Shared or Self-rule? Regional Legislative Initiatives in Multi-level Spain, 1979-2021

ABSTRACT

This paper examines regional legislative initiatives in Spain, a mechanism of shared-rule regulated in article 87.2 of the Spanish Constitution. Through description and analysis of an original dataset covering all legislative terms from 1978 to 2021, it is shown how this specific mechanism has not accomplished its shared-rule objective. Moreover, the article identifies patterns that determine the strategic use, intensity and failure or success of the legislative initiatives. We find diverging trends across regions exemplified by Catalonia, the most active territory but with a very low approval rate. Overall, the analysis underlines how the state-wide scope initiatives seem to have a strategic rather than a legislative purpose while, on the other hand, regional scope initiatives are explained by minor self-rule objectives.

KEYWORDS:

• Federalism
• parliaments
• legislation
• governance
• institutions
• self-determination
• legislative process
• Catalonia

Acknowledgments

We owe a debt of gratitude to Mireia Grau Creus for giving us the initial ideas for this research. We would also like to thank the Editors and anonymous reviewers of South European Society and Politics for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2023.2228099.

Notes

1. Plus two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla.

2. Despite the constitutional distinction between regions and nationalities (Article 2 SC).

3. See Aja 2003; Requejo 2005; Burgess & Gagnon 2010; Burgess 2006; Elazar 1987; Grau Creus 2000; Loughlin et al. 2013; Moreno 2010; Watts 1999; Lago 2021.

4. In 1992 the two State-wide parties agreed to transfer 32 new powers and equate the degree of autonomy of the historical regions to the ‘slow-track’ ones.

5. The ‘Conferencia de presidentes’ is the highest body in Spain for political cooperation between government and the Autonomous Communities. It is composed of the Spanish prime minister, who exercises its presidency, and the presidents of the Autonomous Communities.

6. See: https://www.mptfp.gob.es/portal/politica-territorial/internacional/ue/ccaa-eell-ue/consejo_ministros.html.

7. In the Constitutional Court ruling 23/1990 the Court backed the Board of the Congress in its role of control and evaluation of the initiatives presented by the regions.

8. Although this has not impeded Navarre using this mechanism 25 times.

9. In the case of this multivariate analysis, our methodology aims to capture the main factors explaining the approval of regional legislative initiatives that are unobserved in the descriptive analysis.

10. The differences have been calculated with Welch’s t-test due to their unequial variances.

11. T-test analysis confirms the existence of a significant difference between approved regional scope initiatives and those that are rejected (t = -3.78, p = 0.003). The differences have been calculated with Welch’s t-test due to their unequal variances.

12. We run a fixed effect panel regression model and there are no significant differences in the results. We are controlling for the average differences across legislatures in any observable or unobservable predictors. In sum, the reason why we are controlling by legislative term (fixed effect) is due to the fact that we want to control for the existence of unequal contexts of each unit of observation.

13. See: 125/000012 Proposición de Ley de relativa al reconocimiento de la gratuidad y universalidad del primer ciclo de la educación infantil. Available at: https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L14/CONG/BOCG/B/BOCG-14-B-180-1.PDF.

14. See: 125/000013 Proposición de Ley de declaración del carácter estratégico de la industria de muy alto consumo de energía eléctrica radicada en España. Available at: https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L14/CONG/BOCG/B/BOCG-14-B-196-1.PDF.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marc Sanjaume-Calvet

Marc Sanjaume-Calvet is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Pompeu Fabra University and Coordinator of the Political Theory Research Group (GRTP). His research focuses on secessionism, self-determination, federalism and democracy. He has published in numerous journals including Journal of Politics, Party Politics, Nations and Nationalism, and West European Politics. He is co-editor (with Ferran Requejo) of Defensive Federalism: Protecting Territorial Minorities from the ‘Tyranny of the Majority (2023, Routledge).

Andreu Paneque

Andreu Paneque is a researcher at the Andorran Studies Institute and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain. He is a member of the Institutions and Political Actors Research Group at UPF. He is also a member of the OPCAT (Observatory of Political Parties in Catalonia), which is linked to the PPDB (Political Party Database Project). His research has been published in Party Politics, Government and Opposition and Parliaments, States and Representation.