Original Article

Multilevel structures, coordination and partisan

politics in Spanish intergovernmental relations

Eliseo Ajaa,* and César Colinob

a
Facultat de Dret, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 684, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
E-mail: eaja@ub.edu
b
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, UNED, C/ Obispo Trejo s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
*Corresponding author.

Abstract The article discusses the historical evolution of the federalized Spanish state
and the intergovernmental institutions that have emerged in this process. Although ver-
tical multilateral bodies dominate, they coexist with vertical bilateral cooperation bodies,
deriving from the decentralization process and the original asymmetries in regional
powers, mainly used for conflict resolution among governmental levels. Owing to the lack
of horizontal coordination among Autonomous Communities, however, coordination
remains difficult. While political parties and political dynamics in Spain have represented
alternative informal mechanisms for intergovernmental relations (IGR) due to a growing
level of party congruence in recent years, the proliferation of coalition governments in
many Autonomous Communities has made IGR more difficult to manage. Important is
the role of non-state-wide parties governing on the regional level: these parties have
conditioned the degree of legal conflict. Throughout the last decade, they thereby have
achieved the decentralization of powers and devolution of regional resources.
Comparative European Politics (2014) 12, 444–467. doi:10.1057/cep.2014.9;
published online 26 May 2014

Keywords: Spain; federalism; multilevel governance; IGR; coordination

Introduction

The so-called ‘autonomic’ State or ‘State of Autonomies’, whose main elements

were established by the 1978 Spanish Constitution (SC), meant the setting up of, and
development of, various Autonomous Communities (hereafter ACs) by way of an
extensive decentralization of power and responsibilities along with a constitutional
recognition of certain regions’ specific characteristics. The Spanish devolution model
was largely based on some provisions in the Constitution of 1978 that established
both the principle of autonomy for nationalities and regions and some rules about
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www.palgrave-journals.com/cep/
 Spanish intergovernmental relations

how it had to be exercised. The existence of different languages, political traditions,

distinct civil law traditions, special fiscal arrangements in some regions, or the insular
condition of others, were legally recognized and protected in the Constitution (Aja,
2003).
Owing to the necessary ambiguity of the Constitutional pact, the model displayed
a high degree of flexibility and openness. The devolution process was not completely
regulated in the constitution. Devolution was inspired by the principle of choice,
or voluntariness, inherited from the republican decentralization experience in the
1930s. This meant that the initiative to accede to devolution was left to the very terri-
torial entities benefiting from it, and had to be negotiated with the central
government. After the Constitution was enacted, several different legal routes toward
regional autonomy were pursued by different regions. It was left for the regional
Statutes of Autonomy – ultimately approved by national parliament – to flesh out the
main aspects of autonomy such as policy responsibilities and internal organization of
each region. This had to be made within the framework of some exclusive central
powers and respecting the basic constitutional principles of unity, equality and
solidarity.
Gradually, through several developments in its regional Statutes of Autonomy,
increasing homogenization of regional institutions and legal interpretation of the
system, the Spanish territorial model developed from a regionalized system into
a federalized system as defined in this special issue. The guarantee of autonomy
for ACs in the Constitution, similar to that of other federalized systems, gradually
became a basic principle of the Spanish state, implemented through constitu-
tional safeguards reflected in mechanisms of constitutional rigidity and through the
protection by the Constitutional Court. Spain also displays a constitutionally
entrenched division of powers, whose main contours are contained in the Constitu-
tion and whose details were developed in the regional charters, so-called Statutes of
Autonomy. Both the autonomy and the division of powers cannot be rescinded or
withdrawn unilaterally by the central parliament. Regional Statutes of Autonomy are
considered to have quasi-constitutional nature and all of them are regarded as having
the same constitutional status. Although ACs are not given a direct role in consti-
tutional reform, ACs parliaments have to intervene, along with the Spanish
parliament, in the modification of their regional charters, and in some of them the
population has to approve it through referendum.
This means in practice that the Spanish parliament and the central government may
not pass ordinary laws that go against the regional Statutes of Autonomy or against
the principle of autonomy, the division of powers or the basic equality of ACs.
In addition, ACs have the possibility of participating in the reform of the Constitution
through the Senate, whose assent is required to approve any constitutional reform,
as there is the possibility that a tenth of senators (which is half of the senators
appointed by regional parliaments) may subject any constitutional reform that they
deem against regional autonomy to a national referendum. All these institutional
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 Aja and Colino

preconditions are assumed to have several long-term implications for the development
of dominant mode of coordination in the system, tending toward increasing
multilateralism, and for the evolution of formal change or reallocation of competen-
cies, that will tend toward increasing symmetry. At the same time, this constitutional
constellation of guaranteed autonomy also affects the extent to which party-political
congruence or incongruence shapes the nature of intergovernmental processes (see
introduction of the Special issue).
The causes and consequences of the development of the Spanish multilevel system
of governance or intergovernmental relations (IGR) have been the subject of some
academic discussion, especially by legal scholars, but have not generated a great deal
of empirical research on its real workings. By and large, the scholarly perception
of IGR in Spain has been rather pessimistic and derogatory, with various criticisms
addressed to their structures and functioning. Increasingly, however, scholars are
getting a more accurate picture of multilevel governance and IGR in Spain, and are,
at the same time, beginning to compare it more systematically with other federal
countries. Recent research has shown that Spanish IGR are no longer as deficient or
unique as academic and political discourse in Spain has represented them. The model
now shows many of the traits that can be found in other federal systems and many of
the features that seemed still unique are changing and becoming more recognizable for
foreign observers. There are, of course, several features that are clearly specific,
deriving from the mode of emergence of the Spanish version of federalism and the set
of institutional incentives that actors are subject to (Colino, 2013). Despite some recent
analysis on the Spanish IGR, no research has so far systematically examined or tried to
explain the tendencies of change in the system in the last two decades or to account for
the type of IGR that has evolved or the relationships between other elements of the
institutional system and party competition on IGR and coordination or conflict.
This article discusses the historical evolution of the federalized Spanish state and
the intergovernmental institutions that have emerged in this process. Its interlocked
distribution of responsibilities has generated, despite a constitutional frame silent
or restrictive regarding intergovernmental cooperation, a machinery of consultative
multilateral intergovernmental bodies – at its apex the recently created Conference of
Presidents. Although vertical multilateral bodies dominate, they still coexist with
vertical bilateral cooperation bodies, deriving from the decentralization process and
the original asymmetries in regional powers, mainly used for conflict resolution
among governmental levels. While the day-to-day management of IGR and the prac-
tice of intergovernmental agreements have increased steadily, the degree of jurisdic-
tional conflict between levels has remained high and been largely conditioned by
long periods of party incongruence owing to the existence of powerful non-state-
wide parties in several ACs.
The article proceeds by looking at the constitutional setting and its formal and
informal evolution, which will allow us to examine whether Spain as a federalized
system has evolved toward symmetry in its formal competence allocation. Then it
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presents the intergovernmental arrangements and instruments that the system has
created and institutionalized, indicating whether the system of IGR, as theoretically
expected, tends toward multilateralism or whether bilateralism dominates. Finally,
the role of partisan congruence and party dynamics in the evolution of the system and
the nature and conduct of IGR is examined, to test the hypothesis that due to an
absence of a constitutional hierarchy between regional and central-level partisan
incongruence can be disruptive for IGR (or vice versa, that congruence facilitates
intergovernmental coordination). It concludes with a summary assessment of how
Spain confirms or disconfirms the hypotheses proposed in this special issue about
the relationships of constitutional power and partisan conflict in different types of
multilevel polities.

The Constitutional Setting: The Formal and Informal Evolution of the

Multilevel System

The approval of the 17 Statutes of Autonomy (1979–1983) was a partial closure of

the open constitutional pact. The Basque and Catalan Statutes of Autonomy were
adopted in 1979 easily because consensus still endured. To resolve the controversy
over the number and nature of regional governments, the then two major state-wide
parties (UCD and PSOE) reached an agreement that laid down the strategy to be
followed in the drafting of the rest of regional Statutes of Autonomy: accordingly, all
of the ACs would have the same institutional set-up (which included a regional
Parliament, making them full-fledged political units). Initially, however, there were
going to be two different levels of regional competences for some time: 7 ACs would
have considerable legislative powers and 10 ACs would have a lower level of com-
petences. After the adoption of the regional Statutes of Autonomy, the administrative
decentralization was initiated. This meant the transfer of public services and of
approximately 9 00 000 civil servants from the central government and some from
the provincial governments to the newly created regional authorities.

The formal power distribution

The different types of legislative and executive competences and its assignment to
the different governmental levels in Spain are only vaguely established in the
Constitution. That means they have to be interpreted in conjunction with the different
regional Statutes of Autonomy, the so-called ‘constitutional block’. The constitu-
tional practice and experience of these years allows us to distinguish competences
into three large categories: exclusive, concurrent and shared. The Constitutional
Court set the general contours of these categories in its first rulings on competence
conflicts (1981). The result seems quite reasonable, but some of these categories,
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 Aja and Colino

especially the concurrent category, have provoked a high number of jurisdictional

conflicts.

● ‘Exclusive competences’, both lying with the central government and ACs, allow
their holder to exercise all the powers related with the policy area in question,
that is to say, they grant both the legislative and the executive authority within
a public sector of activity. For example, the central government has exclusive
competences in issues of ‘nationality, status of aliens and rights of asylum’, ‘inter-
national relations’, ‘armed forces’ and so on.
● A competence is ‘concurrent’ (sometimes also called shared legislative power)
when the central government may approve framework or basic legislation (in
Spanish legislación básica), setting only general rules within a policy area, and
ACs can both pass further or supplementary legislation (legislación de desarrollo),
and also have the powers to implement all the legislation and its administrative
application. The most important concurrent competencies are general economic
policy, education, health, environment and others. In this kind of competence, the
biggest difficulty is to determine the scope of the framework (bases) set by the
central government legislation. The Constitutional Court has established several
substantive and formal requirements for it (for example, the framework legislation
should only contain the ‘minimum common denominator’ for all ACs, it should be
drafted through parliamentary statute and only exceptionally through executive
regulations and so on) but there have been a lot of conflicts.
● Within the ‘shared competence legislation-implementation’ category, the approval
of the legislation and of their executive regulation to guarantee legal uniformity
throughout the whole country lies with the central government. The ACs may
approve the procedural regulation and are responsible for implementing its whole
administration, for example in labor legislation.
Additionally, and regarding some formal asymmetries of the system, some regional
powers have to do with the so-called ‘differential factors’, which is the expression
used to indicate that Catalonian, the Basque Country and other ACs have specific
cultural, social and political aspects that are different from the majority of ACs. The
Preamble of SC refers, in plural, to the ‘peoples of Spain … their cultures and tradi-
tions, languages and institutions’. Art. 2 SC has a twofold reference to the ‘nationali-
ties and regions’ that Spain comprises, which is a recognition that some of the peoples
of Spain have a greater sense of belonging to their own community than others do.

The evolution of powers: Judicial interpretation, political trends and reform

attempts

On top of this general configuration of the division of powers, different political

agreements and some judicial interpretation have introduced new rules. Thus, for
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instance, the Constitutional Court Judgment (CCJ) 76/1983 of the Constitutional

Court strengthened the position of the Statutes of Autonomy and prohibited the
central government law to come between them and the Constitution, thereby
fostering the consolidation of autonomy. The Constitutional Court appeared at that
time as their main guarantor, which somewhat contrasts with the current situation.
Many of its rulings established that the framework or basic legislation of the central
government should only regulate the lowest common denominator, leaving room for
regional legislation. It also required (judgment 69/1988) that framework legislation
should be approved by parliamentary statutory law and not by executive regulation.
This jurisprudence is important because in the mid-1980s most of the existing
legislation on education, health, local power was replaced. But the difficulty in deter-
mining the scope of the framework central law and the scope of the ACs legislation
continues to cause many conflicts.
In 1992, the two major state-wide parties (PSOE and PP) agreed on a new Auto-
nomy Pact, which intended to pursue the equalization of powers demanded by the
10 ACs that had up until then enjoyed a lower level of autonomy by facilitating the
reform of their regional Statutes of Autonomy, seeking to close the gap between
them. The result was the substantial equalization of the powers of the 17 ACs, which
generated criticism from nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
Among other mechanisms proposed by the mid-1990s to improve the functioning of
the ‘autonomic’ system, constitutional scholars began to advocate Senate reform, and
after several unsuccessful attempts, an important amendment of the Standing Orders
of the Senate was made in 1994 to create the Standing Legislative Committee of the
ACs, with broad powers to promote agreements among regions and between them
and the central government. However, the weakness of the powers of the Upper
House has prevented reform to be effective in terms of better represent regional
interests in the second chamber. Subsequently, on several occasions (most recently in
the VIII legislative term 2004–2008) the constitutional reform of the Senate has been
once more on the agenda, but without success.
In Catalonia, after 23 years of rule by a nationalist coalition, the 2003 elections
gave office to another coalition that formed a ‘tripartite government’ (Socialists,
former Communists, separatist), which initiated a very ambitious and ideology-
driven reform of the Statute of autonomy of Catalonia, approved in 2005 by a large
majority of political parties in the Catalan Parliament and finally passed by the
Spanish parliament after long negotiations both at the regional and national arena in
2006. The long process of elaboration, including the referendum of the Catalan
population, and the appeal before the Constitutional Court by the main opposition
group, the Popular Party, resulted in multiple political maneuvering in and out of the
Court. The final restrictive result implied by the ruling of the court in 2010 ended
a long and controversial process and was interpreted as a refusal to grant Catalonia
greater autonomy and recognition. Under these conditions, the CCJ 31/2010, which
rejected the main innovations of the amended Catalan regional statute, especially the
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 Aja and Colino

symbolic ones, was the beginning of a new difficult phase of relations between
Catalonia and the rest of Spain.
Parallel to the beginning of the Catalan reform process, there was also an initiative to
reform the Basque Statute of autonomy, the so-called Ibarretxe Plan, which the Cortes
Generales (State Parliament) refused to consider for its amendment procedure at the
beginning of 2005 because it virtually proposed a confederal arrangement of the Basque
Country in Spain, which was contrary to the Constitution. However, other seven
regional parliaments have amended their Statutes of Autonomy following several
models in terms of reform contents, more or less similar to the Catalan template,
especially Andalusia, without their texts being contested by the opposition party or the
Court, except for some minor elements. This is the case also of Valencia Community,
Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castile and Leon, Navarra and Extremadura (Tudela, 2010).
The economic crisis has hit Spain particularly hard since 2008, although the
reaction of the institutions has been delayed. Among the many elements that the
situation has produced in the autonomic system, some of them largely hidden so far,
the most unexpected one has been the ‘express constitutional reform’, made in
15 days in the summer of 2011, which introduced in the Constitution the rules of
budgetary stability for the central government and ACs.
In sum, the observed tendency toward symmetry in formal competences and
resources and the attempts for symbolic asymmetry in response by some regions that
we find in the recent round of statute reforms is in line with the theoretical
expectations about federalized multilevel systems, which would imply that constitu-
ent units with the same constitutionally guaranteed status seek to be treated equally
when competencies and resources are reallocated.

Intergovernmental Arrangements: From Weakness and Informality to

Institutionalization and Regulation

The 1978 Constitution contained no provisions on relations between the central

government and regional governments and only mentioned agreements between ACs
in Art. 145.2 to establish their control. It also set up the appointment of a quarter of
senators by regional parliaments in Art. 69.5, which has not influenced the character
of this House, dominated by political parties like the Congress of the Deputies.
Despite this, intergovernmental cooperation arrangements have been gradually
appearing. The influence of the German practice prompted a first reference to the
sectorial ministers’ conferences on the Law of the Autonomy Process of 1983, but
the first cooperation instruments to be utilized were the bilateral agreements between
the central government and ACs, signed one by one, often to formalize central grants
or subsidies for joint infrastructure projects (Tajadura, 2010).
A decisive factor in the evolution of IGR arrangements may have been the initial
willingness of ACs to assert themselves rather than establish cooperation
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mechanisms. For a long time, ACs failed to perceive the usefulness and benefits of
cooperating with each other and have concentrated in negotiating and cooperating
with the central government, if possible bilaterally, which gave them more visible
benefits (Pérez Medina, 2009). The increasing federalization implied by the homo-
genization of competences and resources led to the need for new multilateral bodies.
In turn, the evolution of shared competence has led to demands for reform of the
regional statutes. In any case, the current interpretation among experts has it that
it takes time to go through several phases, consolidating first vertical relations and
then horizontal relations. Regions have first to learn how to interact with the central
government and then the next step is to interact with the others. Given the lack of
incentives at the beginning and the absence of horizontal fora for discussion among
them, ACs did only slowly realize the benefits of horizontal cooperation, forced
sometimes by the demands of their citizens. Spanish regions ignored until recently
the usefulness of horizontal cooperation to avoid undue centralization of sectoral
policy making and to promote problem-solving and policy coordination without the
involvement of the federal level (Colino, 2011; Matía, 2011).

The regulation of IGR and the most used instruments

Also in the 1980s, the Constitutional Court issued several judgments stressing
the importance of cooperation between the central government and the ACs
(judgments 18/1982 152/1988), and even applying the German theory of federal
loyalty to the autonomic system. In 1992, while expanding the powers of 10 ACs, the
only existing systematic regulation of the intergovernmental cooperation was
introduced in the first articles of Law 30/1992 on Administrative Procedure. In this
decade, the operation of some sectoral councils or conferences consolidated and
sought its projection on the European Union (EU). More recently, in 2005 the first
meeting of the Conference of Presidents was held (García Morales, 2009; Ruiz,
2012).
The compacts or agreements (convenios) signed vertically between the central
government and the government of an AC is the simplest and most utilized
instrument and may serve multiple functions, which explains that about 1000 are
made each year. They show a growing importance and have been widely used to
co-finance social services, education and health or for the adoption of joint plans and
programs. Departments with most intergovernmental cooperation agreements are:
employment and social affairs, education and science, agriculture, fisheries and food,
industry, tourism, commerce, and health and consumers. Horizontal agreements
between ACs are much less, but growing in recent years.
In contrast, the CCJ 13/1992 refused to accept an unlimited use of the spending
power of the central government, so that it could not continue to use subsidies in
matters of regional jurisdiction, which was one of the most frequent areas for the
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 Aja and Colino

1200
1083
1100 1093
1060 1059
1000 1001 1009
952
900 911
863
800
752 730 747
700
600
500
400
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Number of Agreements
Figure 1: Number of vertical agreements signed each year.
Source: MPTA (2011b).

signature of agreements, so that it would henceforth focus much more on central–

ACs joint projects. In many cases, these formal bilateral cooperation agreements are
signed with exactly the same content with several regional governments, so that they
become in reality multilateral agreements, which only differ in the name of the
signing AC. It is also very common for intergovernmental agreements to be reno-
vated year after year, with similar content. Minimum requirements for the preparation
and approval of the agreements were included in Law 30/1992, but the prac-
tice dominates this area, which has greatly increased in the last decade. As seen in
Figure 1, in the early 2000s its annual number was around 700 agreements, in recent
years, the number of agreements has remained around 1000 annually.

The sectoral ministers’ conferences: Functions and differences

Owing to the increased coordination needs and the interlocking of legislative and
implementing powers in most policy areas, the activity of multilateral sectoral councils
or conferences increased from around 20 yearly meetings in the 1980s to 75 in recent
years (see Figure 2). Ministers’ sectoral conferences are the meeting of one Minister of
the central government with the regional ministers (consejeros) from the ACs of the
same policy area. Normally, the Minister is accompanied by senior officials from other
central ministries concerned. In these intergovernmental bodies, also regulated by the
Law 30/1992, the role of the Minister is decisive, as he/she convenes and chairs the
meeting, and controls the secretariat of the Conference. As there are so far no
horizontal sectoral conferences or councils (with only regional ministers) the position
of the central minister is dominant in these intergovernmental bodies.
Conferences generally serve a number of important functions (see Aja, 2009,
2010). First, they establish the criteria for distributing central or European grants
a priori not divisible between regions. European funds for agriculture and fishing
are typical cases. Also, central government grants, in pure form or as multi-year
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 Spanish intergovernmental relations

90
80
70
60
50
40 76,5
68,5
30 60,5
20
32,25 31,75
10
0
1993-1996 1997-2000 2001-2004 2005-2008 2009-2010
Annual average number of multilateral meetings

Figure 2: Total average number of annual meetings in Ministers Conferences in different legislative
terms.
Source: Own elaboration.

programs, are the usual subject of the activity of the ministers’ conferences of
employment, social services, education, industry and so on. Second, 12 of the
sectoral conferences are also utilized to organize ACs participation in the upward
phase of EU policy making, through the participation in the Spanish delegation in
four formations of the EU Council of Ministers. Agriculture, fisheries and environ-
ment are the most prominent of those most Europeanized, but in other sectors such as
health and other areas intergovernmental cooperation is also important for the
transposition and implementation of EU legislation.
A third function, common to many ministers’ conferences, but in differentiated
forms according to the division of powers, is the distribution of information on
central government draft bills and regulations. Sometimes the search for consensus in
the law-making process is important (for example, in health, we could mention the
case of common clinical data collection), but sometimes the presentation of bills in
the ministers’ conference responds more to a courtesy than to a real willingness for
political deliberation. That depends, generally, on the Minister that chairs the
Conference. In some cases, the sectoral ministers’ conference can be used to reach
intergovernmental agreements to enhance the activities that each entity makes in turn
giving a joint projection to separate initiatives (some recent examples are Museum
Network of Spain or a project of several regional governments to carry out joint
tourism campaigns abroad). Occasionally, the conferences are very useful for dealing
with critical situations, as was the case of the reaction to the epidemic of the A flu
2 years ago and the mad cow disease some time ago.
One should distinguish among the 35 sectoral conferences in terms of their
institutionalization and effectiveness. About 15 of them could be said to work fairly
effectively (see Table 1), but just as many do not work or even meet. Every
Conference can develop its internal regulations and rules, which generally rely on

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 Aja and Colino

Table 1: Most active Ministers Conferences/Councils

Ministers Conference/Council Average number of Regulated in Standing

annual meetings statutory law orders

Agriculture (European issues) 9.55 — x

Fishing (European issues) 5.91 — x
Agriculture and rural development 5.04 x x
Universities 4.77 x —
National health system 4.08 x x
Adults long-term care 3.5 x x
Employment and labor 3.2 — x
Fishing 2.53 — x
Education 2.48 x x
Council fiscal and finance policy 2.46 x x
European issues 2.39 x x
Environment 1.96 — x
Social affairs 1.95 — x
Justice administration 1.58 — —
Housing and urban affairs 1.38 — —

Source: Own elaboration.

consensus and unanimity as a decision-making rule. Majority rule provisions exist in

some of them but voting is de facto never used.
As seen in Table 1, amidst the most active ones, there is a group of five Ministers
Conferences that consistently meets from four to nine times a year. Other six con-
ferences meet between two and four times a year, and other four that meet between
one and two times a year. Among the sectoral conferences with a positive operation
one could find those that may have some coordination functions (in the constitu-
tional sense defined by the Constitutional Court, as the arranging of procedures to
reach common decisions), such as education, health and so on. In addition to that,
there are also those two conferences that meet most often owing to requirements of
EU policy (agriculture and fisheries) and a third which is half way of the two criteria
(coordination and EU affairs), which is the Sectoral Conference of the Environment
(Aja, 2009; Colino and Parrado, 2009).
Regarding the other two important ministers’ conferences that have some pecu-
liarities, we could mention the so-called Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy,
which is a multilateral body created by the Organic Law on Regional Funding, and
includes the Spanish Minister of Finance and all the regional ministers of Finance.
It must approve the major funding and fiscal decisions and it establishes the
possibility of majority voting if the negotiation does not reach a unanimous
agreement. It also has a decisive role during the reform process of the funding
system. Although the final say belongs to the parliament, all governments have

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 Spanish intergovernmental relations

tried to previously legitimize the reforms of the funding and equalization system
by reaching consensual agreements in this body. In fact, there has been a reform of
the funding system every 5 years. For its part, the Conference on Issues Related to
the European Communities (until 2010 CARCE, now called CARUE) has been a
very important intergovernmental forum to organize the participation of ACs in EU
decision making, for example in the various formations of the EU Council of
Ministers. It seems that once ACs have consolidated their participation, the role of
CARUE has become more undefined and sparse.
These sectoral conferences meetings are only the visible part of a much bigger
machinery of intergovernmental bodies at the bureaucratic or technical level, with
hundreds of commissions or working groups, meeting several times a year.

The persistence of bilateral cooperation

The Bilateral Cooperation Commissions are vertical cooperation bodies that reunite
central and each of the regional governments individually. They emerged naturally,
as a continuation of bilateral commissions established for the devolution of services,
to address the problems that appeared to the new regional administrations and the
conflicts between the central government and some ACs. Navarre was the first to
regulate (1984), and then Catalonia (1987) and then all the rest. These commissions
increased their activity as a result of the reform of the Constitutional Court
regulations of 2000, which sought to promote negotiation among governments to
avoid or reduce the number of jurisdictional conflicts over central or ACs legislation
before the Constitutional Court.
Bilateral Commissions have been considerably strengthened in recent amended
regional Statutes of Autonomy in several ACs, especially in the new Catalan statute
of autonomy, which sought to establish a Bilateral Commission between the
central government and the Catalan government, with several sub-committees for
infrastructure, policy development, and so on, as the preferred instrument for its
relationship with the central government (see Figure 3). Similarly, Bilateral
Commissions have been created in other amended regional statutes as in those of
Andalusia, Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castile and Leon and Extremadura, with a joint
composition. Alongside these new Bilateral Commissions, the former bilateral
commissions with the rest of ACs have continued working, usually centered on the
negotiation of services devolution and the prevention of conflict before the
Constitutional Court (Ramos, 2006; Montilla, 2011).
But the legal status is not equivalent to the actual function. After the establishment
of all new bilateral commissions and some promising initial meetings, throughout
2009 and 2010, most have fallen into lethargy meeting just once or twice per year
(Andalusia, Catalonia, Aragon) or even none, and have kept the traditional activities
of negotiating transfers and discussing potential conflicts of competence.
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 Aja and Colino

30

25

20

Number of
15 annual
bilateral
meetings
10

0
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Figure 3: Evolution of annual bilateral meetings.

The new Conference of Presidents

The Conference of Presidents (of the central and regional governments) was for
long perceived as a clear need, owing to the familiar experiences of Germany
and Austria, and to the necessity of giving some coherence to the whole complex
of sectoral Ministers Conferences, but neither prime minister Gonzalez nor Aznar
had dared to summon it (Aja, 2006), perhaps to avoid the potential setback that a
regional President did not attend the meeting, as indeed would eventually happen
with the Prime Minister of the Basque Country. Still, the First Conference of
Presidents convened by President Zapatero in 2005 was a success and created
high expectations for greater cooperation between ACs. The unpreparedness of the
first meeting was excused by their initial character, but the second, convened the
following year, around the funding of health policy showed the same improvisation
and lack of previous dialogue as the first. The Third Conference of Presidents was
held in January 2007, and it addressed some well-prepared issues (research) and
others less (immigration), but without changing a format that prioritized grand-
standing and publicity before the media and made effective dialogue difficult. The
Fourth Conference, held 2 years later in December 2009, was already held in the
midst of economic crisis and was unable to reach agreements in this field.
Nevertheless, it adopted a regulation of the operation of the Conference of
Presidents itself. This was the last meeting until October 2012, when Rajoy, the
new Prime Minister, held another Conference of Presidents.

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 Spanish intergovernmental relations

Multilateral cooperation and bilateral conflict resolution in Spanish IGR

In sum, we could argue that, as expected by our theoretical assumptions, Spanish

IGR arrangements have experienced increased institutionalization and have reflec-
ted a typical coexistence between multilateralism and bilateralism at the political
level, but the predominance of multilateralism at the policy-making and executive
level. Despite some stereotypes disseminated by Spanish and foreign scholars on
the prevalence of modes of bilateral cooperation and interaction in the Spanish
territorial model, a detailed study of intergovernmental meetings indicates that
bilateral cooperation bodies have not been widely used and, in any case, have been
much less used than multilateral ones. In fact, they have been consistently utilized
only with six or seven of the regions. For example, half of the 178 bilateral meetings
held in the last 20 years until 2009 have been with Navarre, Canary Islands and
Catalonia.
As Figure 4 shows, there has been a parallel growth of both types of bodies,
multilateral and bilateral, but the proportion remained clearly in favor of multilateral
bodies (González, 2006; Ramos, 2006; Colino and Parrado, 2009).
Given the existence of both bilateral and multilateral bodies at all stages of the
development of the Spanish model, we could say that regional nationalist govern-
ments may have preferred bilateralism in principle, but have been indeed effecti-
vely engaged in participation at the multilateral bodies. Multilateral bodies have
dominated routinized and Europeanized policy sectors and bilateral bodies have been
used almost exclusively for particular jurisdictional issues with one specific regional
government. The strategies of governments to achieve desired changes in the
distribution of power in the system have not used the intergovernmental channels
but the parliamentary ones. Whereas IGR around policies have been characterized by
the dominance of the executives, with only a limited role for the parliaments, the

Figure 4: Comparison of the use of multilateral and bilateral bodies.

Source: Adapted from Colino and Parradom (2009).

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 Aja and Colino

decisions on the constitutional distribution of powers have been dealt with at the
parliamentary arena. As the Senate has failed to act as a representation channel of
ACs interests in national policy making and in constitutional or institutional reform,
this role has been mostly assumed by the parliamentary groups of nationalist or
regionalist parties in the Congress of Deputies – the lower chamber. They have
defended, through their scrutiny and legislative initiatives, the interest of their (or all)
ACs in national legislation, as well as the devolution of further competences and
resources (see Grau, 2010).

The Political Dynamics of the System and the Role of Multilevel Partisan
Congruence and Conflict

During the late 1980s and 1990s, regional institutions were entrenched, democracy
consolidated and regional political classes and bureaucracies were established. The
dynamics of the system had brought it into the homogenization path. Motivations for
decentralization in the 1990s were no longer mainly based on historical claims or
democratization desires, although the pressure for recognition coming from regional
nationalist elites was still there. Several new drivers were emerging as motivations
for change in the system. The three main ones were: the regional elites’ perception of
increasing demands from regional societies and from global and European environ-
ments, the adaptive reactions of regional politicians and bureaucracies to new
governance problems and insufficient resources, and last but not least, the conditions
of regional party politics and electoral competition (Colino, 2008).

The political factors behind the evolution of the system

In perspective, one could say that the evolution of the Spanish multilevel system
has been underpinned by two main tensions. First, a vertical tension between
regional governing parties wanting more resources from the center and seeking
legitimation from their citizens, and the central government that sought to preserve
its capacity to determine some policies and its legitimation. Second, a horizontal
tension between some ACs with nationalist governments seeking special recogni-
tion and powers to differentiate themselves from the others and the other regions
aspiring for a similar treatment whenever that happened. In a very open institu-
tional arrangement, asymmetric devolution led at the beginning to decentraliza-
tion demands in all regions, and these led to new attempts at asymmetry. At
some periods, the vertical tension prevailed and moved the reform attempts,
sometimes initiated in a top-down fashion by the two main state-wide parties or, as
was recently the case with regional statute reforms, initiated by the regional
branches of state-wide parties (Keating and Wilson, 2009). At other periods, it is
458 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790 Comparative European Politics Vol. 12, 4/5, 444–467
 Spanish intergovernmental relations

the horizontal tension that dominated, with reforms demanded or initiated by

regional nationalist parties or by regionalist parties and state-wide parties’ branches
in other regions. And still in other moments both tensions were combined owing to
party-political or environmental factors such as the fiscal, supranational or policy
problems.
A political factor implying a decentralizing pressure was the long-lasting presence
in office of nationalist parties in two ACs. They considered decentralization as an end
in itself, which should be a reflection of the national condition they attribute to their
communities. Accordingly, they have always pressed for increased decentralization
of powers and resources. They also defend a differentiated decentralization for their
ACs. Accommodation of these demands has been a continuous driver for some incre-
mental reforms, in many cases as a result of party-political relations and negotiations.
The central government, alternatively formed by the two big state-wide parties,
has occasionally needed regional nationalist parties in the Parliament in Madrid.
They have exchanged their support for concessions in terms of powers and financial
resources (Heller, 2002).
As a reaction, we have witnessed the emergence and growth of regionalist parties
in almost all ACs, now in regional parliaments or cabinets in all but three regions
(Barrio et al, 2009; Wilson, 2012). They have learned to demand exactly what the
nationalists request. All of them have also come to demand increased decentralization
of resources and powers as a way of responding to regional electoral demands and
competition, and to legitimate themselves. This has meant an additional pressure
for decentralization in the system and is leading the regional branches of state-wide
parties to engage in more regionalist or nationalist demands, as they have both regional
and state interests. Also, as a consequence, State-wide parties and their regional bran-
ches have adapted to decentralization and electoral competition with regional parties
and have changed their organizations accordingly, gaining growing influence within
state-wide party’s organizations and leadership (Roller and van Houten, 2003;
Hopkin, 2009; Betanzo, 2011).

The evolution of party congruence in the Spanish multilevel system 1983–2012

The party composition of regional governments has been dominated in the last
decade, similarly to the national level, by the three main state-wide parties – Socialist
Party (PSOE), the People’s Party (PP) and United Left (IU) – and by several regional,
AC-based or non-state-wide parties. Some of the latter have also been important
in the national parliament (Convergencia i Unió (CiU), Basque Nationalist Party
(PNV) and Canary Coalition (CC)) when supporting the Socialist and PP minority
governments in Madrid (Pallarés and Keating, 2006; Barrio et al, 2009; Wilson,
2012). Non-state-wide parties are in parliament or cabinets in all but three regions. In
Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, Navarre and the Canary Islands they have
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790 Comparative European Politics Vol. 12, 4/5, 444–467 459
 Aja and Colino

Table 2: Party political congruence between the central and regional level

1983– 1987– 1991– 1995– 1999– 2003– 2007– 2011–

1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011

Ruling party at the central level PSOE PSOE PSOE PP PP PSOE PSOE PP
ACs with same ruling party as the center 12 9 5 8 8 8 10(9) 11
ACs governed by the main opposition 3 4 10 6 5 6 5 3
party at the center
ACs with regionalist or nationalist 2 3 2 3 4 3 2(3) 3
governing parties
Other — 1 — — — — — —

Source: Own elaboration.

given rise to distinct regional party systems. In some cases – until 2003 in Catalonia
and 2009 in the Basque Country – they have dominated regional parliaments and
cabinets from its inception. Six ACs are usually governed by coalition governments
between state-wide and non-state-wide parties – three dominated by non-state-wide
parties, Catalonia, Navarra, and Canary Islands, and three dominated by state-wide
parties, Aragon, Cantabria, and Balearic Islands. In 12 ACs the competition is
bipartisan and in the other five it is multiparty, with three to five parties (Ocaña and
Oñate, 2007; Stefuriuc, 2009). Table 2 shows the evolution of party congruence since
the beginning of the current decentralized system.
At the regional level, the peculiarities of each regional party system can be very
different from the Spanish Central Parliament and show their own structures and
dynamics of competition and their own coalitional politics. At this level, numerous
parties are represented which hold different interpretations of the constitutional
openness of the system and the need for institutional reform. These interpretations
may range from mainstream parties to being classified as semi-loyal opposition or
antisystem forces. Therefore, also in the regional level political confrontation occurs
between centrifugal and centripetal tendencies of the Spanish system. Table 3 details
the situation in the 17 ACs.

Does partisan congruence affect the evolution of IGR: The politicization of IGR
bodies and jurisdictional conflict

To see the real consequences of party-political differences, we can either look at the
extent to which they dominate the nature of intergovernmental coordination, create
conflict, stall decision making, create deadlock or the extent to which party-political
congruence helps to assure coordination and shape the nature and facilitate the
conduct of everyday IGR (see McEwen et al, 2012).
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© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790

Table 3: Party-political orientation of regional governments

1987–1991 1991–1995 1995–1999 1999–2003 2003–2007 2007–2011 2011–

Andalucía PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE since 2012
Aragón PAR PP PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PAR PP y PAR
Asturias PSOE PP PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE FAC till 2012
PSOE
Islas Baleares PP PP PSOE PP PP PSOE UM PSM IU PP
País Vasco PNV PNV PNV PNV EA PNV EA EB PNV EA EB till 2009 PSE PSE
Canarias PSOE PSOE AIC CC CC CC PP CC PSOE
Cantabria UPC PP PP PRC PRC PSOE PRC PSOE PP
Castile y León PP PP PP PP PP PP PP
Comparative European Politics

Castile-La Mancha PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PP

Cataluña CiU CiU CiU CiU PSC ERC ICV PSC ERC ICV (till 2010) CiU
CiU
Com. Valencian PSOE PP PP PP PP PP PP
Extremadura PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE PSOE- PSOE PP-EU

Spanish intergovernmental relations

Galicia PP PP PP PP PP till 2005 PSOE PSOE-BNGa (till 2009) PP
– till 2009 PP
Madrid PSOE PP PP PP PP PP PP
Murcia PSOE PP PP PP PP PP PP
Navarra PP PSOE PP PP UPN-PP UPN UPN PSN-PSOE
Vol. 12, 4/5, 444–467

La Rioja PSOE PP PP PP PP PP PP
Number of ACs with 9 5 8 8 8 10 11
congruent governments

Sources: Own elaboration and Aja (2003) and López-Nieto (2008).

461
 Aja and Colino

Regarding the former, we could also distinguish between the parliamentary and the
executive arena. Around 14 out of 17 AC governments in Spain are single-party
cabinets, either having a majority or a minority status. Nonetheless, in the past three
elections parliamentary coalitions involving the main state-wide parties (PSOE or
PP) and at least one nationalist or regionalist party have become more common.
Coalition governments create multi-level links of mutual dependence offering new
incentives to the relationship between parties, mainly when the state-wide party is
involved in a regional coalition and at the same time is a minority government at the
central level and needs parliamentary support.
Regarding the consequences of party incongruence between levels in the conduct
of IGR and the degree of conflict, we may use two indicators and try to establish
some associations with the evolution of partisan congruence/incongruence. In recent
times, for instance, vertical IGR and implementation of central public policies have
been increasingly politicized by the Popular Party in opposition, which has utilized
intergovernmental bodies and regional governments to block or impede the
implementation of some central or shared policies out of ideological or simply
electoral reasons. This has occurred with long-term care programs, anti-tobacco laws,
the introduction of civic education in schools, or with some central regulations on
abortion. This phenomenon of politicization of IGR and boycott of central policies by
regional governments in areas of shared competence is a phenomenon commonly
observed in other federations like the United States and Switzerland. With the current
crisis, regions governed by the main opposition party such as Andalucía or the
Basque Country or by nationalist parties, such as Catalonia, are acting against the
central government in intergovernmental bodies that coordinate the fiscal consolida-
tion efforts.
This means that party confrontation is visible when the main opposition party
at the center governs the largest ACs. Their presidents, the so-called regional
barons of PP or PSOE, become an instrument for party-political opposition not
based on territorial issues or the common interests of regions. As León and Ferrín
(2011) have argued, party incongruence and confrontation may have a negative
effect in those multilateral intergovernmental bodies that discuss national norms
affecting regional governments, as is the case in the Ministers Conference on
Education. Unlike in Europeanized policy areas, there are no external pressures (for
example, implementation of directives) that force the central government and
regional governments to cooperate, and therefore concurrent powers may occasion-
ally lead to blocking of decisions and deadlock in the intergovernmental bodies.
Intergovernmental bargaining becomes difficult because ACs governed by the main
opposition party may systematically oppose any initiative from the central govern-
ment. We find instances of this when observing the behavior of Andalucía or
Castilla-La Mancha vis-à-vis the central government during the PP rule, or that
of Valencia and Madrid against the PSOE central government (Alda and Ramos,
2010, p. 351).
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 Spanish intergovernmental relations

As a result, ministers’ conferences may reproduce the relationship between

government and opposition parties in the lower house, and eventually become
ineffective as mechanisms of intergovernmental cooperation. This confirms the
hypotheses that the type of federalized configuration of the Spanish system makes
party-political incongruence one of the main elements affecting intergovernmental
coordination at the same time feeding partisan differences into the system.
However, some recent research has confirmed that conflict at the ministers level is
much more frequent, and relationships are much more politicized, than if we look at
the level of officials. Except in sectors very affected by ideological or programmatic
issues, cooperation at that level is mostly unaffected by party congruence, and
cooperation and problem-solving orientations at the level of public officials prevails,
partly driven by high mobility of senior officials and politicians between the two
levels of government (Colino and Parrado, 2009).
Another indicator that seems to be affected by the degree of congruence, but
also by the presence of the PP or the PSOE in office at the central level, is the
number of jurisdictional conflicts lodged before the Constitutional Court by the
central government or by the regional governments. There is no clear correspondence
between periods of more or less congruence and more or less conflict, but if we look
at the data in detail (see Figure 5) we can see that most of the conflicts come from
three or four ACs that are usually ruled by one regional nationalist party or by the
party in central opposition. For example, we could mention that during the VIII
legislative term, half or the jurisdictional conflicts before the Constitutional Court
involved the central government and three ACs (Catalonia, Valencia and Madrid)
(Alda and Ramos, 2010).

140
131
120
100 101 101
96 92
80
68 69 72
60
41 53 53
37 47
40 36
32 32 33 22 24
18 29 23
20 18 19
15 15 18
16
0
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010

Total number of annual conflicts before the Constitutional Court

Figure 5: Evolution of competence conflicts before the Constitutional Court 1983–2010.
Source: MPTA (2011a).

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 Aja and Colino

Final Assessment: Multilevel Dynamics and Partisan

Conflict – Institutionalizing IGR and Making Coordination

In this article we have tried to test several hypotheses proposed by this special issue
theoretical framework. The first one, that in federalized systems the non-subordinated
and equal constitutional status of units will lead to the predominance of multilateral
modes of coordination and toward symmetry in the long-term reallocation of
competences. The Spanish case confirms the hypothesis of a tendency to multi-
lateralism vis-à-vis bilateralism and of symmetry vis-à-vis asymmetry driven by the
very evolution of constitutional powers, as all the changes in terms of powers and
resources have gone in that direction. The evolving party systems and electoral
competition among state-wide and non-state-wide parties and among ACs for
catching up with additional devolution, alongside the cumulative and incremental
devolution of policy areas to ACs, seem to explain constitutional evolution, that is,
the distribution of powers and the nature and form of IGR.
If bilateral coordination mechanisms were more prevalent at the starting process of
Spain’s federalization, they were gradually replaced with multilateral bodies as the
process of federalization deepened. The examination of the Spanish case also confirms
that an increasingly symmetrical devolution has led to increasing institutionalization of
multilateral cooperation bodies but maintained simultaneously a much less significant,
but creative and sometimes symbolic use of bilateral bodies for conflict resolution, but
not really to negotiate constitutional change or manage everyday policy sectors. Despite
the equalization of ACs’ powers, however, the lack of real intrastate mechanisms for
regional participation through the Senate or the Conference of Presidents, regional
governments do not participate as such in the changes of the intergovernmental system.
The second hypothesis was that the constitutional status of units in federalized
systems also determines the way partisan conflict or congruence may affect, by
disrupting or facilitating, intergovernmental coordination. We could also confirm
that, as expected, changes in party congruence in the Spanish multilevel system have
directly affected the nature and form of IGR or conflict. Our description has shown
clear effects both on the degree of programmatic or policy conflict and on the temporal
variations in legal jurisdictional conflict between levels of government. Some typical
manifestations of the consequences of party incongruence can be seen in episodes of
policy boycott by ACs of central polices and recourse to judicial conflict. At the same
time, the type of IGR that have developed for the everyday management of policies
(mainly multilateral) and for jurisdictional conflict solving (mainly bilateral) have
sometimes affected negotiations on policy and jurisdictional issues. For example, both
the recurrent reform of the financial and funding arrangements and the devolution
of more competencies through the reform of regional Statutes of Autonomy (both
bilateral and multilateral) have taken place within the intergovernmental circuit of
negotiations, but the final decision has always depended on party political nego-
tiations and the relative force of parliamentary majorities.
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 Spanish intergovernmental relations

About the Authors

Eliseo Aja is Full Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona. For
10 years he was the editor of the Report on the Autonomous Communities, published
by the Barcelona Public Law Institute, and then became the director of this Institute
from 2001 to 2009. In 2009, he was appointed President of the Council of Autonomic
Guarantees of Catalonia, where he still acts as a member. Some of his recent book
publications are La reforma del Senado (2010); Inmigración y democracia (2012);
Estado autonómico y reforma federal (2014). From 2005 to 2008 he was the Chair of
the Spanish Association of Professors of Constitutional Law.

César Colino is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and

Public Administration at Spanish National Distance-Learning University (UNED) in
Madrid. His recent research and publications have revolved around comparative
federalism, in particular diversity management, intergovernmental relations, fiscal
federalism and constitutional reform in federations, especially focusing on the
Spanish, German and Canadian cases. He has published in journals such as Regional
& Federal Studies and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. He has coedited
Diversity and Unity in Federal Countries for McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2010 and the 2011 special issue ‘Federalism and constitutional change: Theoretical
and comparative perspectives’ for the journal Regional & Federal Studies (with
Arthur Benz).

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