smooth than expected. Amending the recommended allowance scheme in a fiercely disputed parliamentary decision, MSPs showed a high level of disunity and managed to stir up considerable public disaffection. This experience made them shy away from the responsibility of self-regulation: a little later they voluntarily linked their salaries to those of MPs, thus happily rejoining the Westminster path. Thus, the mutually beneficial arrangements that were finally installed can, by and large, be traced back to Westminster regulation and to Westminster precedents. But so can the ‘teething problems’ of the fledgling Scottish political class that have hampered its capacity to recognise and install their long-term self-interest in a more autonomous fashion. As the infamous allowance debate has shown, MSPs, at that time, had neither come to terms with their new representational structure (the inclusion of list members), nor had they learned to overcome deeply running partisan cleavages. Consensual experiences in the self-government movement and the consensual elements in the set-up of the new parliament had not yet eliminated the majoritarian instincts of politicians socialised in a majoritarian political system.81 While the experience gained in the Constitutional Convention may have paved the way for a Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition, it also deepened the cleavage visà-vis the non-Convention parties, especially between Labour and the SNP. As a result, parliamentary parties were still inclined to force their short-term party interest upon their opponents. In lieu of the concrete experience of government and seat alternation, they remained captive to their respective roles (government v. opposition, list v. constituency), unable to recognise a potential common interest in the long run. The public outcry that followed in Scotland, too, was mainly due to the open discrepancy of this behaviour with the Scottish Leitbild of democracy, characterised by its emphasis on consensus and its ambivalence with respect to professional politics. Parliamentary squabbles about members’ own self-interest were a reminder of the perceived pathologies of representative democracy at Westminster, and thus far away from the high expectations of a new, publicly spirited consensus politics in the Scottish Parliament. On the other hand, this readiness to engage in open conflict about the endowment of 81

This refers in particular to the nearly 20 per cent of MSPs who have had prior experience at the House of Commons. However, the majoritarian system runs (or rather had run) through the whole political system, socialising not only MPs but also local councillors, party activists and even the general public.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 269

20/8/09 11:51:08

270

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

their mandates – in the light of a hostile general public – also clearly reflects the ambition of the newly elected MSPs to pursue a professional parliamentary career. Thus, despite the strong element of contingency that the establishment of new regional institutions by definition entails, the basic regulatory patterns of political professionalisation installed in Catalonia and Scotland at this critical juncture have been mainly reproduced from the national level. This regional institutional path was paved by direct central state regulation and by a voluntary (and partly even unconscious) orientation at the normative base of central state institutions. The newly emerging regional political classes were either incapable of, or unwilling to introduce a significantly different framework for the pursuit of professional political careers. In Catalonia, just like in the rest of Spain, political parties (most of them distinctly Catalan parties) had been set up that controlled a high number of more or less professionalised positions in various institutional settings on different political levels. By contrast, in Scotland a new, highly professionalised parliament had been established (just like that on the UK level) that allowed politicians to embark on professional parliamentary careers at the regional level (once selected by their party). As we will see, the subsequent institutional trajectories have not deviated from these basic models. Instead, the concrete institutionalisation of the respective regional polity as a career arena by the political class is following to a large extent this originally implanted institutional logic. Again, this persistence is not only dependent on the regulative power of the installed institutions and their orientating function. Their consolidation in the daily political conduct is also due to the fact that these institutional structures correspond to the interests of those who have been (and still are) drawn into a professional political career by the concrete opportunities offered in this structure: those socialised as party politicians look to their parties for career support, while professional parliamentarians strive to protect their parliamentary career. Institutional developments in the trajectory

In Catalonia, the most astonishing feature of this trajectory from a political class perspective is the failure to develop the regional parliament into a more attractive career arena with adequate salaries, corresponding infrastructural and staff support, more powers vis-à-vis the executive, and secure career prospects, including social security. Of course this had much to do with the very low base-line set at the beginning (as explained above) and the notorious difficulties raising anything which might be seen as serving the self-interest of politicians. However, it would be too easy to blame this long-term lock-in effect simply on the anticipated public reaction. A very important additional

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 270

20/8/09 11:51:08

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

271

(though not path-dependent) explanatory element can be seen in its dyadic opportunity structure based on a relatively stable pattern of party competition. With both major political camps in fairly secure long-term control of one executive level (CiU in charge of the regional administration from 1980 to 2003, and the PSC in control of the major town halls) none of them were resource-dependent on the parliament. Furthermore, from a CiU perspective the professionalisation and upgrading of the Catalan Parliament would have meant a strengthening of the opposition, which the majority coalition was hardly going to concede voluntarily. It is thus no mere coincidence that the first meaningful alteration to this regime happened at a time (1999 to 2003) when there was no absolute majority in the parliament. Perhaps the most important factor in this respect, however, has been the lack of a homogeneous career interest of MCPs to drive any professionalisation reform process. As we have seen in chapter 3 the occupational structure and the career ambitions vary considerably among MCPs. Thus, while there are a considerable number of full-time, long-term professional parliamentarians and a fair amount of young members who wish to follow this career path, others had been drawn into this office exactly because they had no need for a fully professionalised mandate or indeed did not want to professionalise as a member of parliament. This goes not only for the relatively small group of those who remain wedded to a non-political professional career. Others, who have been identified in chapter 3 as concentrating on party or local politics while sitting in the Catalan Parliament, can usually revert to their own infrastructural and staff support at the party headquarters or the town hall. Mayor-MCPs often see their parliamentary mandate as an ornament and an additional channel of influence, while the mayor post remains their (better paid) breadwinning occupation. Furthermore, as any serious professionalisation and upgrading of the Catalan Parliament would almost certainly also entail an increase in the time-demands of the mandate, political parties would deprive themselves of a considerable number of politicians effectively engaged in party business while being maintained by a parliamentary salary. From the perspective of individual members, any exclusive commitment to the parliamentary realm is a highly risky strategy, as most of them will soon have to look for a continuation of their political career outside parliament. The strong party interest and the heterogeneous career interests of MCPs is also reflected in the professionalisation pattern advanced by the 1999–2003 reforms: the improvement of staff and infrastructural support channelled via the parliamentary group can be seen to constitute a professionalisation of the institution that is in effect making up for the lower level of office professionalisation with regard to the parliamentary mandate. In addition, the differentiation of the salary structure, with considerable extra payments for parliamentary and

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 271

20/8/09 11:51:08

272

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

party group office-bearers, allows for a rather broad range in terms of the level of individual professionalisation of parliamentarians. The institutionalisation of the executive branch of Catalan self-government occurred rather separately from that of the parliamentary system. As shown above, the governing CiU coalition used the administrative model of the Spanish central state – consensually installed into the Catalan system during the first legislature – to populate the administrative structure of the Generalitat with its own political confidants. In the years following, the regional government expanded this path of partisan colonisation of state and society in both directions. It extended its patronage practice to more and more public positions, yet also to civic society organisations closely linked to (and often financially dependent upon) the regional administration. A central motive for this behaviour is to be seen in the wish of party leaders to increase the sphere of party influence and their own personal power. However, it can also be seen as a deliberate extension of the career arena for professional politicians that is highly consistent with, if not directly caused by the party-based path of political professionalisation. The lack of career security within the parliamentary realm is at least one of the driving forces behind the creation of additional political jobs. Instead of fundamentally challenging this practice, the main opposition party, the PSC, soon recognised the benefits of such a system in its own sphere of influence, i.e. local government. Once the principle of partisan patronage for non-elected administrative positions is established, parties have a self-interest in following this path rather than closing it down. In fact, the very attractiveness of executive positions on both the regional and local level vis-à-vis parliamentary mandates may well be seen as a major mechanism of self-perpetuation for the strongly executive-dominated pattern of Catalan self-government. Any significant deviation from the path of executive domination and party patronage would thus have to come from external shocks, such as a drastic de-legitimisation of the political system, and/or challengers from the outside. Yet, while Spain and Catalonia are indeed suffering from a certain disenchantment with mainstream politics, so far the political class has been rather successful in co-opting critical forces. At a time when the CiU had lost its absolute majority and when criticism of government patronage was growing, smaller parties were given a stake in the system by increasingly introducing mechanisms of proportional distribution for public positions via the Catalan Parliament. A similar effect had been produced by the first full government alternation at the Catalan level: when the new tripartite coalition took over Catalan regional government in 2003, two small parties (ERC and ICV) and one party appendage (Ciutadans pel Canvi), which together had represented

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 272

20/8/09 11:51:09

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

273

large sections of the anti-party, anti-establishment vote, were provided for the first time with ministerial posts and with patronage power over administrative positions. Thus, while the mechanisms had been altered, the party patronage path had not been abandoned. Instead, pursuing its institutional logic has led to an expansion of the partisan colonisation of state and society in Catalonia. The final element in this party model of political professionalisation is the financial and organisational development of political parties themselves. Having been set up as the central political actors in the transition period (see above), Spanish parties, with the support of Catalan parties, successfully provided themselves with public money to engage in electoral campaigns and to build up and run a party organisation. The remuneration of its political personnel (party office holders) was more or less completely off-loaded to public institutions, with party leaders installed in well-endowed executive positions. The early expansion and professionalisation of Catalan party organisations was mainly based on the public resources provided by this central state regulatory framework. The general crisis of this system and the failure to reform it on the national level eventually led the Catalan political class to act on its own. By introducing considerable additional subsidies for Catalan parties they deviated from central state legislation (arguably even breaking its legal provisions). However, in doing so they were not abandoning the Spanish path but taking it even further. After all, the agreement clearly followed the principle – originally installed in the 1987 Spanish party finance act – that the state has to provide the resources for political parties to maintain their daily functions. Furthermore, the negotiation of this agreement by voluntary crossparty co-operation rather than in a parliamentary committee confirmed the role of political parties as the central vehicles in the pursuit of the common self-interest of the Catalan political class. In Scotland, where parliament had been installed as the dominant institution of the structure of opportunities for professional politicians, MSPs have unsurprisingly formed the core of a Scottish political class primarily concerned with the parliamentary system. Institutionalising their mandate as a professional one, reforming inner-party recruitment mechanisms in their favour, installing the parliamentary group as the parties’ major power-block, stratifying the parliament’s internal structure (committee system, introduction of junior ministers and ministerial parliamentary aides), defending its structure against challenges from outside (debate on its size), and demanding an expansion of powers and competencies (with regard to self-regulation and policy-making), MSPs have clearly been engaged in developing the Scottish Parliament into an attractive and secure career arena. Having successfully provided themselves with sufficient parliamentary career opportunities, there

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 273

20/8/09 11:51:09

274

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

was no need to pursue other potential strategies of a political class such as the colonisation of state and society and the introduction of state funding for political parties. In fact, both these strategies would not only have entailed significant reforms of central state regulation (not in the hands of the Scottish political class), they also run contrary to central aspects of the British Leitbild of democracy that have not been discredited in Scotland. As a result, the newly erected regional institutional structure closely resembles that of the central state. The Scottish political class has clearly been following the parliamentary path of political professionalisation. As shown above, Scottish institution-building has also been deviating in significant aspects from the UK model. The most obvious differences were to be expected as a consequence of the introduction of proportional representation into the electoral system – a reform that was anticipated to fundamentally alter the representational structure of democracy. However, so far the representational role of MSPs has not been diverging that much from the Westminster model. While constituency and list MSPs have been established as two distinct types of parliamentarians (with different sets of allowances), the behavioural norm set by constituency members both at Westminster and Holyrood – with a strong emphasis on constituency presence and case work – has also been largely shaping the way that list MSPs understand their role and their mandate. As a consequence, overlapping regional and local constituencies have been leading to accusations of ‘poaching’ and conflicts about competencies. In contrast to their representational role, the opportunity structure for parliamentarians has been altered significantly by the new electoral system. The introduction of the list element offered a new additional pathway into parliament. While the election of list members was regulated by the Scotland Act, the institutionalisation of this new career path depended to a large extent on the way that parties selected and nominated their candidates. At the first Scottish election this process of candidate nomination for the regional lists varied considerably between parties, reflecting different party traditions. As first responses to a new institutional framework, these original mechanisms had not yet been strongly institutionalised, leaving them open to adaptation and reform. And indeed, shortly after the second Scottish election, most of them had changed. In fact, they have almost completely converged into a new, Scotland-wide model of list nomination: a one-member-one-vote postal ballot among party members using a preferential voting system. This mechanism has no UK precedent, nor does it directly follow from any institutional logic installed in the original devolution legislation. Instead, it is a result of MSPs adapting their institutional opportunity structure according to their own career interest (member ballots are mechanisms that most likely lead to

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 274

20/8/09 11:51:09

(RE)MAKING POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

275

incumbent reselection) using an important strand in the Scottish Leitbild of democracy (namely its emphasis on participatory elements) to legitimise it. Yet the introduction of proportional representation has also installed an institutional dynamic into Scottish democracy that is already showing the capacity to profoundly change the structure of party competition and to remould the structure of opportunities for professional politicians. In the first instance, the additional member electoral system in the Scottish parliament has stabilised the Scottish multi-party system and produced, as expected, a coalition government with one of the smaller, pro-PR parties as junior partner. This institutionally moulded configuration, together with the general modernisation impetus in post-devolution Scotland, has in turn provided the basis for the introduction of another form of proportional representation (STV) to Scottish local government. This subsequent institutional reform has altered the electoral opportunities for parties at the local level, allowing for some representation from smaller parties, yet mainly strengthening the contingent of the immediate runners-up. This, of course, affects patterns of government formation (more hung councils and coalition arrangements) and inner-council organisation (more consensual). As a consequence, the major socialisation agency of Scottish politics is undergoing considerable institutional change. Scottish career politicians on their way up the ladder (whether towards Westminster or to Holyrood) will thus learn their trade quite differently from their English counterparts. As the once alien principle of proportional representation takes root in Scottish politics, any attempt to reverse the initial introduction of PR to the Scottish Parliament would thus have to overcome increasing resistance – a classical example of the lock-in effect of path-dependent development. The case of local government reform also shows that the distinct Scottish institutional trajectory includes matters of political professionalisation. Of course, at surface level the introduction of salaries, severance payments and pensions for local government councillors can be rightly seen as a mere compensation, a sweetener for the unpopular measure of electoral reform. And indeed, there is no other logical nexus between the two. Yet the fact remains that the professionalisation of Scottish local government would not have happened without electoral reform and, I would add, it would not have happened without devolution. In contrast to England, where there are similar demands from local politics, regionalisation in Scotland provided the catalyst (the introduction of PR), the institutional focus (the Scottish Parliament), and last but not least the climate which made it possible to take the process of political professionalisation beyond the parliamentary realm. With regard to this last point – the political climate – the professionalisation of the regional mandate in the Scottish Parliament provided an important

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 275

20/8/09 11:51:09

276

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

model and a direct pre-condition for local government to follow. Given the negative publicity, the criticism and the hostility MSPs have faced during this process, such an argument may seem far-fetched. However, it is exactly because of this experience that MSPs have become much more conscious of their professionalism than Westminster MPs. Accepting that their professional remuneration requires them to develop some professional standards in return, they have been setting themselves a rather rigid Code of Conduct, have been exposing themselves to the highest levels of transparency, and have been coercing their non-complying colleagues into accepting their mandate as a full-time employment. Thus, while their material endowment has followed the Westminster example (though on a slightly lower scale), its normative implications have gone far beyond. Of course this positive projection of professionalism in politics has not banished scepticism and hostility towards this concept – after all the tension between democracy and political professionalisation is irresolvable (Borchert 2003a). However, it has established political professionalism as a much more self-evident element of Scottish politics, facilitating the extension of the parliamentary path of political professionalisation to local councils. As has been demonstrated above, the institutional trajectories in both Catalonia and Scotland show clear marks of path dependency. This is not to say of course that their regional institution-building has been determined by respective national precedents, nor that pathways are automatically following decisions taken during the critical juncture of regionalising the Spanish and the British state. Long-established institutional settings as well as major institutional reforms merely provide incentive structures that open up or close down certain pathways. The actual process of institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation have been ultimately shown to follow voluntary decisions made by individual actors. However, parties as well as politicians who have been socialised in a particular system, who have invested in it, have adapted to it, and who are generally benefiting from this system are highly unlikely to radically change its structural basis. Thus, Catalan party politicians have institutionalised a pattern of professional politics that makes them look to their party to provide them with a career, while Scottish parliamentarians have institutionalised professional politics mainly within the highly bounded parliamentary arena, attempting to immunise their careers from the vagaries of intra-party politics.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 276

20/8/09 11:51:09

5 Conclusion: traces of a regional political class in Catalonia and Scotland

Having analysed the making of a regional political class and its re-making of regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland in some detail, it is now time to step back and reprise what this analysis can tell us about the development, the state, and the prospect of democracy and autonomy in the two regions. This is followed by a more general evaluation of the theoretical insights and the conceptual advancements that result from a comparison of the two cases.

The impact of political professionalisation on democracy and autonomy in Catalonia and Scotland

In Catalonia political professionalisation as well as regionalisation had been part of the democratisation process during the transition. Replacing corporatist Francoist elites – who had gained their political and administrative leadership roles on the basis of their advanced social and economic positions – with elected politicians who were to represent all strata of Catalan society, the introduction of salaries for public offices and mandates was a democratic necessity. Not only was it fair to support those who were building the new Catalan democracy with a (rather modest) public income, it was also the only way to make sure that people from all walks of life could take up a political position and concentrate on their (quite onerous) political task. In fact, retrospectively, Catalan politicians seem to agree that it was a mistake not to have gone further with the professionalisation of the newly established representative institutions. Absorbed in more pressing political tasks and deterred by what they perceived as a lack of democratic culture in a country ridden by a long period of dictatorship, they were neither focused on, nor were they bold enough to argue, their case and to convince a sceptical general public that politicians’ self-interest was indeed converging with the interest of democracy. However, this failure to introduce a fully professionalised parliamentary system with adequate pay (as well as pensions and severance payments) tied

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 277

20/8/09 11:51:09

278

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

individual politicians even closer to their parties. Unable to maintain their professional political career on their own, yet also inadequately endowed for any smooth re-integration into the non-political professional orbit, they became increasingly reliant on the patronage of their respective parties. As a result, we have seen the establishment of a closed circuit of paid political positions effectively controlled by political parties and largely detached from public control and the ballot box. This pattern of political professionalisation has affected Catalan democracy in contradictory ways. On the one hand it has smoothed the transition to democracy and stabilised political parties and political institutions . . . and thus the form political conflict takes in Catalonia. Having experienced a brutal civil war and a long period of dictatorial repression, this effect is not to be underestimated. Access to and dependence on the same sources of revenues (a publicly funded system of party patronage) provided an important social and economic basis for the common identity of Catalan politicians and thus for their reputedly reasoned, prudent (seny) and consensus-orientated interaction that has been proudly depicted in the term ‘oasis Catalana’. However, the very image of ‘oasis’ refers to a certain insularity. And while this term was meant to picture the uniqueness and distinction of Catalan politics vis-à-vis politics elsewhere (e.g. in Madrid), it can quite rightly also be taken to delineate the detachment of professional Catalan politics from Catalan citizens. Political professionalisation has changed from a democratic device for social inclusion into a force that entails social exclusion and even undermines democratic accountability. Despite criticism and challenges from outside and within, the Catalan political class has managed to preserve its privileged position, deploying strategies of adaptation and co-optation. This picture has not been substantially altered since the first alternation in Catalan government in 2003. While the new government has denounced some of the most excessive incidents of partisan favouritism by its predecessor – and at one time even appeared to be willing to terminate the professional cordiality of the ‘oasis Catalana’ by accusing the former government party of corruption – the degree of partisan penetration of the Catalan administration has certainly not been reduced. Instead, by replacing the old CiU guard with nominees from PSC, ICV and ERC, this government alternation has finally turned the last and most prestigious Catalan institution from a bastion of one political formation into a structure that can provide privileges and benefits for the whole political class, including even its most radical and most critical sections.1 Furthermore, the demise of the independent-minded president 1

As the dismissal of ERC from government and the subsequent downfall of the coalition in 2005 shows, the co-option strategy of the Catalan political class does

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 278

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

279

Maragall (partly caused by his lack of support within his party) and his replacement by party bureaucrat Montilla points towards a re-strengthening rather than a weakening of party political control in Catalan politics. As the reform of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy (2006) has shown, this political class is not willing to concede any significant degree of control over the political process (and their own opportunity structures) to political actors outside its own ranks. While official campaigns called on Catalan citizens to participate in reform discussions, any such voices were all but excluded in a legislative process characterised by a dialectic of public party-political bickering and secret negotiations. Nor does the final result of this process provide any institutional progress towards a more participative form of democracy: the new Statute of Autonomy and thus the institutional future of Catalan democracy has remained firmly in the hands of professional party politicians. No wonder only half of the electorate turned out to ratify it in a referendum. Compared to the rather ambivalent consequences of political professionalisation for the development of regional democracy in Catalonia, its balance with regard to the establishment and expansion of regional autonomy seems much more clear-cut. No doubt, the emergence of a professional self-interest of Catalan politicians predominantly tied to the Catalan level (by their career orientation as well as by their career base) has strengthened Catalonia’s position in its constant battle with the Spanish state over competencies and autonomy. This was particularly so during the first years of democracy, when Catalan political institutions were still fragile and highly contested. The Catalan political class, united in its interest in strong and autonomous institutions, was often unanimous in its support of the Generalitat’s efforts in institution-building, and thus constituted a formidable opponent to the centralist tendencies of Spanish governments from right and left. Its capacity to expand its realm on to the central state level without its representatives ‘going native’ provided the basis for a dual strategy of defending Catalan institutions and Catalan interests in Madrid, while constructing its own institutions back home. However, the capacity of Catalan politicians to act as a coherent political class is, of course, far from unrestrained. Its inner coherence is impaired by ideological differences (including the question of Catalonia’s constitutional status) and electoral competition between parties. The long-time dyadic not work without friction. Yet, nevertheless, ERC has re-entered the tripartite coalition after the 2006 Catalan election. Thus, although ERC representatives may have proved quite awkward partners within the government coalition, the real schism had opened between its professionalised political leadership and its much more radical activist base, providing further evidence for the existence of a political class.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 279

20/8/09 11:51:09

280

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

structure of the Catalan polity – with the nationalists running the Generalitat, while the socialists were controlling most of local government – clearly provided the most important internal barrier in this respect. In addition, the integration of Catalan professional politicians into a Spanish-wide career arena was perforating its boundaries vis-à-vis the Spanish political class. Thus, existing Spanish orientations of Catalan politicians (especially within the PP and the PSC), whether ideologically motivated or career driven, were also defining clear limits to a Catalan political class acting to further Catalan autonomy. The most obvious case in point was the support of the PSC Congress members for the centralising LOAPA legislation of the Spanish socialist government in 1982. At the regionalist end of the political spectrum, it might have been partly due to the very existence of political professionals interested in the maintenance and advancement of their political careers that demands for Catalan autonomy have largely fallen short of separatism. After all, in Catalonia such a demand hardly gains political majorities, and thus it is not the way to maintain or win parliamentary and ministerial careers. Of course, such a direct causal nexus between political professionalisation and the moderation of regionalist demands is hard to prove. Nevertheless, it has been apparent in Catalan politics that those with a professional political career at stake have proved much more cautious in their approach to the constitutional question than the non-professional activists within their parties. However, emphasising the general concern of professional politicians vis-à-vis a radical change of their opportunity structures is not to deny that political professionalisation in Catalonia has generated a common interest in the strengthening and the expansion of Catalan autonomy – an interest that goes much beyond the nationalist parties. The latest evidence in this respect comes from the new Catalan Statute of Autonomy established in 2006. While the respective legislative process may indeed serve as an example of the partypolitical nature of high politics decisions about the territorial order (see previous chapter), the fact remains that this new statute – bringing an improvement of the institutional, financial and symbolic base of Catalan autonomy had been initiated by a socialist-led government and was almost unanimously supported in the Catalan Parliament. Thus, although hampered by its internal cleavages, the Catalan political class remains a powerful guardian of Catalan autonomy and an important actor on the Spanish stage upholding a centrifugal dynamic in the territorial order of the Spanish State of Autonomous Communities – without (necessarily) working towards its break-up. In Scotland, the introduction of a system of representative democracy on the regional level, staffed by professional politicians, has resolved what had been perceived by many as a fundamental democratic deficit. As one expert

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 280

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

281

rightly keeps reminding us, devolution – i.e. the replacement of a central government ministerial department with a regional government accountable to an elected regional parliament – has led to ‘the removal of the legitimacy issue from Scottish politics’ (Mitchell 2003: 137; Mitchell 2005: 29). And yet, this new system and its political personnel have not been allowed to settle down without having to face high levels of criticism and abuse. In fact, in the first years of devolution Scottish politicians seemed to be confronted with the full repertoire of politician-bashing: criticism was (and still is) directed at their lack of representativeness, their lack of quality, their lack of responsiveness, the high level of their salaries, their additional privileges and perquisites, party patronage over non-elected positions, and a certain detachment of the political process. As Mitchell (2003: 136–7) shrewdly observes, ‘in repatriating Scottish politics, devolution has repatriated contempt for politics, politicians and parliament’. These criticisms aren’t really derived from particular features of Scottish democracy, but address almost universal grievances with professional politics. The particular disillusionment with devolution in Scotland stems from the fact that these grievances occurred despite the establishment of institutions apparently designed to cure all the ills of modern-day representative democracy. To a large extent, public disenchantment is a function of the quite high and unrealistic expectations raised in Scotland, and more particularly of the failure to grasp the inevitable tension between democracy and professional politics. The rather diverse Leitbilder subsumed under the ill-defined notion of a ‘new Scottish politics’ simply did not accept political professionalisation for what it is – an irreversible macro-trend closely related to democratisation. For indeed, many of the consequences of political professionalisation are quite positive, especially if compared with possible alternatives. The longterm, full-time and fully paid politicians who occupy the seats of the Scottish Parliament may not be the mirror image of Scottish society, nor do they come cheap. Yet are they better or worse than political amateurs with lesser experience, lower pay and concurrent occupational interests to serve when it comes to responding to citizens’ attitudes and grievances, to forging stable and practicable political compromises across social and political cleavages, or to holding a government to account that, after all, is deploying a well-endowed administration staffed by a very large number of professional civil servants? Similarly, the self-interest of these professionalised parliamentarians to keep political decision-making concentrated within the parliamentary realm may go against the grain of democratic ideals based on the notion of Civil Society so popular within sections of the self-government movement. Yet again, one may dispute – as Jordan and Stevenson (2000) have done – whether the input of organised minority groups would necessarily improve upon the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 281

20/8/09 11:51:09

282

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

democratic quality of Scottish policy-making. If we agree that the major democratic achievement of devolution has been to replace the unaccountable group-politics around the Scottish Office (as the central way to exercise some form of Scottish autonomy) with a new and democratically accountable form of authoritative interest-aggregation by elected representatives, then it is the professional self-interest of MSPs rather than the organised self-interest of other (professional) groups that falls in line with democratic improvement. Of course, this argument holds only up to the point where the inevitable emergence of a professional self-interest turns into the deplorable de-coupling of a self-referential political class attempting to immunise itself against any form of democratic control in order to maximise its privileges and benefits and to expand its realm into ever wider areas of state and society. In Scotland, the parliament-centred pattern of political professionalisation (and thus a very British tradition), together with the particular Scottish provisions against the perceived pathologies of the Westminster system, have effectively limited the scope of professional politicians to act in such a way. Politicians are professionalised as parliamentarians, rather than in any other capacity. Their access to and command over positions in the non-elective part of public institutions is clearly limited. They have been able to install quite favourable social and economic terms for the pursuit of their mandate, yet hardly beyond what can be justified by functional criteria. In general, institutional provisions, public awareness and an internalised role-model shaped by these two components have limited the capacity of the Scottish political class to decouple itself from the general public and to expand and abuse its privileges and position within the political and administrative system. However, this is not to say that no such tendencies exist. On an individual level, a considerable number of cases of personal misconduct by MSPs (many of them with a high public profile, e.g. McLeish, McLetchie, (Wendy) Alexander) have been revealed and rightly criticised. The relatively high number of political scandals in post-devolution Scotland, though, seems to reflect the sensitivity of the general public – and thus the proper working of the control system – rather than any particularly selfish behaviour of Scottish politicians in general. Arguably more detrimental to the quality of Scottish democracy in the long run are the highly successful attempts by MSPs to immunise their careers from the unpredictabilities of democratic control by voters and party selectors. The generous resource and staff endowments which MSPs have granted themselves, for example, clearly add to the incumbents’ advantage over challengers in both the selection and the election process. Arguably the best example of a collective strategy to protect the careers of those who have made it inside the ranks of professional politicians is the installation of a closed-list system, and the subsequent reforms of the intra-party

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 282

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

283

ranking mechanisms. Cutting out activist influence and abandoning the direct link to the performance of potential candidates at public hustings by transferring the decision to a rather amorphous party membership in a postal ballot has, rather predictably, favoured incumbent MSPs with their superior public profile and resource endowment over any challengers from outside the realm of professional politics. While from a purely functional point of view, a low parliamentary turnover may not be a bad thing as such, the lack of voters’ choice with respect to the personal composition of representative institutions (once the party preference is given) – in conjunction with the high hurdles imposed for anybody willing to challenge the cartel of incumbents – is clearly increasing the social cleavage between professional politicians and citizens, and limiting democratic accountability and control. It is this form of participative deficit and social closure – rather than any lack in terms of its descriptive representation – that constitutes the major problem with the emergence of a political class in Scotland’s newly established regional democracy. With regard to the territorial differentiation of the Scottish polity and its autonomy vis-à-vis the UK state, the emergence of such a political class of professional politicians with a career interest in Scotland has already proved important and is highly likely to become even more so. In the debate about the amendment of the Scotland Act it was their decidedly Scottish career ambitions that made them prefer the maintenance of Scottish opportunity structures (i.e. number of seats in the Scottish Parliament) rather than a (potential) career link with the Westminster system (i.e. the co-terminosity of constituency boundaries). And it was the almost unanimous demand of Scottish MSPs supported by large and vocal sections of Scottish society that made the difference. Despite harsh criticism from its own back-benches (especially among Scottish MPs), the UK government had to concede the amendment if it was to avoid the risk of opening up another highly charged constitutional dispute between Westminster and Scotland. Thus, despite its low levels of institutional autonomy and its lack of representation at central state level (both in stark contrast to the Catalan political class), a Scottish political class acting collectively, especially if it can muster popular support, can exercise strong influence on the shape of its political institutions. Furthermore, the logic of the emergence of a distinct Scottish career pattern as well as the recent statements of Scottish politicians suggest that the demands of the Scottish political class will not end with defending the opportunity structures provided by the Scotland Act. Instead, devolution has created a potent collective actor whose self-interest points towards an expansion of its formal autonomy over Scotland’s institutional structures (in order to enhance its capacity for self-regulation) as well as to an expansion of its policy competencies (in order to enhance the power and prestige of those

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 283

20/8/09 11:51:09

284

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

engaging on a Scottish career). While partisan interests and personal convictions may interfere with this collective professional interest and may hamper the capacity of the Scottish political class to pursue this interest, they can’t cancel it out. To be quite clear, the career interest of the Scottish political class can hardly be seen as the major driving force in constitutional politics. However, now that Scotland is run by a nationalist government, whose very ideological raison d’etre is to expand Scotland’s autonomy, the fact that most opposition politicians also have a strong career stake in Scottish institutions is highly likely to affect the intensity of their resistance to any such attempt. While ideological differences and the logic of party competition will prevent major collective advancements with regard to high politics questions, the collective career interest of almost all Scottish MSPs is likely to allow a highly consensual and yet rather quiet shifting of the institutional goal posts. Another challenge to the basic territorial order of the UK may indeed come from developments within the UK political class. There, the end of Labour hegemony in Scotland has been emphasising the constitutional anomalies created by devolution and has finally provoked some ill-thought-out proposals to solve the so-called West Lothian Question (see chapter 2) within the present constitutional arrangement. However, any attempts at depriving Scottish MPs of their voting rights on English legislation and debarring them from certain cabinet positions (including the premiership) – as discussed in the Tory party – would turn the already existing territorial cleavage between Scottish and English MPs into a formal two-tier system. Disgruntled Scottish MPs devoid of any real career prospects at Westminster might then turn into the major driving force for radical constitutional change, whether in the form of a federal system or a break-up of the Union. Attempts to lock Scottish MPs out of the UK political class could well prove much more detrimental to the future of the Union than the emergence of a distinct Scottish political class. One reason why the deliberate institutional deviations from the Westminster model have not yet produced a more radical departure from Westminster politics may well be that the socialisation of political actors in Scotland has predominantly taken place within the Westminster system (in the Westminster Parliament, yet also in local politics and party politics). As shown in chapter 4, majoritarian mindsets die hard. However, the separation of career paths into a pattern of alternative careers will soon dry out the source of direct Westminster experience. Furthermore, in a few years the Scottish Parliament will see the first new recruits coming from Scottish local government based on new institutional structures, most notably an STV electoral system and hung councils. Thus, the consolidation and dispersion of non-majoritarian institutional features within Scotland, in conjunction with

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 284

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

285

the narrowing of career paths in and out, will soon bring about a Scottish political class that has predominantly experienced its political socialisation in an institutional context markedly different from the Westminster system. The chances are that over time the new formal political institutions governing the Scottish polity will also more strongly influence the behavioural norms and political practices of the Scottish political class. This may not necessarily bring about Scottish independence, nor the ‘new politics’ that has been dreamed of, yet it identifies the Scottish political class as a potential driving force of territorial differentiation, strengthening Scottish autonomy well beyond the current institutional and behavioural norms. If we compare the role professional politicians have played in the development of Catalan and Scottish regional democracy, we may conclude that despite the rather different form the regional political class has taken, their effect has been quite similar. Both the party-based, yet institutionally diffused Catalan political class as well as the strongly focused, parliament- based Scottish political class have displaced unelected elites from the centre stage of the regional polity. As elected professional politicians, their self-interest coincided with the democratic demand for the primacy of representative politics over technocratic administrative rule or management by corporate organisations. Thus, their very existence has been stabilising regional democracy in both cases. Pursuing their self-interest in career maintenance, however, both professional party politicians in Catalonia and professional Scottish parliamentarians have introduced new forms of social exclusion. Using different instruments, the two regional political classes have effectively restricted public participation and control, safeguarding its members from outside challengers. Their relationship with democracy can thus be seen as ambiguous. With regard to regional autonomy, the formation of a group of professional politicians based in (and orientated towards) regional politics has clearly strengthened the position of both Catalonia and Scotland vis-à-vis their respective central state. For Catalonia, the extension of the regional political class into the institutions of the Spanish level of government has certainly proved quite effective and beneficial in terms of gaining concessions and forging favourable compromises. Its clear Catalan base, though, has meant that most of the time it can also mobilise a strong Catalan front in case of conflict. As a result, the Catalan political class has been quite successful in extending Catalan autonomy beyond the already high level originally granted. In contrast to Catalonia, Scottish autonomy rests on a weak institutional base. As shown above, the existence of a Scottish political class with almost exclusive Scottish career interests has already proven to be of crucial importance in defending Scottish institutional structures. With a nationalist government in power in Scotland, Scotland’s low level of institutional autonomy and the

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 285

20/8/09 11:51:09

286

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

rather weak institutionalisation of inter-governmental relations in the UK make for a high conflict potential. The clear-cut boundaries between regional and national political classes will certainly do nothing to smooth territorial politics in the UK.

Theoretical insights and conceptual progress: the regional political class as epitome of the complementary character of territorial and functional social organisation

Over and above these empirical findings with regard to the development and prospect of democracy and autonomy in Catalonia and Scotland, the preceding analysis of a regional political class has also produced a number of theoretical and conceptual insights. On the most general theoretical level, the study provides counter-evidence to any claim that the principle of functional and territorial differentiation are necessarily in opposition or in conflict with each other. Looking at two cases where concurrent processes of regionalisation and political professionalisation allow for the analysis of the interaction of the two principles in its most pronounced form, we have not discovered them taking hold at the expense of each other. In neither of the cases has political professionalisation eroded the territorial bonds of regional politicians and the territorial distinctions of regional institutions. Neither have regionalism and regionalisation prevented or counteracted the functional differentiation of politics into a separate profession in the respective regions. Instead, the analysis of Catalan and Scottish politicians has shown them to be regional and professional politicians at the same time, without compromising their territorial for their functional identity or vice versa. As a regional political class in itself, territorially and functionally differentiated from other social strata, they epitomise the very fusion of the two principles. Furthermore, as a regional political class acting for itself, they have shown themselves capable of driving forward differentiation processes on both dimensions. Thus, there is evidence that the territorial and the functional dimensions in politics are not necessarily in conflict, but may under specific circumstances indeed even be mutually reinforcing. For the study of political professionalisation and political careers this means that territory matters. A politicised territorial identity on the regional – or perhaps even on the local level – has to be seen as an important factor affecting career pathways of professional politicians up to the point of a complete reversal of the traditional central state oriented and dominated pattern. In Catalonia and Scotland there are politicians whose conception of the common good is predominantly related to the regional rather than the wider national

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 286

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

287

polity. Given the chance for a professional political career at the regional level (as provided by the regionalisation processes in Spain and the UK), they prefer such a career over one at the central state level. As a result, many MSPs pursue an exclusively Scottish career as a clear alternative to that at Westminster. For Catalan politicians, positions on the national level form part of an integrated career arena. They might be sent there by the party leadership or actively seize the opportunity to enhance their standing in their party. In any case, though, they continue to play to a Catalan gallery, continue to move on a Catalan centred career ladder, and often strive to ultimately return to a Catalan position in the Catalan government. Thus, in both cases, the regionalist setting – with its prevalence of a strong and politicised regional identity – counters the centripetal tendencies of political professionalisation and makes for regionally orientated career pathways that do not fit the conventional wisdom of career studies. For many scholars of regional studies this result may not be surprising. What may be new to them, though, is the extent to which political professionalisation matters for the development of regional institutions and regional democracy. As professional politicians take up mandates and offices in regional institutions, they begin to shape them, inserting their own collective self-interest into the process of institutionalisation and institution-building. As the theory of political class holds, they will strive to establish conditions which allow them to maintain and advance their professional political careers. This may be done by installing a differentiated parliamentary system of fully professionalised political offices – where incumbents are secured by a generous resource endowment and favourable re-election and reselection mechanisms, and are allowed to rise by accumulating expertise and seniority up towards government office (as in Scotland). Alternatively this may take the form of a system of patronage, where professional politicians – via the vehicle of political parties – monopolise access to a closed circuit of elected and unelected public and private offices, which may be held simultaneously and/or by rapid succession (as in Catalonia). Geared to secure the careers of those already in a professional position, both systems are socially exclusive (separating professional politicians from the rest of the regional population) and clearly at odds with democratic values (as the competition for political positions is distorted). As has been shown, regionalisation and regionalism – despite the higher proximity of politicians and citizens on the regional level and despite the democratic impetus of self-government movements – do not per se foreclose such a development. Regional democracy is thus affected by political professionalisation in much the same way as democracy at the national level. The collective self-interest of professional regional politicians in improving their working conditions and their career opportunities has also been

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 287

20/8/09 11:51:09

288

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

shown to affect the extent of institutional autonomy of the region and thus the territorial order of the state. Striving to defend and expand their own institutional and financial base – as seen for example in the Scottish fight to maintain the number of regional parliamentarians, and the implementation of a regional mechanism of public party funding in Catalonia – they demonstrate a collective interest distinct from that of their national counterparts and a willingness to increase their capacity for self-regulation. The extent of this interest divergence and their respective capacity to pursue their distinct interest should be regarded as important factors in a region’s dynamic balance of autonomy and integration within its host state. Perhaps the most important theoretical result of this study, though, derives from the differences revealed between the two cases. As has been shown, both the formation and the collective action of the respective classes are conditioned by (pre-)existing institutions. On the most general level, thus, the lesson of this study simply reads: institutions matter. While this statement is not completely new, it can hardly be proved too often with empirical data. The concrete effects of the different institutional configurations in the two cases can be seen in both fields of investigation. With regard to the formation of a regional political class in itself, regionalism in conjunction with the high level of political professionalisation at the regional level (compared to the central state level) has turned both Catalonia and Scotland into highly attractive career arenas for professional politicians. However, this rather similar yet diffuse regional career-orientation translates into completely different career patterns. In fact, intra-party recruitment- and nomination-mechanisms, plus the regulations of the respective electoral systems, and finally the norms and conventions of intra-parliamentary ascendancy and government promotion create strongly diverging opportunity structures for Catalan and Scottish politicians. They are not only endowed with different levels of control over their own careers, they also have to overcome rather different institutional boundaries if they want to move from one institution to the other, or from one territorial level to the other. As a consequence, career pathways of Scottish politicians condense into the pattern of ‘alternative careers’ pursued either in the Scottish or the UK Parliament, whereas Catalan politicians follow much less structured and predetermined pathways, which allow for the accumulation and sequence of different positions on different territorial levels in a pattern of ‘integrated careers’. Yet, this divergence in career patterns is not the result of one single feature of the respective opportunity structure. Neither the electoral system, nor the system of candidate selection, nor any particular parliamentary rule can determine career pathways. Indeed, similar institutional mechanisms

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 288

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

289

may produce quite different effects depending on the specific configuration of institutions they are part of. Thus, a closed-list electoral system, for example, may make for high parliamentary turnover, when selection and list ranking depend on the strategic decisions of a limited number of party leaders (as in Catalonia), yet may provide comparatively secure careers for incumbents if combined with a generous resource endowment of sitting members of parliament and a postal ballot of the whole party membership (as in Scotland). With regard to the regional political class acting for itself, the capacity of regional professional politicians to institutionalise their collective selfinterest by actively shaping regionalisation and professionalisation processes has been found to be highly dependent on central state institutions. Despite strong regionalist assertion, the institutionalisation of professional politics at the regional level has mainly followed the national path. Hence, the Catalan political class has been establishing a party-based model of political professionalisation, while the Scottish political class has followed a parliament-based path. In Scotland, institutional path dependency beyond the critical juncture of regionalisation has basically taken three forms: many features shaping the Scottish pattern of political professionalisation have indeed been directly regulated by the UK Parliament in the Scotland Act and in its legislation on reserved matters. This applies for example to the fusion of legislature and executive in the Scottish Parliament, to the preservation of an integrated, non-partisan civil service in Scotland and to the lack of state funding for political parties. Other features, such as MSPs’ material endowment, were provisionally specified by a Westminster mechanism (the recommendations of the Review Body on Senior Salaries), yet later adopted by the Scottish Parliament. And finally, there are many informal institutions that have simply been taken over by Scottish politicians from Westminster practice – e.g. the proscription on dual mandates (effectively preventing the accumulation of a local council and regional parliament mandates). While these forms have to be distinguished, it should be noted that even direct central state regulations were largely initiated and negotiated by regional politicians and can therefore hardly be seen to have been forced upon them. Socialised into the Westminster model of democracy, Scottish politicians were not able to think the unthinkable. Thus, apart from some notable exceptions (e.g. the introduction of proportional representation) alternative institutional devices were simply never discussed. Instead, most of the current institutional features of Scottish politics have been established as forming part of an unquestioned inventory of parliamentary democracy, whether in London or Edinburgh. In other words, they conform to – or may even be seen as expressions of – a

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 289

20/8/09 11:51:09

290

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

common animating idea of parliament which derives from the Westminster path of democracy. In Catalonia regional politicians were much more autonomous in setting up their own regional institutions. Nevertheless, parliamentary rules, the structure of the regional administration and the role parties play in both these institutions follow the same principles and are even captured in the same words as the respective regulations for the Spanish level. Again, this was a voluntary reproduction of national institutions. Nevertheless, it was hardly independent of the previous institutionalisation of democracy on the Spanish level. Instead, the reproduction of a party-based model of democracy and political professionalistion in Catalonia was basically due to two factors: first, Catalan politicians had been involved, and indeed been instrumental in establishing these institutions on the Spanish level in the first place. Thus, one could argue, that the institutional outcome reflected to a large degree their interests and their Leitbild of democracy, and so a similar model might have been established in Catalonia even independently of its prior installation at the central state level. This argument is supported by the fact that Catalan political parties had been formed earlier than their Spanish counterparts. However, this is only part of the explanation. The almost exact reproduction of the Spanish model also owes a lot to the specific situation of the transition, characterised by a high degree of social and political uncertainty. In this context, copying from a consensually agreed model was clearly a strategy to minimise transaction costs and risk, as any extended debate about the institutional structure would have been time consuming, entailing even the danger of failure. The decisions taken during the critical juncture of regionalisation have been of fundamental importance for the subsequent institutional trajectory of the two regions. This is clearly to be seen with regard to the pattern of political professionalisation that has been developing. With the new regional institutions up and running, it is not only a shared animating idea that is sustaining their existence, but the interests of those actors acting within them. Professional politicians socialised as well-endowed parliamentarians with long career prospects will be interested to perpetuate and expand a professionalised parliamentary system (as in Scotland). On the other hand, politicians occupying a paid political position in the closed circuit of fast changing offices and mandates governed by a system of party patronage (as in Catalonia) will be less interested in professionalising the very office they currently hold (as they may move on tomorrow) than in securing and expanding the function of political parties to dispose of offices that provide their politicians with a sufficient income. Particular opportunity structures attract a certain group of politicians and allow those who best adjust to its specific demands to advance in their political careers. Yet, those who make their career within the given

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 290

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

291

structure are hardly inclined to fundamentally alter its structural base. This relationship can be seen as a classic example of the locking-in effect of pathdependency. However, while the comparison between Catalonia and Scotland has provided ample evidence of this effect, it has also shown that the institutionalisation of professional politics does not deterministically follow any prescribed institutional logic. While regional professional politicians may generally function as a political class in and for itself, they do not always adhere to their apparent collective self-interest, nor are they immune to exogenous demands. The extreme openness and transparency of the Scottish parliamentary system, for example, is clearly not a product of a self-interested institutional politics of professional parliamentarians (after all, the careers of some MSPs have already been negatively affected by the high level of public accountability). Instead, it owes its existence to the ideals fostered and popularised by the Scottish self-government movement, which have found their way into parliamentary practice via committed individuals within the parliament, yet perhaps even more so via the media and the general public, who have taken these ideals as a yardstick for their evaluation of the fledgeling institution. To their credit, though, Scottish politicians – some gladly, some grudgingly – seem to have acknowledged that there is a precarious balance between forcing their immediate collective self-interest and sustaining institutional legitimacy – on which, after all, their professional livelihood rests. Thus, by following the path set out by the Scottish self-government movement they are diminishing the risk of a legitimacy crisis that could force all of them out of their careers. At first sight, the convergence of all Scottish parties to a one-memberone-vote (OMOV) postal ballot system for the nomination of their list candidates represents a similar success-story for the capacity of the Scottish self-government movement to insert its democratic values into the Scottish polity. Yet, while parties are apparently adhering to a participatory ideal, it is not entirely accidental that this system produces a very high incumbent return-rate. In fact, I have argued that MSPs endowed with a high public profile and a vast resource base have knowingly instrumentalised this ideal in their self-interested attempt to immunise themselves from inner-party challengers. Institutions are not the direct product of ideas, they are made by actors with interests. Catalonia, too, has seen disillusionment with a socially detached political class as well as demands for new forms of openness and citizen participation. However, in contrast to Scotland, these demands were not part of the original regionalist settlement at the critical juncture. Criticism of the Catalan partitocracy emerged only after the transition. As by that time the system had already been formed, the main criticism had to come from the outside. So

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 291

20/8/09 11:51:09

292

TOWARDS A REGIONAL POLITICAL CLASS?

far, the Catalan political class has preserved its privileged position, deploying strategies of adaptation and co-optation. The first instance of government alternation – disseminating government positions to three parties, including two with a strong anti-establishment sector (ERC and ICV) – has altered the overall distribution of perks and positions, yet it has in no way undermined the system. The devolved United Kingdom and the Spanish state of autonomies have both been rightly depicted as highly dynamic institutional systems. In fact, there is hardly any analysis of the territorial order of these two states that does not emphasise their process character.2 As shown above, though, the concrete institutional dynamics cannot simply be deduced from a given status ex ante. Instead, all processes of institutionalisation (including path-dependent processes) are accomplished by political actors and their interests, and are thus potentially contingent. Breaking down institutional analysis to the actor level depends on a number of theoretical and conceptual decisions. The preceding analysis has been based on the claim of Klaus von Beyme (1993, 1996) and Jens Borchert (2003a, 2003b), that political institutions are not only shaped by actors such as interest groups, political parties and government bodies – attempting to maximise the power and influence of their own organisation and the societal interest they represent – but also to a considerable degree by the collective self-interest of those who make a living out of representing these societal interests: professional politicians. Conceptualising professional politicians as a political class, and thus as a collective actor, we are able to introduce this professional self-interest into an actor-centred analysis of institutions and institutional change. In this study, I have adapted and further advanced the concept of political class by adding a territorial dimension to it. Starting from the propositions that political careers are territorially embedded (as there is no integrated worldwide job market for professional politicians), I have argued that the most relevant career arena for professional politicians is not necessarily always the nation-state. In my quest for a regional political class I have identified Scottish and Catalan politicians to be highly distinctive both with regard to functional and to territorial criteria. Furthermore, the study has also shown regional politicians in Catalonia and Scotland to be actively pursuing their professional self-interest by institutionalising and expanding an opportunity structure that differentiates them both from the regional public and from their professional counterparts at the national level. Catalan and Scottish politicians 2

See titles such as The Dynamics of Devolution (Trench 2005), Spain: A Federation in the Making? (Guibernau 1995), or The Federalization of Spain (Moreno 2001), among many others.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 292

20/8/09 11:51:09

CONCLUSION

293

have thus been shown to exhibit the structural features of a regional political class in itself and to be acting as a regional political class for itself. In addition to demonstrating the empirical validity of this ideal type, the analysis of the two cases has also provided for a further refinement of this concept by depicting two opposing real types: a highly focused, parliamentary-based regional political class in Scotland and its much more diffused, party-based counterpart in Catalonia. This conceptual advancement is not contradicted by the fact that the empirical analysis has also revealed that class boundaries contain areas of blurring and overlap, that the common class-consciousness has been shown to be limited in scope and subject matter, and that there are institutional and behavioural factors that hamper class capacity for collective action. The theory of political class neither claims that its structural boundaries are completely fixed, nor that its members always act as a coherent class. In fact, most of the time professional politicians will not act in such a way. What this study has shown, though, is that looking through this conceptual lens can reveal causal relations that would otherwise be simply overlooked. Directing the attention to the self-interest of territorially embedded professional politicians, the concept of a regional political class is helping to unravel the complex institutional dynamic that is set in motion when regionalisation meets political professionalisation. By taking seriously both their professional capacity and interests as well as their territorial and institutional embeddedness, such an analysis will contribute to a more accurate picture of how regional politicians are shaping the institutional structure of regional democracy and how they are influencing the territorial order of the state – whether in Spain, the United Kingdom, or elsewhere.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 293

20/8/09 11:51:10

Appendix 1 Survey of regional parliamentarians in Catalonia and Scotland

The two surveys were conducted in autumn 2002 (Scotland) and winter 2003 (Catalonia). The questionnaires contained 30 (Scotland) and 32 (Catalonia) questions – mostly identical, yet with a few case-specific variations. Most questions were of a closed nature. The language used was English and Catalan. In the Scottish case questionnaires were sent to MSPs individually, in the Catalan case they were distributed via the parliamentary groups. During the fieldwork for the survey (and for the interviews) the author was based at the Departament de Ciències Polítiques i Socials, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona and at the Institute of Government, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh. He is grateful for the support of both institutions. Both surveys achieved considerable response rates of 37.2 per cent and 43.7 per cent respectively. As not all parliamentarians answered all questions, n varies not only between the two cases but also depending on the question. The exact figure is thus given in all tables in the text. In the Catalan case the representativeness of respondents with regard to the most relevant subgroups is almost ideal, with nearly complete correspondence for gender and seniority, and only slight deviations for party, hierarchy and experience. In the Scottish survey representativeness with regard to particular subgroups is less perfect. The table shows a considerable underrepresentation of Labour MSPs and an overrepresentation of all other parties. Similarly male, list and back-bench MSPs are overrepresented, while female and constituency MSPs as well as executive members are underrepresented. However, with regard to their prior experience respondents are highly representative of the totality. However, in a study mainly aiming at statements about MSPs as a group, and not about its subgroups, very high levels of representativeness are not essential. For most purposes of the study, subgroups function merely as a control of the group’s cohesion. Thus, it is important that the sample is not dominated by one subgroup, and that all relevant subgroups show a sufficient response rate.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 294

20/8/09 11:51:10

APPENDICES

295

Data was processed using SPSS. Table A1.1 Members of the Catalan Parliament (MCPs) survey Group

No.

No. of respond’s

% of total

% of sample

Difference

CDC/UDC PSC/CpC PP ERC ICV Party

56 50 12 12 5

23 23 8 3 2

41.5 37.0 8.9 8.9 3.7

39 39 13.6 5.1 3.4

−2.5 +2 +4.7 −3.8 −0.3

Female Male Gender

37 98

16 43

27.4 72.6

27.1 72.9

−0.3 +0.3

43.2 43.9 0.6

4 131

Cong/Sen/EP Non Prior exper.

18 117

Elected pre1999 Elected 1999 + Seniority

70

31

51.9

52.5

+0.6

65

28

48.2

47.5

−0.7

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 295

41.1 46 66.7 25 40 13.3

Executive Backbencher Hierarchy

All MCPs

Duncan Return Index rate

0 59

3.0 97.0

0 100

−3.0 +3.0

0 45.0 6.0

5 54

13.3 86.7

8.5 91.5

−4.8 +4.8

27.7 46.2 9.6 44.3 43.1 1.3

135

59

43.7

20/8/09 11:51:10

296

APPENDICES

Table A1.2 Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs) survey Group

No.

No. of respondents

% of total

% of sample

Difference

Labour SNP Con Lib-Dem Others Party

56 35 18 17 3

11 17 11 7 2

43.4 27.1 14.0 13.2 2.3

22.9 35.4 22.9 14.6 4.2

−20.5 +8.3 +8.9 +1.4 +1.9

Female Male Gender

48 81

Constituency List Mandate

73 56

Executive Backbencher Hierarchy

20 109

Parl. exp Rookie Experience

24 105

All MSPs

129

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 296

Duncan Return Index rate 19.6 48.6 61.1 41.2 66.6 41

14 34

37.2 62.8

29.2 70.8

−8 +8

29.2 42.0 16

18 30

56.6 43.4

37.5 62.5

−19.1 −19.1

24.7 53.6 38.2

3 45

15.5 84.5

6.3 93.8

9.2 9.3

15 41.3 18.5

10 38

18.6 81.4

20.8 79.2

2.2 2.2

41.7 36.2 4.4

48

37.2

37.2

20/8/09 11:51:10

Appendix 2 Interview series with Catalan and Scottish politicians

Between 18 September 2002 and 21 November 2002, 28 interviews were conducted in Scotland. The 25 interviews in Catalonia were conducted between 6 February 2003 and 26 March 2003. Interview partners consist of Catalan and Scottish politicians (and some journalistic and academic observers) from a wide range of institutions and positions (see list in table below). Interviews were all conducted by the author. They were semi-structured with variations depending on the position of interviewees, yet leaving also enough leeway to follow individual points. They lasted between half an hour and two hours, with an average length of one hour and were conducted in English and Spanish (plus two in German). All but seven of them were recorded and fully transcribed. Varying degrees of secrecy and anonymity were agreed with different interview partners and for different parts of the interviews. They ranged from full disclosure and direct attribution, over passages attributed to a particular office or function (e.g. Labour MP or PP party official), to complete off-the-record remarks. As a consequence interview statements are used and reproduced in various different forms: as pure background information, as non-attributable statements (referred to in the text with interview number in brackets), as statements attributed to a particular office, or to a particular person. The following complete list of interviews shows the names of interviewees, the places and dates at which they were conducted, plus the party affiliation and the positions and offices interview partners were holding at the time of the interview.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 297

20/8/09 11:51:10

298

APPENDICES

Table A2.1 List of interviews Name

Place

Date

Party

Main position(s) held at time of interview

Catalonia Pujol, Jordi

Barcelona

24.03.2003

CiU/CDC

Barcelona

12.02.2003

CiU/CDC

MCP; President of Catalonia MCP

Barcelona

21.03.2003

CiU/CDC

Molins, Joaquim Barcelona

14.03.2003

CiU/CDC

Vidal i Gayolà, Joan

Barcelona

18.03.2003

CiU/CDC

Grifells, Salvador Barcelona

15.03.2003

CiU/CDC

Casas i Bedós, Barcelona Jordi Puigdomènech i Barcelona Cantó, Carles Rigol y Roig, JoanBarcelona

13.03.2003

CiU/UDC

13.03.2003

CiU/UDC

17.03.2003

CiU/UDC

Huguet i Biosca, Barcelona Josep

05.02.2003

ERC

Vendrell i Segura, Barcelona Xavier

11.03.2003

ERC

Ribó i Masso, Rafael

Barcelona

17.02.2003

ICV

Mejías Sánchez, Caridad Sirera i Bell, Daniel

Barcelona

26.03.2003

PP

Barcelona

17.03.2003

PP

Riera i Bou, Marcel Campuzano i Canadès, Carles

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 298

Spanish Congress member Former politician Senior civil servant, Catalan administration Communication officer, CDC MCP; speaker, UDC MCP MCP; President of Catalan Parliament MCP; speaker of parl. group; deputy general secretary, ERC MCP; national secretary organisation and finance, ERC MCP; speaker parl. group; professor of politics, UAB MCP MCP; deputy speaker parl. group; deputy general secretary, PP

20/8/09 11:51:10

APPENDICES

299

Table A2.1 (continued) Name

Place

Date

Party

Main position(s) held at time of interview

Clotas i Cierco, Higini

Barcelona

12.03.2003

PSC

Nadal i Farreras, Barcelona Joacquim

12.02.2003

PSC

Roma i Cunill, Joan Simó i Huguet, Josep Inglada, Xavier

Barcelona

12.03.2003

PSC

MCP; vice president Catalan Parliament MCP; speaker of parliamentary group MCP; mayor

Barcelona

13.03.2003

PSC

MCP

Barcelona

25.03.2003

PSC

Espasa i Oliver, Ramon

Barcelona

13.03.2003

PSC/CpC

Valles i Barcelona Casadevall, Josep

12.02.2003

PSC/CpC

Argelaguet, Jordi Barcelona

10.02.2003

Calvet i Crespo, Barcelona Jordi Matas i Dalmases, Barcelona Jordi Pau, Francesc Barcelona

13.02.2003

Chief executive, PSC MCP PSCCpC, formerly PSUC/ICV MCP; leader CpC; professor of politics, UAB Lecturer in politics, UAB Lecturer in politics, UB Professor of politics, UB Senior staff, Catalan Parliament

Scotland DouglasEdinburgh Hamilton, James Fraser, Murdo Edinburgh Johnston, Alex Edinburgh

Tosh, Murray

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 299

Edinburgh

20.02.2003 05.02.2003

30.09.2002

Con

MSP

19.11.2002 02.10.2002

Con Con

14.11.2002

Con

MSP MSP; Conservative group business manager MSP; deputy presiding officer, Scottish Parliament

20/8/09 11:51:10

300

APPENDICES

Table A2.1 (continued) Name

Place

Date

Party

Main position(s) held at time of interview

Mitchell, David

Edinburgh

30.09.2002

Con

Rodger, Alan

Edinburgh

30.09.2002

Con

Hughes, Janice Edinburgh McAllion, John Edinburgh McNeil, Duncan Edinburgh

12.11.2002 08.10.2002 09.10.2002

Labour Labour Labour

Reid, George

Edinburgh

12.11.2002

Labour

Galbraith, Sam

Glasgow

18.11.2002

Labour

Welsh, Ian Glasgow Lazarowicz, Mark Edinburgh Matheson, Murdo Glasgow

18.09.2002 15.11.2002 21.11.2002

Labour Labour Labour

Rumbles, Mike Stone, Jamie Wallace, Jim

Edinburgh Edinburgh Edinburgh

06.11.2002 09.10.2002 03.10.2002

Lib–Dem Lib–Dem Lib–Dem

Barrie, Derek

Edinburgh

19.11.2002

Lib–Dem

McArthur, Liam Edinburgh

20.09.2002

Lib–Dem

Robison, Shona

01.10.2002

SNP

Chairman, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party Research assistant, Scottish Conservative and Unionist MSP MSP MSP; Labour group whip MSP; deputy presiding officer, Scottish Parliament Retired Labour politician Former MSP MP party researcher, Labour MSP MSP MSP; deputy First Minister, Scottish Executive; leader of Scottish Liberal Democrats Chief of staff, Scottish Liberal Democrats Special adviser to deputy first minister MSP; secretary of SNP group

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 300

Edinburgh

20/8/09 11:51:10

APPENDICES

301

Table A2.1 (continued) Name

Place

Date

Party

Main position(s) held at time of interview

Hosie, Stewart

Inverness

27.09.2002

SNP

Maxwell, Stephen Edinburgh

24.09.2002

SNP

Ross-Williams, Capre

Edinburgh

01.10.2002

SNP

Wishart, Peter Grice, Paul

Inverness Edinburgh

28.09.2002 13.11.2002

SNP

Wright, Kenyon

Edinburgh

05.11.2002

Young, Ben

Edinburgh

20.11.2002

Mitchell, James

Glasgow

25.09.2002

National secretary, SNP Senior officer, Scottish Council for Voluntary Org. Westminster researcher; Holyrood candidate MP Chief executive/ chief clerk, Scottish Parliament Executive chair of Scottish Constitutional Convention Researcher Scottish Civic Forum Professor of politics, Strathclyde University

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 301

20/8/09 11:51:10

Appendix 3 Time commitments of regional politicians

Table A3.1 Time commitments (hours per week) by type of politician in the Catalan Parliament (n = 43) mandate

Other political activities

Local political occupation

Nonpolitical activity

Professional parliamentarians n Average Median Minimum Maximum

20 34.8 32.5 18.0 60.0

20 13.8 15.0 0 35.0

20 1.5 0 0 15.0

20 0.3 0 0 5.0

Professional politicians n Average Median Minimum Maximum

10 21.5 20.0 12.0 30.0

10 30.3 31.3 20.0 36.0

10 0 0 0 0

10 0.3 0.0 0.0 3.0

Professional local politicians n Average Median Minimum Maximum

6 18.4 18.7 8.0 30.0

6 6.2 5.0 0 15.0

6 35.0 30.0 20.0 60.0

6 0 0 0 0

Semi-professional politicians n Average Median Minimum Maximum

7 30.0 30.0 20.0 40.0

7 8.9 10. 0 20.0

7 0 0 0 0

7 15.0 10.0 10.0 25.0

Type of politician

Source: Author’s survey.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 302

20/8/09 11:51:10

APPENDICES

303

Table A3.2 Time commitments (hours per week) of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament (n = 43)

n Average Median Minimum Maximum

Mandate

Other political

Non-political

43 59.0 60 40 112

43 6.8 5 0 30

43 0.6 0 0 10

Source: Author’s survey. Note: MSPs all fall into the professional parliamentarians type.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 303

20/8/09 11:51:10

References

Acord de transparència i autolimitació de despeses electorals i de financement dels partits politics (2001): Barcelona. Agranoff, Robert (1996): ‘Federal evolution in Spain’, International Political Science Review 17, pp. 385–401. Ainaud de Lasarte, Josep Maria (1996): Ministres Catalans a Madrid, Barcelona: Planeta. Aja, Eliseo (2001): ‘Spain: nation, nationalities, and regions’, in: John Loughlin (ed.), Subnational Democracy in the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 229–53. Alfonso Bozzo, Alfonso (1982): ‘Los “altos cargos” de la Generalitat: ¿administradores o políticos?’, Revista de Estudios Políticos 25, pp. 81–100. Argelaguet, Jordi (1999): ‘Las características sociales y políticas de los diputados del Parlamento de Cataluña (1988–1995)’, Revista de las Cortes Generales 48, pp. 113–32. Arter, David (2004): The Scottish Parliament: A Scandinavian Style Assembly?, London: Frank Cass. Bagehot, Walter (1963) [1867]: The English Constitution, Collins: Glasgow. Balcells, Albert (1996): Catalan Nationalism: Past and Present, London: Macmillan. Baras, Montserrat (ed.) (2004): Els militants dels partits polítics a Catalunya. Perfils socials i percepcions polítiques, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Beer, Samuel (1977): ‘Political Overload and Federalism’, Polity 9, pp. 5–17. Bennie, Lynn G. (2000): ‘Small parties in a devolved Scotland’, in: Alex Wright (ed.), Scotland: The Challenge of Devolution, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 68–82. Bennie, Lynn G. (2002): ‘Exploiting new electoral opportunities: the small parties in Scotland’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), Tomorrow’s Scotland, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 98–115. Bennie, Lynn G. (2004): Understanding Political Participation: Green Party Membership in Scotland, Aldershot: Ashgate. Bennie, Lynn, Jack Brand and James Mitchell (1997): How Scotland Votes: Scottish Parties and Elections, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Best, Heinrich and Maurizio Cotta (2000a): ‘Elite transformation and modes of representation since the mid-nineteenth century: some theoretical considerations’, in: Heinrich Best and Maurizio Cotta (eds), Parliamentary Representatives in Europe

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 304

20/8/09 11:51:10

REFERENCES

305

1848–2000: Legislative Recruitment and Careers in Eleven European Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–28. Best, Heinrich and Maurizio Cotta (eds) (2000b): Parliamentary Representatives in Europe 1848–2000: Legislative Recruitment and Careers in Eleven European Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beyme, Klaus von (1993): Die politische Klasse im Parteienstaat, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Beyme, Klaus von (1996): ‘The concept of political class: a new dimension of research on elites?’, West European Politics 19, pp. 68–87. Biezen, Ingrid van (2003): Political Parties in New Democracies: Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe, Houndsmill: Macmillan Pelgrave. Bochel, Catherine and Hugh M. Bochel (1998): ‘Scotland’s councillors 1974–1995’, Scottish Affairs 24, pp. 29–44. Bonney, Norman (2003): ‘The Scottish Parliament and participatory democracy: vision and reality’, Political Quarterly 74, pp. 459–67. Borchert, Jens (1999a): ‘Politik als Beruf: Die politische Klasse in westlichen Demokratien’, in: Jens Borchert (ed.): Politik als Beruf, Opladen: Leske & Budrich, pp. 7–39. Borchert, Jens (1999b): ‘The subnational level in political careers: towards a typology of advanced industrial democracies’, unpublished manuscript prepared for Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, GA, 2–5 September 1999. Borchert, Jens (2001): ‘Movement and linkage in political careers: individual ambition and institutional repercussions in a multi-level setting’, unpublished manuscript prepared for ECPR Joint Session of Workshops, Grenoble, 6–11 April 2001. Borchert, Jens (2003a): Die Professionalisierung der Politik. Zur Notwendigkeit eines Ärgernisses, Frankfurt: Campus. Borchert, Jens (2003b): ‘Professional politicians: towards a comparative perspective’, in: Jens Borchert and Jürgen Zeiss (eds), The Political Class in Advanced Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–25. Borchert, Jens and Lutz Golsch (1995): ‘Die politische Klasse in westlichen Demokratien: Rekrutierung, Karriereinteressen und institutioneller Wandel’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 36, pp. 609–29. Borchert, Jens and Klaus Stolz (2003): ‘Die Bekämpfung der Unsicherheit: Politikerkarrieren und Karrierepolitik in der Bundsrepublik Deutschland’, Politische Vierteljahressschrift 44, pp. 148–73. Borchert, Jens and Klaus Stolz (2004): ‘German political careers: the state level as an arena in its own right?’, unpublished manuscript prepared for conference on Political Careers in Multi-Level Systems, Kloster Seeon (Bavaria/Germany), 1–4 July 2004. Botella, Joan (1997): ‘Parlamento y carreras políticas’, in: Manuel Ramírez (ed.), El Parlamento a debate, Madrid: Trotta, pp. 145–53. Bradbury, Jonathan (2006): ‘British political parties and devolution: adapting to multi-level politics in Scotland and Wales’, in: Dan Hough and Charlie Jeffery (eds), Devolution and Electoral Politics: A Comparative Exploration, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 214–47. Bradbury, Jonathan, David Denver, James Mitchell and Lynn Bennie (2000a): ‘Devolution and party change: candidate selection for the 1999 Scottish

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 305

20/8/09 11:51:10

306

REFERENCES

Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections’, Journal of Legislative Studies 6, pp. 51–72. Bradbury, Jonathan, James Mitchell, Lynn Bennie and David Denver (2000b): ‘Candidate selection, devolution and modernisation: the selection of Labour Party candidates for the 1999 Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections’, British Elections and Parties Review 10, pp. 151–72. Brown, Alice (1998): ‘Representing women in Scotland’, Parliamentary Affairs 51, pp. 435–44. Bru de Sala, Xavier (2003): ‘Rigol se despide’, La Vanguardia (19 August 2003). Bru de Sala, Xavier (2006): ‘Cuidado, Montilla’, La Vanguardia (7 March 2006). Burdeau, Georges (1975) [1958]: ‘Die politische Klasse’, in: Wilfried Röhrich (ed.), Demokratische Elitenherrschaft, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 251–68. Burnside, Ross and Jim Dewar (2006): Regulatory and Investigatory Bodies Created by the Parliament since Devolution, Scottish Parliament Information Centre Briefing Paper 06/16, Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Burnside, Ross, Stephen Herbert and Stephen Curtis (2003): Election 2003, Scottish Parliament Information Centre Briefing Paper 03/25, Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Calsina i Buscà, Miquel (2001): ’25 anys d’estructura organitzativa de Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya’, in: Joan B. Culla i Clarà (ed.), El pal de paller. Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (1974–2000), Barcelona: Portic, pp. 217–48. Calvet i Crespo, Jordi (1999): ‘Las elites políticas del Parlamento de Cataluña. Un estudio sociológico y político de los diputados de la quinta legislatura’, Autonomies 24, pp. 235–63. Caminal Badia, Miquel (1998): Nacionalisme i Partits Nacionalistes a Catalunya, Barcelona: Empúries. Carr, Raymond and Joan Pablo Fusi-Aizpurau (1979): Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy, London: George Allen and Unwin. Coleman, James Samuel (1990): Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Colomé, Gabriel (1993): ‘The Catalan party system’, in: Gabriel Colomé and Enric Fossas, Political Parties and Institutions in Catalonia; Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials, pp. 37–64. Colomer, Josep M. (1996): ‘Spain and Portugal: rule by party leadership’, in: Josep M. Colomer (ed.), Political Institutions in Europe, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 170–210. Colomer, Josep M. (1999): ‘The Spanish “state of autonomies”: non-institutional federalism’, in: Paul Heywood (ed.), Politics and Policy in Democratic Spain: No Longer Different?, London/Portland: Frank Cass, pp. 40–52. Commission on Boundary Differences and Voting Systems (2006): Putting Citizens First: Boundaries, Voting and Representation in Scotland, Edinburgh: Stationery Office. Committee on Standards in Public Life (1998): Standards in Public Life: The Funding of Political Parties, Fifth Report, Cm 4057, London: HMSO. Committee on Standards in Public Life (2000): Reinforcing Standards, Vol. 1, Sixth Report (The Neill Report), London: HMSO.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 306

20/8/09 11:51:10

REFERENCES

307

Congreso de los Diputados (2007): ‘régimen económico y ayudas de los señores diputados, 24/01/07’, www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/Congreso/ Diputados/RegEcoyProtSoc/regimen_economico_diputados_300608.pdf (accessed September 2008). Consultative Steering Group (1998a): The Operation of the Scottish Parliament: Key Principles, CSG (98)(2), Edinburgh: Scottish Office. Consultative Steering Group (1998b): Shaping Scotland’s Parliament: Report of the Consultative Steering Group on the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh: Scottish Office. Cotta, Maurizio and Heinrich Best (2000): ‘Between professionalization and democratization: a synoptic view on the making of the European representative’, in: Heinrich Best and Maurizio Cotta (eds), Parliamentary Representatives in Europe 1848–2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 493–526. Curtice, John (2005): ‘Public opinion and the future of devolution’, in: Alan Trench (ed.), The Dynamics of Devolution: The State of the Nations 2005, Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 117–36. Dahl, Robert A. and Edward R. Tufte (1973): Size and Democracy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Del Castillo, Pilar (1994): ‘Problems in Spanish party financing’, in: Herbert E. Alexander and Rei Shiratori (eds), Comparative Political Finance among the Democracies, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 97–104. Department of The Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) (1997): Building Partnerships for Prosperity, London: HMSO. Deutsch, Karl (1966): Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality, Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Durkheim, Emil (1964): The Divisions of Labour in Society, New York: Free Press. Earle, Murray (2007): Parliamentary Allowances and Pay, SPICe briefing, SB 07–51, 4 October 2007, Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. Eliassen, Kjell A. and Mogens N. Pedersen (1978): ‘Professionalization of legislatures: long-term change in political recruitment in Denmark and Norway’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, pp. 286–318. Flinders, Matthew (2004): ‘Distributed public governance in Britain’, Public Administration 82, pp. 883–909. Font Fábregas, Joan and Ismael Blanco Fillola (2003): ‘Òrgans de participació ciutadana i associtativa de la Generalitat de Catalunya: anàlisi i propostre’, in: Informe Pi i Sunyer sobre l’Administració de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona: Fundació Carles Pi i Sunyer, pp. 279–91. Font Lovet, Tomás (1983): ‘Tendencias organizativas en la administración de las comunidades autónomas’, Revista Vasca de Administración Pública 6, pp. 217–36. Francis, Wayne L. and Lawrence W. Kenny (2000): Up the Political Ladder: Career Paths in U.S. Politics, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Friedrich, Manfred (1977): Der Landtag als Berufsparlament? Ein verfassungspolitisches Gutachten zu der Frage, ob den Landtagsabgeordneten in der Bundesrepublik Diäten auf der Grundlage einer ‘Vollzeitbeschäftigung’ gewährt werden sollen, Wiesbaden: Karl Bräuer-Institut des Bundes der Steuerzahler. Genieys, William (1997): Les Elites Espagnoles Face à L’État. Changement de régimes politiques et dynamicques centre–péripheries, Paris: L’Harmattan.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 307

20/8/09 11:51:10

308

REFERENCES

Genieys, William (1998a): ‘Las elites periféricas españolas ante el cambio de régimen político’, in: Revista de Estudios Políticos 102, pp. 9–38. Genieys, William (1998b): ‘Autonomous Communities and the state in Spain: the role of intermediary elites’, in: Patrick Le Galès and Christian Lequesne (eds), Regions in Europe, London: Routledge, pp. 166–80. Gerdes, Dirk (1985), Regionalismus als soziale Bewegung. Westeuropa, Frankreich, Korsika: vom Vergleich zur Kontextanalyse, Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Gerring, John (2001): Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodin; Robert E. (1996): ‘Institutions and their design’, in: Robert E. Gooding (ed.), The Theory of Institutional Design, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–53. Grant, Katie (2002): ‘McLetchie must be ready for big sweep’, Scotsman (31 March 2002). Greer, Scott (2006): Nationalism and Self-government: The Politics of Autonomy in Scotland and Catalonia, New York: State University of New York Press. Gress, Franz and Ronald Huth (1998): Die Landesparlamente. Gesetzgebungsorgane in den deutschen Ländern, Heidelberg: Huethig Verlag. Guibernau, Montserrat (1995): ‘Spain: a federation in the making?’, in: Graham Smith (ed.), Federalism: The Multiethnic Challenge, London/New York: Longman. Harvie, Christopher (1994): Scotland and Nationalism. Scottish Society and Politics 1707–1994, London/New York: Routledge (2nd edn). Hassan, Gerry (2002): ‘The paradoxes of Scottish Labour: devolution, change and conservatism’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), Tomorrow’s Scotland, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 26–48. Hassan, Gerry and Chris Warhurst (2000) ‘A new politics?’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), The New Scottish Politics: the First Year of the Scottish Parliament and Beyond, Norwich: Stationery Office, pp. 1–15. Hassan, Gerry and Peter Lynch (2001): The Almanac of Scottish Politics, London: Politico’s. Hassan, Gerry and Douglas Fraser (2004): The Political Guide to Modern Scotland: People, Places and Power, London: Politico’s. Henderson, Ailsa and Amanda Sloat (1999): ‘New politics in Scotland? A profile of MSPs: part 1’, Talking Politics 12:1, pp. 243–6. Heras, Raúl (1997): Enciclopedia política y atlas electoral de la democracia española, Madrid: ed. temas del hoy. Herzog, Dietrich (1992): ‘Zur Funktion der Politischen Klasse in der sozialstaatlichen Demokratie der Gegenwart’, in: Thomas Leif, Hans-Josef Legrand and Ansgar Klein (eds), Die politische Klasse in Deutschland, Bonn: Bouvier, pp. 126–49. Hesse, Joachim Jens and Arthur Benz (1990): Die Modernisierung der Staatsorganisation. Institutionenpolitik im internationalen Vergleich: USA, Großbritannien, Frankreich, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Baden-Baden: Nomos. House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee (2004): Coincidence of Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries in Scotland and the Consequences of Change, London: HMSO, 3 February 2004. Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials (ed.) (1997): Estatuts Partits Polítics Catalans 1992, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 308

20/8/09 11:51:10

REFERENCES

309

Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials (ed.) (1998): Estatuts Partits Polítics Catalans 1977, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Keating, Michael (1977): A Test of Political Integration: The Scottish Members of Parliament, Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Studies in Public Policy no. 6. Keating, Michael (1988): State and Regional Nationalism: Territorial Politics and the European State, Hemel Hempstead: Wheatsheaf. Keating, Michael (1992): ‘Regional autonomy in the changing state order: a framework of analysis’, Regional Politics and Policy 2, pp. 45–61. Keating, Michael (1996): Nations against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland, Houndmills: Macmillan. Keating, Michael (1998): The New Regionalism in Western Europe: Territorial Restructuring and Political Change, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Keating, Michael and Paul Cairney (2006): ‘A new elite? Politicians and civil servants in Scotland after devolution’, Parliamentary Affairs 59, pp. 43–59. King, Anthony (1981): ‘The rise of the career politician – and its consequences’, British Journal of Political Science 11, pp. 249–85. Lane, Jan-Erik, David McKay and Kenneth Newton (1997): Political Data Handbook OECD Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2nd edn). Lepsius, M. Rainer (1995): ‘Institutionenenanalyse und Institutionenpolitik’, in: Birgitta Nedelmann (ed.), Politische Institutionen im Wandel, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 35, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 392–403. Lepsius, M. Rainer (1997): ‘Institutionalisierung und Deinstitutionalisierung von Rationalitätskriterien’, in: Gerhard Göhler (ed.), Institutionenwandel. Leviathan Sonderheft 16/1996, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 57–69. Lessenich, Stephan (2003): Dynamischer Immobilismus. Kontinuität und Wandel im deutschen Sozialmodell, Frankfurt/New York: Campus. Lloyd, Greg (2000): ‘Quasi government in Scotland: a challenge for devolution and the renewal of democracy’, in: Alex Wright (ed.), Scotland: The Challenge of Devolution, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 102–22. Loughlin, John and Guy Peters (1997): ‘State traditions, administrative reform and regionalization’, in: Michael Keating and John Loughlin (eds), The Political Economy of Regionalism, London: Frank Cass. Lynch, Peter (1996): ‘Professionalization, new technology and change in a small party: the case of the Scottish National Party’, in: D. M. Farrell, J. Fisher, D. Broughton and D. Denver (eds), British Elections and Parties Yearbook 1996, London: Frank Cass, pp. 217–33. Lynch, Peter and Steven Birrell (2004): ‘The autonomy and organisation of Scottish Labour’, in: Hassan, Gerry (ed.), The Scottish Labour Party: History, Institutions and Ideas, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 176–91. McCrone, David (1992): Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation, London: Routledge. McEwen, Nicola (2003): ‘Is devolution at risk? Examining attitudes towards the Scottish Parliament in light of the 2003 election’, Scottish Affairs 44, pp. 54–73. McGarvey, Neil (2002): ‘Relations with local government’, Scotland Devolution Monitoring Report November 2002, Constitution Unit, pp. 27–9.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 309

20/8/09 11:51:10

310

REFERENCES

McLeish, Henry (2004): Scotland First. Truth and Consequences, Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing. McRoberts, Kenneth (2001): Catalonia: Nation Building without a State, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Macwhirter, Iain (2000a): ‘Why Holyrood is closer to the people’, Herald (16 February 2000). Macwhirter, Iain (2000b): ‘Where do we go from Ayr?’, Herald (19 March 2000). Macwhirter, Iain (2001): ‘Labour will lose any fight to cut MSPs down to size’, Herald (29 August 2001). Magre Ferran, Jaume (1999): L’Alcalde a Catalunya, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Politiques i Socials. Mahoney, James (2000): ‘Path dependence in historical sociology’, in: Theory and Society 29, pp. 507–48. Manow, Philip (2007): ‘Electoral rules and legislative turnover: evidence from Germany’s mixed electoral system’, in: West European Politics 30, pp. 195–207. Marcet, Joan (1994): ‘The parties of non-state ambit: the case of Catalonia’, in: de Winter (ed.), Non-state-wide parties in Europe, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials, pp. 163–78. Martínez-Alonso i Camps, José Luis (1998): ‘L’organització territorial i els governs locals de Catalunya’, in: Miquel Caminal Badia and Jordi Matas Dalmases (eds), El Sistema Polític de Catalunya, Barcelona: Tecnos, pp. 315–64. Marx, Karl (1972) [1894]: Das Kapital. Dritter Band, in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, vol. 25, Berlin: Dietz. Massie, Allan (1999): ‘Why the quangos are not for burning’, Scotsman (17 February 1999). Matas Dalmases, Jordi (1995): Public Administration and the Recruitment of Political Elites: Formal and Material Politicization in Catalonia, Barcelona, Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials Working Paper no. 104. Matas Dalmases, Jordi (1996): Las Elites Políticas de la Administración. Los Altos Cargos de la Generalitat de Cataluña, Barcelona: Cedecs (Estudios Constitucionales y Políticos). Matas Dalmases, Jordi (1998): ‘Política i administració a la Generalitat de Catalunya’, in: Miquel Caminal and Jord Matas (eds), El Sistema Polític de Catalunya, Barcelona: tecnos, pp. 291–314. Matas Dalmases, Jordi (2001a): ‘El control político de la administración en Cataluña’, in: Jordi Matas (ed.), El control polìtico de la Administración, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials, pp. 33–76. Matas Dalmases, Jordi (2001b): ‘Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya, partit de govern’, in: Joan B. Culla i Clarà (ed.), El pal de paller. Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (1974–2000), Barcelona: Portic, pp. 99–126. Matas Dalmases, Jordi (2003a): ‘Consellers, alts càrrecs i assessors de l’Adminstració de la Generalitat de Catalunya’, in: Informe Pi i Sunyer sobre l’Administració de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona: Fundació Carles Pi i Sunyer, pp. 89–130. Matas Dalmases, Jordi (2003b): ‘La figura del conseller a l’Administració de Catalunya (1980–2000)’, unpublished paper. Matland, Richard E. and Donley T. Studlar (2004): ‘Determinants of legislative turnover: a cross-national analysis’, British Journal of Political Science 34, pp. 87–108.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 310

20/8/09 11:51:10

REFERENCES

311

Matuschek, Peter (2003): ‘Spain: a textbook case of partitocracy’, in: Jens Borchert and Jürgen Zeiss (eds), The Political Class in Advanced Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 336–51. Mitchell, James (1990): Conservatives and the Union, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mitchell, James (1999): ‘Consensus, whose consensus?’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), A Different Future: A Moderniser’s Guide to Scotland, Edinburgh: Centre for Scottish Public Policy, pp. 28–33. Mitchell, James (2000): ‘New parliament: new politics in Scotland’, Parliamentary Affairs 53, pp. 249–73. Mitchell, James (2005): ‘Scotland: devolution is not just for christmas’, in: Alan Trench (ed.), The Dynamics of Devolutions: The State of the Nations 2005, Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 23–41. Mitchell, James and the Scottish Monitoring Team (2003): ‘Third year, third First Minister’, in: Robert Hazell (ed.), The State of the Nations 2003: The Third Year of Devolution in the United Kingdom, Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 119–42. Morata, Francesc (1992): ‘Institucionalización y rendimiento político de l estado autonomico. Un estudio comparado: Andalucía, Cataluña, Galicia y Comunidad Valenciana’, Revista de Estudios Políticos 76, pp. 255–97. Moreno, Luis (2001): The Federalization of Spain, London: Frank Cass. Mosca, Gaetano (1896): Elementi di scienza politica, Turin: Bocca. Mosca, Gaetano (1939) [1896]: The Ruling Class, New York: McGraw-Hill. Mosca, Gaetano (1950) [1896]: Die herrschende Klasse, Munich: Lehnen. Norris, Pippa (1997a): ‘Introduction: theories of recruitment’, in: Pippa Norris (ed.), Passages to Power: Legislative Recruitment in Advanced Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–14. Norris, Pippa (ed.) (1997b): Passages to Power: Legislative Recruitment in Advanced Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, Pippa and Joni Lovenduski (1993): ‘“If only more candidates came forward”: supply side explanations of candidate selection in Britain’, British Journal of Political Science 23, pp. 373–408. Norris, Pippa and Joni Lovenduski (1997): ‘United Kingdom’, in: Pippa Norris (ed.), Passages to Power: Legislative Recruitment in Advanced Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 158–86. Norton, Philipp (1994): ‘The growth of the constituency role of the MP’, Parliamentary Affairs 47, pp. 705–20. Oborne, Peter (2007): The Triumph of the Political Class, London/New York: Simon & Schuster. Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments in Scotland (2006): Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies in Scotland, Edinburgh, April 2006. Pallarés, Francesc and Joan Font (1995): The Autonomous Elections in Catalonia (1980–1992), Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Parlament de Catalunya (1986): Legislatura 1980–1984 (Vol. I–II), Barcelona: Publicacions del Parlament de Catalunya. Parlament de Catalunya (1988): Legislatura 1984–1988 (Vol. I–II), Barcelona: Publicacions del Parlament de Catalunya.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 311

20/8/09 11:51:10

312

REFERENCES

Parlament de Catalunya (1993): Legislatura 1988–1992 (Vol. I–IV), Barcelona: Publicacions del Parlament de Catalunya. Parlament de Catalunya (1996): Legislatura 1992–1995 (Vol. I–IV), Barcelona: Publicacions del Parlament de Catalunya. Parlament de Catalunya (2008): ‘Régim Ecònomic dels Diputats i les Diputades del Parlament de Catalunya’, Barcelona, www.parlament.cat/composicio/regim_ economic.pdf (accessed September 2008). Parry, Richard (2002): ‘Leadership and the Scottish governing classes’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), Tomorrow’s Scotland, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 141–53. Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (2000): Estatutos, aprobados pro el 9° Congreso Junio 2000, Barcelona: PSC. Paterson, Lindsay (1991): ‘Ane end of ane auld sang: sovereignty and the renegotiation of the Union’, in: Alice Brown and David McCrone (eds), Scottish Government Yearbook 1991, pp. 104–22. Paterson, Lindsay (1999): ‘Why should we respect civic Scotland?’, in: Gerry Hassan and Christ Warhurst (eds), A Different Future: A Moderniser’s Guide to Scotland, Edinburgh: Centre for Scottish Public Policy, pp. 34–42. Paterson, Lindsay, Alice Brown, John Curtice, David McCrone Alison Park, Kerstin Hinds, Kerry Sproston and Paula Surridge (2001): New Scotland, New Politics?, Edinburgh: Polygon. Patzelt, Werner (2003): ‘Institutionalität und Geschichtlichkeit von Parlamenten. Kategorien institutioneller Analyse’, in: Werner Patzelt (ed.), Parlamente und ihre Funktionen. Institutionelle Mechanismen und institutionelles Lernen, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 50–117. Pau i Vall, Francesc (1998): ‘El Parlament de Catalunya’, in: Miquel Caminal Badia and Jordi Matas Dalmases (eds), El Sistema Polític de Catalunya, Barcelona: Tecnos, pp. 249–73. Peñate, Faci (1999a): ‘Los sueldos del poder. Los políticos y ejecutivos mejor y peor pagados’, Tiempo (6 December 1999), pp. 26–33. Peñate, Faci (1999b): ‘Sueldos a la carta. El caos de las retribuciones en ayuntamentios y autonomías’, Tiempo (13 December 1999), pp. 40–3. Pitarch, Ismael E. and Joan Subirats (1982): ‘Los diputados del Parlament de Catalunya de 1980. Un estudio político y social’, Revista de Estudios Políticos 26, pp. 127–71. Puente Egido, Juan (1992): ‘Parteienfinanzierung in Spanien’, in: Dimitris Th. Tsatsos (ed.), Parteienfinanzierung im europäischen Vergleich. Finanzierung der politischen Parteien in den Staaten der Europäischen Gemeinschaft, Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 421–54. Ramió Matas, Carles (2003): ‘L’Administració de la Generalitat de Catalunya des d’una perspectiva institucional: model d’organització, gestió de personal i innovació administrativa’, in: Informe Pi i Sunyer sobre l’Administració de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona: Fundació Carles Pi i Sunyer, pp. 23–52. Ramió Matas, Carles and Joan Subirats (1996): ‘Los aparatos administrativos de las Comunidades Autónomas (1980–1995): entre el mimetismo y la differenciación’, Revista Vasca de Administración Publica 45, pp. 151–81. Review Body on Senior Salaries (1999a): Initial Pay, Allowances, Pensions and Severance Arrangments for: Members of the Scottish Parliament, National

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 312

20/8/09 11:51:10

REFERENCES

313

Assembly for Wales, Northern Ireland Assembly, Report no. 42 (March 1999), Cm 4188. Review Body on Senior Salaries (1999b): Devolution Salaries for Ministers and Office-holders and Office Support for Members: Parliamentary Development Recommendations, Report no. 43 (March 1999), Cm 4246. Review Body on Senior Salaries (2001): Scottish Parliament: Review of Pay and Allowances, Report no. 50 (December 2001). Ridao, Joan (2001): ‘Informe sobre els assessors i la resta de personal eventual en l’Adminstració de la Generalitat de Catalunya (1996–2001)’, unpublished paper. Riddell, Peter (1993): Honest Opportunism: The Rise of the Career Politician, London: Hamish Hamilton. Roller, Elisa and Pieter van Houten (2003): ‘A national party in a regional party system: the PSC-PSOE in Catalonia’, Regional and Federal Studies 13, pp. 1–22. Rosenthal, Alan (1996): ‘State legislative development: observations from three perspectives’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 21, pp. 169–98. Rosenthal, Alan (1998): The Decline of Representative Democracy: Process, Participation, and Power in State Legislatures, Washington, DC: CQ Press. Rosie, George (2002): ‘Network Scotland: the power of the quango state’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), Anatomy of the New Scotland: Power, Influence and Change, Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, pp. 124–32. Ruge, Undine (2003): Die Erfindung des ‘Europa der Regionen’ – kritische Ideengeschichte eines konservativen Konzepts, Frankfurt: Campus. Rush, Michael (1994): ‘Career patterns in British politics: “first choose your party . . .”’, Parliamentary Affairs 47, pp. 566–82. Sala, Gemma (2005): ‘The judicialization of regional politics: the impact of the Spanish constitutional court through constitutional litigation in Spain’, unpublished paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Workshops, Granada 14–19 April, 2005. Sánchez, Jordi (ed.) (1999): Estudi de les elits dels partits politics de Catalunya, Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Politiques i Socials. Sánchez, Jordi (2000): ‘Financiación y transparencia’, El País (23 February 2000). Schlesinger, Joseph A. (1966): Ambition and Politics: Political Careers in the United States, Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Schultze, Rainer-Olaf and Sturm, Roland (1992): ‘Regionalismus’, in Dieter Nohlen (ed.), Lexikon der Politik, Band 3: Die westlichen Länder (ed. Manfred G. Schmidt), Munich: Beck, pp. 404–16. Schwartz, Pedro (2005): ‘La financiación de los partidos’, La Vanguardia (9 March 2005). Scotland Office (2002): Responses to ‘The Size of the Scottish Parliament: A Consultation’, December 2002. Scottish Constitutional Convention (1990): Towards Scotland’s Parliament: A Report to the Scottish People, Edinburgh. Scottish Executive (2001): Public Bodies: Proposals for Change, Edinburgh: HMSO. Scottish Executive (2002): Renewing Local Democracy: The Next Steps (Consultation), Edinburgh (March 2002). Scottish Executive (2006): ‘Scottish Executive’s Response to the SLARC Report’, Letter by Tom McCabe, Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform, to

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 313

20/8/09 11:51:10

314

REFERENCES

Ian Livingstone, Chairman of the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee, 23 March 2006. Published on the Scottish Executive web-page: www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/1070/0024065.pdf. Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee (2006): Review of Remuneration Arrangements for Local Authority Councillors, Edinburgh. Scottish Parliament (2001): ‘Broad acceptance by party leaders over MSPs’ pay and allowances recommendations’, Scottish Parliament News Release 095/2001, 19 December 2001. Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) (2002): The Public Appointments and Public Bodies etc. (Scotland) Bill, SPICe Briefing 02/89. Scottish Parliament Procedures Committee (2003): The Founding Principles of the Scottish Parliament: The Application of Access and Participation, Equal Opportunities, Accountability and Power Sharing in the Work of the Parliament, Report no. 3/2003, Scottish Parliament Paper 818. Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) (2004): The Holyrood Inquiry: A Report by Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC on His Inquiry into the Holyrood Building Project, Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament Paper 205. Shephard, Mark, Neil McGarvey and Michael Cavanagh (2001): ‘New Scottish Parliament, new Scottish parliamentarians?’, Journal of Legislative Studies 7, pp. 79–104. Signatura de l’Acord de transparència i autolimitació de despeses electorals i de finançament dels partits polítics (2001), on Generalitat Web-Page http://gencat. net/parlam/activita/acordfin.htm (accessed 15 May 2005). Smith, Matt (1999): ‘Re-energising the public sector’, in: Gerry Hassan and Chris Warhurst (eds), A Moderniser’s Guide to Scottland, Edinburgh: Centre for Scottish Public Policy, pp. 249–58. Solà i Cabanas, Xavier (n.d.): Sóc regidor, i ara què. Les principals preguntes, Barcelona: Associació Catalana de Municipis I Comarques. Spicer, Matthew (2004): The Scotsman Guide to Scottish Politics, Edinburgh: Scotsman Publications, 2nd edn. Stolz, Klaus (1999): ‘Labour and British territorial politics: (lots of) continuity and (maybe some) change’, in: Hans Kastendiek, Richard Stinshoff and Roland Sturm (eds), The Return of Labour: A Turning Point in British Politics, Berlin/ Bodenheim: Philo, pp. 221–36. Stolz, Klaus (2001): ‘The political class and regional institution-building: a conceptual framework’, Regional and Federal Studies 11, pp. 80–100. Stolz, Klaus (2002a): ‘Gaetano Mosca – Die Entdeckung einer politischen Klasse als Grundlegung einer neuen politischen Wissenschaft’, unpublished manuscript. Stolz, Klaus (2002b): ‘Klaus von Beyme und die politische Klasse im Parteienstaat’, unpublished manuscript. Stolz, Klaus (2003): ‘Moving up, moving down: political careers across territorial levels’, European Journal of Political Research 42, pp. 223–48. Stolz, Klaus (2006): ‘Towards a regional political class? Professional politicians and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland’ (Habilitation thesis, University of Goettingen). Taagepera, Rein and Matthew S. Shugart (1989): Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Tarrow, Sidney (1978): ‘Introduction’, in: Sidney Tarrow, Peter J. Katzenstein and

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 314

20/8/09 11:51:10

REFERENCES

315

Luigi Graziano (eds), Territorial Politics in Industrial Nations, New York and London: Praeger, pp. 1–27. Taylor, Lee (1968): Occupational Sociology, New York: Oxford University Press. Thomson, Bob (2004): ‘Two-jobs Jackson’, letter to The Herald (4 October 2004). Trench, Alan (2004): ‘Introduction: has devolution made a difference?’, in: Alan Trench (ed.), Has Devolution Made a Difference? The State of the Nations 2004, Exeter: Imprint Academic, pp. 1–10. Trench, Alan (ed.) (2005): The Dynamics of Devolution: The State of the Nations 2005, Exeter: Imprint Academic. Udina, Ernest (1997): ‘Catalanes en el Gobierno central’, in: Memòria de Catalunya, Madrid: El País, pp. 193–201. Uría, Lluís (1997): ‘La batalla por el territoria’, in: Memòria de Catalunya, Madrid: El País, pp. 225–33. Urwin, Derek W. (1982): ‘Territorial structures and political developments in the United Kingdom’, in: Stein Rokkan and Derek W. Urwin (eds), The Politics of Territorial Identity: Studies in European Regionalism, London: Sage, pp. 19–73. Vásquez Montalbán, Manuel (2004): La aznaridad: por el imperio hacia Dios o por Dios hacia el imperio, Barcelona: Mondadori. Weber, Max (1985) [1922]: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th edn, Tübingen: Mohr. Weber, Max (1958) [1919]: ‘Politics as a vocation’, in Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 77–128. Winetrobe, Barry K. and Janet Seaton (2000): ‘Creating a new Parliament in the UK: the first year of the Scottish Parliament’, paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, 31 August – 3 September 2000. Wright, Kenyon (1997): The People Say Yes: The Making of Scotland’s Parliament, Glendaruel: Argyll Publishing. The Herald: various issues. El País: various issues. Scotland on Sunday: various issues. The Scotsman: various issues. Sunday Herald: various issues. La Vanguardia: various issues. Boletin Oficial de las Cortes Generales. House of Commons Hansard Reports – Hansard. The Scottish Parliament Official Report – SPOR. Scottish Monitoring Team: Quarterly Reports.

M1870 - STOLZ TEXT.indd 315

20/8/09 11:51:10