European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 97

State and Regional Administrative Coordination in Spain
Health , and the Environment ). However , we have tried to operate in a complementary way : thus , while the work by León and Ferrín focuses on the formal arrangements reached by the Sectoral Conferences , we pay attention to the participants ´ interventions , thus trying to capture the weight of partisan rivalries in their real praxis : in other words , whether party discipline plays a role at the time of explaining attendance , agendasettings , dynamics , and interaction among participants . I
Multilateral Relations in the State of the Autonomous Communities
As mentioned above , our intention with this analysis is to test the extent to which the Sectoral Conferences have fulfilled the functions that were first planned for them by law . In this respect , we would like to stress three independent variables that , in accordance with our theoretical basis , have a strong influence on the way the conferences have been carried out in practice . All of them are related to contextual political and historical conditions that have set limitations on the way these organizations perform and how the actors play their roles within them : the broad institutional framework for territorial organization , the party system and the cultural background of political and administrative elites .
As regards the institutional framework , we should keep in mind the fact that the decentralization process in Spain — regardless of its achievements — is marked above all by the retention of historical nationalities within the State , holding them together ( Linz 1997 , 35 – 9 ). Thus , at the level of the central state architecture , one of the aspects that sets conditions for interterritorial cooperation is the absence of major federalist institutions for shared government ( Máiz , Beramendi , and Grau 2002 , 388 ). The example most commonly cited when this aspect is analyzed is the insufficient territorial nature of the Senate , which can only partially be considered a chamber for representing the Autonomous Regions , as it is subordinate in the legislative process and subjected to inter-party relations . But this is not the only feature of the Spanish polity that shows such a lack of shared government : as noted by some authors , Spanish intergovernmental structures tend to be vertical , lacking horizontal-multilateral intergovernmental arrangements and mechanisms . In this sense , even the Sectoral Conferences show an incomplete institutionalization as they do not produce legally binding agreements ( Bolleyer 2006 , 398 ).
Bearing in mind this institutional design , it is to be expected that , in some comparative studies , such as that by Marks , Hooghe , and Schakel ( 2008 ), the Spanish case should appear as a territorial model that is still far from federalism . Although in terms of self-government the Spanish case puts its Autonomous Regions on the same level as territorial bodies characteristic of federal models , the other side of decentralization — that of shared government — remains at a level of development similar to that of the cases commonly considered as exemplifying centralized states . In other words , the State of the Autonomous Regions is characterized by conceding important powers to the territorial bodies without allowing these to take part in communal decision-making .
As far as the party system is concerned , we assume that the way federal
I
For a more detailed use of data , the reader may consult a previous publication by this research group ( Mondragon et al . 2015 ).
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