European Policy Analysis
institutions work is frequently determined by the internal organization and interactive relations of political parties ( Riker 1964 ). J This is particularly the case for Spain , where territorial matters have been resolved through inter-party competition rather than within inter-governmental institutions ( Méndez Lago 2004 , 50 ). Therefore , it is not strange that party competition has been one of the most influential factors for explaining the work of sectoral conferences and the probability of reaching formal agreements in their meetings ( León and Ferrín 2012 , 75 ).
As far as the party system is concerned , the most general assumption is that the Spanish case represents an example of that Sartorian category of the “ limited multi-party system ”, as just a small number of significant parties have been present in the lower chamber for most of the democratic period ( Oñate and Ocaña 2005 ). In this sense , the formation of governments and parliamentary majorities have always been in the hands of the two major statewide parties ( the social democratic Socialist Party , PSOE , and the conservative Popular Party , PP , see appendix 2 ) with the occasional support of smaller organizations , such as the Catalan and Basque moderate nationalist parties . It is also noteworthy that in those cases when the nationalists ’ support has been needed , eventual agreements have included concessions of a territorial nature ( Heller 2002 ; Máiz , Beramendi , and Grau 2002 , 393 ), reproducing the idea that a bilateral relationship is needed for central state governability ( Máiz , Beramendi , and Grau 2002 , 420 ). In any case , support from those party organizations for a federalist aspiration has been rather weak : only within the social democrats can a few voices be heard claiming that federalism is the best way to tackle historical territorial conflicts in Spain . However , this is not the case for the conservatives or the bulk of the Socialist Party , who considers decentralization to be a rather problematic issue , still under review and subject to the evolution of political circumstances , as the recent economic crisis has showed . Moreover , the Basque and Catalan nationalists show a certain unwillingness for symmetrical decentralization , and they have tended to feel unenthusiastic about cooperating with other regional actors of the State , especially from the beginning of the process of standardizing powers begun in 1992 ( Aja 2014 , 56 ).
Lastly , if the cultural background of political and administrative elites is analyzed , it is also possible to indicate a historical absence of that “ federal thinking ” that Elazar considers an essential component of power sharing ( Elazar 1991 , 192 – 97 ). Put in other words , Spanish administrative elites tend to show a hierarchical administrative culture that is not at all disposed to cede competences or seek cooperative mechanisms ; it is the reflection of a political culture that has not yet managed to normalize the coexistence of a diversity of territorial interests and in which a resistance to the decentralization of power lives on ( Mendoza 1990 , 266 – 67 ; Moreno 1997 , 102 – 5 ). Consequently , a bureaucratic model predominates that is inflexible and excessively tied , in operational terms , to the strict delimitation of competences and specialization . Given this situation , these authorities are unable to meet the needs of a new political-administrative context
J
Such a relationship between the territorial and partisan variables might well be bidirectional in some cases , where the territorial institutional framework results in particular party structures where sub-national organisation tends to prevail ( Simeon , 1980 ).
98