César Colino

Constitutional Change in Federations—A Framework for Analysis

This article outlines a conceptual framework for analysing constitutional change in federal systems. It begins by explaining the dilemmas, tensions and dynamics inherent in federations that cause the need for adaptation and formal reform of constitutions. After reviewing some approaches and concepts from the literature, the article introduces a conceptual framework for understanding constitutional federal change. It tackles its complexity by determining its modes, mechanisms and outcomes. First, it proposes an analytical distinction among four types of constitutional federal change—reform, innovation, evolution and adjustment—and presents a distinction among four mechanisms of change, distinguishing change produced through constitutional policy making, ‘implicit’ change of intergovernmental rules and patterns of governance practices, intergovernmental competition and/or ‘paradigmatic’ shifts in constitutional ideas and values, or change in court decisions and legal interpretation and discourses. It also deals with several typical outcomes of federal change. Finally, some implications for further research are examined.

Responding to the New Europe and the Crisis: The Adaptation of Sub-national Governments' Strategies and its Effects on Inter-governmental Relations in Spain

Abstract This article analyses the evolution of the institutional setting that the Spanish multi-level system provides for regional European Union (EU) adaptation, and the effects that recent developments of the EU (the Eastern enlargement, the Treaty reform process and the Euro-zone crisis) have had on the more or less pro-European positions and adaptive strategies of Spanish regions and on inter-governmental arrangements. It thus describes the increasing institutionalization of regional participation and EU policy coordination, both at the domestic and supra-national level, and the evolution of regional strategies, looking at its effects both on the degree of vertical and horizontal coordination, and the actual relative power and discretion of both levels of government. It argues that regional strategies have increasingly become more defensive and less pro-European and that increasing participation in European matters seemed to have favoured multi-lateralism and increased coordination without having produced further centralization until the recent crisis and associated budget consolidation targets induced new coordination requirements and a centralization of power towards the central government and EU authorities. This has, as a side-effect, reinforced some centrifugal tendencies of the system and therefore may affect the operation of IGR.

Intergovernmental Relations in the Spanish Federal System: In Search of a Model

When taking stock of the Spanish version of federalism, the “Estado autonomico”, it seems of utmost importance to address not just the distribution of powers and resources or its diversity but also its complex machinery of government and its everyday workings, that is, its intergovernmental relations (hereafter IGR) and the way its strengths and weaknesses have been evolving and treated by both political science, public administration, and public law. The academic study of IGR may serve primarily to identify patterns of functioning and its evolution and thus to pinpoint possible problems and pathologies. Only then can institutional design solutions have a chance of success. This, in turn, can only be done by comparing the Spanish system with other similar ones, i.e., by understanding its historical evolution and workings in comparative perspective.

The State of Autonomies between the Economic Crisis and Enduring Nationalist Tensions

After a first term (2004–2008) marked by significant controversy surrounding the territorial model of the Spanish state and the reform of six regional statutes of autonomy, the reelection of Zapatero’s Socialist Party (PSOE) at the central government level in 2008 ushered in a much calmer environment on territorial issues and partisan confrontation at large.1 In the context of an international economic crisis that began to affect Spain in a particularly severe fashion, public debate seemed to have turned almost exclusively to the problems of the Spanish economy. However, three main territorial issues remained on the political agenda and garnered media attention for most of Zapatero’s second term (2008–11) and have imbued the occasional public discussions and the conduct of intergovernmental relations: the reform of the regional government funding arrangements and the central and regional responses to the economic crisis; the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the Catalan statute of autonomy issued in 2010; and the end of violence in the Basque Country.