State and Regional Administrative Coordination in Spain
proportion of critical interventions — were governed by the PP ; in the case of Navarre , which took up a slightly less strident opposition , this region was governed at this time by a conservative coalition ( UPN-CDN ). Only one Autonomous Region governed by a progressive coalition intervened critically : Asturias , which did so on 10 % of the occasions when it took the floor ( at that time it had a government made up of the PSOE and the United Left ( IU ).
Likewise , during the years when the José Ignacio Wert was head of the department , the regions of Andalusia , Asturias , Canarias , Catalonia , and the Basque Country practically monopolized the critical interventions during meetings . All of them were , at that time , governed by parties other than the PP . In some cases , the criticism raised by these regions is particularly noticeable when the regional governing parties did not undergo a change between the time of Gabilondo ’ s ministry ( the previous legislature ) and Wert ’ s . This is the case , for example , with Andalusia and the Basque Country , both
governed during both legislatures by the Socialist Party : during the period when Gabilondo was minister , they did not intervene critically , but when Wert was minister they expressed their opposition on more than 70 % of the occasions .
In short , the debates during both Sectoral Conferences seem to be guided , above all , by the government-opposition dialectic , so that the ministry ’ s plans tend to be contested by regions with the opposite political tendency , and deferred to by regional representatives of the same party . We believe that , together with the other patterns analyzed in previous sections , this shows the influence of the partisan factor on the dynamic of these institutions ’ meetings . In principle , and looking just at the design of the SCs , it would be important to have a much more multilateral debate , given both that territorial interests are very varied in kind , and also that the requirements of inter-authority coordination are exceedingly technical in nature . However , this complexity is reduced by practical considerations , with a recreation , to
Graph 7 . Percentage of critical interventions by region ( Education SC . Angel Gabilondo ' s ministry )
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