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Abstract
As in other federal-like countries, intergovernmental relations in Spain are characterised by a series of conflicts between central and regional governments. But, which factors explain this dynamic of contention? This investigation operationalises intergovernmental conflicts through a specific dataset constituted by the volume of contestations between regional and central executives (and vice versa) in Spain before the Constitutional Court. This research demonstrates that from 1984 to 2014 the periods of absolute majority at the Congress and the victory of peripheral nationalist parties at the head of autonomous communities increased the level of intergovernmental contestations.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Public Administration, Jesús Ramos Prieto, César Colino, Salvador Parrado, Sandra León, José Álvarez Junco, Lourdes Nieto, Robert Agranoff, Joan Subirats, Jaume López, Eliseo Aja, Luis Moreno and Xavier Arbós for their support and helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 In reality, the Constitution and the 1979 organic law give central government easier access to the Constitutional Court with respect to the regional governments. The former can contest any decision taken by the latter, while regional executives must demonstrate that central government violated specifically the sharing of competences. Moreover, central government has the prerogative to suspend regional laws if it considers it necessary. Lastly, regional governments must file a requerimento (request) before challenging an act adopted by central government.
2 The Constitutional Court is made up of 12 magistrates including its president. Those judges are elected for a nine-year mandate. One third of the court is renewed every three years to disconnect the court from the general elections. Constitutional judges are appointed by the Congress of Deputies, Senate, General Council of the Judicial Power and the government. This explains the political profile of the court's magistrates and the recurrent criticisms against their politicisation.
3 Regional and central governments can be involved in other types of litigation as the very infrequent negative conflicts of competences (conflictos negativos de competencias) or the prior review of constitutionality (control previo de constitucionalidad) that disappeared in 1985.
4 In the case of the Basque Country, in the early 1990s the regional executive – led by the Basque Nationalist Party – slightly modified its legal strategy with respect the Constitutional Court. In 1991, the Basque Government stopped litigating against the entire laws adopted by the central government and rather focused on the specific policy areas where its autonomy could be challenged.
5 Given the high correlation between both dimensions (0.68, Pearson test, p-value <0.05), the test was implemented on the global sum of intergovernmental conflicts.
6 As this study starts in 1984, it does not take into account the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD, Unión del Centro Democrático) led by Adolfo Suárez.
7 Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’, 0.001 ‘**’, 0.01 ‘*’, 0.05 ‘.’, 0.1 ‘ ’.
8 The PP candidature included collaboration with the Conservative-regionalist parties Union del Pueblo Navarro (Union of the Navarrese People) and the Partido Aragonés (Aragonese Party).
9 This political agreement was signed at the Majestic Hotel in Barcelona after a dinner between the main leaders of the PP and CiU on 28 April 1996.
10 Interestingly, Field and Hamann (Citation2015) demonstrated that those parties modified their behaviour at the Congress. In the majority of cases, the PNV and CiU only frame a small proportion of bills in centre-periphery terms.