Agenda Dynamics in Spain

Laura Chaqués Bonafont, Frank R. Baumgartner, Anna Palau

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137328786
• eBook ISBN: 9781137328793
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Spanish politics has been transformed. Using new techniques, this book looks at 30 years of Spanish political history to understand party competition, the impact of the EU, media-government relations, aspirations for independence in Catalonia and the Basque region, and the declining role of religion.

Part I

Theory and Methods

1

Policy Dynamics in Democratic Spain

Introduction

In this book, we explain how and why policy issues get onto the political agenda. We make both theoretical and empirical contributions to the analysis of policy dynamics and provide a new set of tools for qualitative and quantitative studies of Spanish politics and public policy throughout the period of democratic governance. To do that we follow the policy-dynamics approach. This means that we focus not only on policy preferences and institutional factors, as most comparative analysis does, but also on flows of information, or attention. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the patterns of issue prioritization on the agendas of the Spanish government, parliament, and media. We want to go beyond case studies, to cover a time span of more than three decades, and to rely on systematic quantitative indicators for our conclusions. We consider the empirical scope of what we have undertaken to be one of our major contributions to existing research. Of course, we have theoretical and substantive conclusions that go beyond only these methodological points.

Preferences, institutions, and flows of information

Policy preferences are, of course, fundamental to policy dynamics. The government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero put an end to the participation of Spain in the Iraq war, brought marked social change to Spain, promoted women’s rights, pushed through contested changes in the laws surrounding abortion, legalized same-sex marriage, and pushed to make the state more secular. Some of these issues were strongly opposed by the conservative Partido Popular (PP), especially those aspects related to defense, international relations, and moral issues such as abortion. By the same token, the priorities defined by PP leader Mariano Rajoy after winning election in November 2011 show important contrasts with previous socialist governments, such as the introduction of a new labor reform, the proposal to reform the regulation of abortion, or the new education law. These are old vindications of the right and were indeed put into practice following its arrival in power.

So, ideological preferences clearly drive many important policy changes (Boix, 1998). The ability of the Spanish state to transform policy preferences into policy outputs is mediated, however, by institutional factors, cultural trends, and unexpected focusing events (Kingdon, 1984; Baumgartner and Jones, 1993, 2015). Institutional factors impose important constraints on the strategies and behaviors of the actors involved in the policymaking process (Hall, 1993). As in other advanced democracies, like the UK, the institutional structure of the Spanish political system generates a bias toward the formation of stable, single-party governments and the domination of the legislative process by the executive (John et al., 2014; Lijphart, 1999; Gunther and Montero, 2009). Most of the time, the governing party does not need to cooperate with opposition parties in order to legislate, which basically implies the prime minister has an almost monopolistic capacity to define the political agenda along the term, especially for those issues whose jurisdiction is not shared across levels of government.

Minority governments have occurred several times. As we explain in detail in this book, minority governments increase the chances for opposition parties to veto the entry of some issues into the agenda, or/and to translate some of their policy priorities into final decisions, like regionalization in the late 1990s. Regional fiscal reform unexpectedly became one of the key priorities of the first government of Aznar. This regulatory change did not respond to the preferences of the PP but to institutional factors. Indeed, this issue was never highlighted during the political campaign of 1996, and in some ways contradicted some of the ideological principles of the PP regarding the territorial organization of power in Spain. Aznar implemented this reform because he was governing with the minority of seats and needed to cooperate with opposition parties, especially regional parties like CiU, to keep a working majority in parliament throughout the rest of his term.

Focusing events and flows of new information are also relevant factors to explain how and why new issues get into the agenda. As the policy-dynamics approach highlights, the policy process is essentially a disorderly and unplanned process dominated in many occasions by unexpected focusing events (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993, 2015). Environmental catastrophes, food-safety scandals, terrorist attacks, corruption scandals related to financial, economic or political institutions, or simply the publication of new ideas and information related to some issues may force a radical change in the issue priorities of the government. The mad-cow outbreak, which appeared to threaten food safety throughout Western Europe; the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; bankruptcy and misuse of resources of major financial institutions; or the publication of new information concerning the use of citizen’s private information by state agencies have had dramatic effects on agenda dynamics, and this should be no surprise.

In this regard, our results indicate that variations in issue attention in the political agenda can be partly predicted by changing economic conditions. A deterioration in economic conditions generates a significant decline in the attention to all issues but the economy and hence, generates a decline in agenda diversity. However, the justifications for dramatic policy reversals also come from other directions. Some are consistent with the ideological tenor of the governing party; some appear to be related to the type of government; some seem to be responses to crisis; and others to changing cultural trends. It is sometimes not the party preferences but the preferences of the prime minister, even if from the same party as the previous prime minister, that explain the ups and downs of some issues in the governmental agenda. By the same token, increasing attention to some issues, especially those related to old political cleavages like political decentralization, terrorism, and rights-related issues, can be predicted by knowing which political parties are governing and which are in the opposition.

In fact, we demonstrate in this book that governing status has a strong impact on the focus of attention or parties in parliament. Political parties, as vote maximizers, select among those issues that may be more rewarding in electoral terms (Petrocik, 1996; Mair 1998; Riker, 1986). While in government, parties tend to focus their attention on a broad set of issues, highlighting those that may give a more positive opinion about what the government is doing, in the media and/or the parliamentary arena. While in the opposition, large-state parties will tend to focus attention on a few sets of issues, especially those which generate more political conflict, leaving aside an important range of issues that perhaps are not so rewarding in electoral terms. In contrast to other countries, in Spain this party conflict is not so much focused on welfare-related issues, but other political cleavages, mainly political decentralization, rights-related issues, and to a lesser extent, terrorism (Fernández-Albertos and Manzano, 2012). These opposition-government dynamics are consistent over time and independent of ideology, contributing significantly to a new politics of confrontation in Spain.

In short, what variations in issue attention have in common is not a single cause, but rather a single process: the political system responds in fits and starts, and in response to many potential causes of change rather than proportionately to the severity of problems or to any single explanatory factor, be it institutional or ideological. While we can find examples of each, an overall theory must focus on the characteristics common to policy change across the board. Neither ideology, preferences, institutional procedures, cultural trends, nor framing by themselves can explain policy change in Spain. Of course, each can and does explain many individual cases. But when we look at policy change in a systematic manner, and across all policy domains, as we do in this book, we find that each explanation falls short.

Multilevel governance and responsiveness

Major institutional transformations, especially the consolidation of a multilevel system of governance, have a direct impact on agenda dynamics. Multilevel governance generates a “double-sided shift of authority away from national governments” (Hooghe and Marks, 2001). In Spain, as in some other countries, this process of delegation of issue jurisdiction upwards to the EU and downwards to the regions happened simultaneously from the 1980s to present, which resulted in a complete transformation of the territorial distribution of power (Hooghe et al., 2010; Morata and Mateo, 2007; Requejo and Miquel, 2010; Subirats and Gallego, 2002). In less than two decades, Spain has been transformed from a unitary state to a highly decentralized state in which the central government only manages half of the public expenditures. In this new context, the policy process is more complex and opaque than before, in terms of the number of public and private actors, the preferences and interest these actors represent, and the pattern of alliances these actors can perform across time and issues in order to accomplish different functions, from exchange of information to the implementation of policy goals (Richardson, 2006; Schmitter, 2004; Peters and Pierce, 2013; Chaqués-Bonafont, 2004).

Multilevel governance means that an increasing share of the political agenda is not defined unilaterally by national political elites. On the one hand, delegation of authority upwards to the EU limits state autonomy to define issue priorities in a wide range of issues, especially those related with the economy, trade, agriculture, and the environment (Brouard et al., 2012; Palau and Chaqués-Bonafont, 2012). On the other hand, regionalization imposes important limits to the agenda-setting capacity of the Spanish government, especially regarding the provision of welfare issues like health or education. To see this, we need look no further than the constitutional reform in 2011, designed to control public deficits according to EU standards, the political confrontation between the Spanish government and some regional governments (especially Catalonia) generated by the new education law passed by the Rajoy government in 2012, or the similar economic policies of governments led by Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (2004–2011) and Conservative Mariano Rajoy (2011–2014), both of whom were heavily constrained by the “recommendations” of the EU. While ideological differences are apparent, institutional constraints are also clearly important factors in determining the policy goals and direction of any government.

In this book we provide detailed information about how Europeanization and regionalization affect agenda dynamics. From here, we explain how this transformation has affected mandate responsiveness across time (Stimson et al., 1995; Soroka and Wlezien, 2010; Anderson, 2006). In a multilevel system of governance, the costs to translate policy promises into policy decisions increase because of a greater number of veto-points and higher institutional friction. National governments more and more have to negotiate with a large set of policy actors, which may or may not share their view about what should be done regarding particular issues. At the same time, in a multilevel governance, citizens have a less precise idea about which government is doing what, and thus which government is politically accountable for each policy area. The attribution of responsibilities is more complex and less clearly defined, which may lower the political costs derived from not implementing policy promises and/or not responding to citizens’ preferences.

In this context, political parties during electoral campaigns may have strong incentives to keep paying special attention to those issues that are more rewarding in electoral terms, independently of whether they can fulfill their policy promises, or not, once elected. Overall, the governing party will tend to follow its electoral promises (Stimson et al., 1995), but in the case where the party does not succeed it can always start a strategy of blame-shifting oriented to avoid electoral reprisal. In case of inaction, like the so-called corredor central (the construction of a high-speed train that connects Spain with France, crossing over the center of the Pyrenees), or in cases where policies clearly conflict with stated ideological positions (as when a left government implements economic adjustment policies in the face of a severe economic recession), political costs can be shifted to other levels of governance. That is, governments can blame the regions or Europe for policies they do not want to embrace but which they implemented. This is facilitated because citizens do not have a full knowledge of which level of government is doing what (Lago and Lago, 2011; Chaqués-Bonafont, Palau and Muñoz 2014), and because, in fact, the situation is more complicated over time.

The incentives of parties to engage in this process of blame-shifting (pushing the blame on other governments when policies fail to respond to citizens’ preferences and/or electoral promises) and credit-taking (claiming political responsibility when policies are a success [Anderson, 2006]) are greater for those issues with shared jurisdiction and for those issues that individual parties “own.” As the issue ownership theory highlights, parties tend to emphasize those issues where they have a reputation for greater competence and their opponents are less well regarded (Petrocik, 1996). During electoral campaigns, left parties may focus attention and make proposals for policy change about issues related to welfare or the environment where they are perceived to perform better by the public, and they will do so independently of whether they have the jurisdiction to implement these policy proposals. By the same token, right parties may pay more attention and make electoral proposals to issues like the economy, taxes, or the size of government where they have a reputation of good performance, regardless of the increasing role of the EU in these matters. Parties will not hesitate to politicize these issues, even when they know they do not have the jurisdiction to follow through on their policy promises, especially when they can blame others for any eventual failures down the road. As a result, there is a growing imbalance between electoral promises and policy outputs, which contributes to exacerbate the democratic deficit that already characterizes the EU and its member states (Peters and Pierre, 2013; Raunio, 1999; Follesdal and Hix, 2006).

The economic crisis has reinforced this decline in mandate responsiveness. Following the agenda-setting approach, in this book we explain that responsiveness is not only linked to institutional factors but also to external events. Contrary to spatial theories of party behavior (Downs, 1957), the implementation of policy promises does not follow a defined pattern along the period of a government in office, but rather an erratic trend linked to external events (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave, 2014; Chaqués-Bonafont, Palau and Muñoz, 2014; Bevan and Jennings, 2014; John et al., 2011; Bertelli and John, 2013). Governments tend to abandon some of their promises along the term as a response to new conditions (e.g., economic recession) and focusing events (e.g., a terrorist attack), which cannot be predicted during the electoral campaign. As the legislature moves forward, correspondence between promises and policy decisions declines, not necessarily because policy makers are self-interested policy actors or are not interested in fulfilling their electoral promises, but simply because they do not have the cognitive capacity to predict major changes in the political, social, and economic context along the term (Manin, Przeworski and Stokes, 1999; Jones, 2001; Maravall, 2013; Maravall and Sanchez Cuenca, 2008). They must respond, while in government, to the issues that the world throws at them. Often, this means dealing with issues they would prefer to avoid, and which they may not have mentioned during the campaign. So we see important limits to the party mandate theory in the chapters to come, even though we do not contest its motivating logic. Parties may want to implement their programs, but they must govern.

Finally, we test whether mandate responsiveness declines under divided governments (see Klingeman et al., 1994; Budge et al., 2001; Walgrave, Varone and Dumont, 2006; Green-Pedersen, 2006,). As in most other advanced democracies, the capacity to implement policy promises in Spain is greater when the party in government has the majority of seats in the Parliament, and thus does not need to negotiate with opposition parties to pass legislation. However, divided or unitary governments cannot explain why mandate responsiveness declines across time. As argued above, this decline is very much related to the consolidation of multilevel system of governance ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I  Theory and Methods
• Part II  The Dynamics of Political Institutions in Spain
• Part III  Policy Issues in an Agenda-Dynamics Approach
• Part IV  Conclusions
• Glossary
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index