Sebastián Royo

After the Fiesta: The Spanish Economy Meets the Global Financial Crisis

During the last decade and a half the Spanish economy has been one of the fastest growing and most successful economies in Europe. Immigration, low interest rates, and the liberalisation and modernisation of the Spanish economy all contributed to this spectacular performance. This success, however, came to a halt in 2007 and Spain is now suffering a painful economic recession. While the global economic crisis has been a significant contributing factor in this downturn, this article shows that domestic imbalances largely help account for the current economic problems. It examines the reasons for the crisis and analyses the governments response.

'A New Century of Corporatism?' Corporatism in Spain and Portugal

This article analyses the resurgence of national-level social bargaining in Portugal and Spain. It argues that this development was the result of the reorientation of the strategies of the social actors. In a new economic and political context, marked by a process of institutional learning and the increasing autonomy by unions from political parties, trade unions have supported social bargaining as a defensive strategy to retake the initiative and influence policy outcomes. The incentives leading governments and employers to agree to new social pacts reflect their failure to control wages in a relatively fragmented and decentralised wage setting. Finally, co-operation among the social actors has been helped by the emergence of state institutions for tripartite macroeconomic and social bargaining.

Banks and the political economy of the sovereign debt crisis in Italy and Spain

ABSTRACT This paper sets out to explain why Spain experienced a full-fledged sovereign debt crisis and had to resort to euroarea financial assistance for its banks, whereas Italy did not. It undertakes a structured comparison, dissecting the sovereign debt crisis into a banking crisis and a balance of payments crisis. It argues that the distinctive features of bank business models and of national banking systems in Italy and Spain have considerable analytical leverage in explaining the different scenarios of the crises in each country. This ‘bank-based’ analysis contributes to the flourishing literature that examines changes in banking with a view to account for the differentiated impact of the global banking crisis first and the sovereign debt crisis in the euroarea later.

Beyond Confrontation The Resurgence of Social Bargaining in Spain in the 1990s

The proponents of globalization contend that European countries are now converging on an Anglo-American model of capitalism. Contrary to this prediction, this article shows that in Spain, globalization and the European Monetary Union have promoted rather than undermined cooperation among economic actors. Unable to escape from economic interdependence, they have developed coordinating capacities at the macro and micro levels to address and resolve tensions between economic interdependence and political sovereignty. In particular, this article analyzes the resurgence of national-level social bargaining in Spain in the 1990s. This development was partly the result of the reorientation of the strategies of trade unions. They have supported social bargaining as a defensive strategy to retake the initiative and influence policy outcomes. This article shows that successful social bargaining depends on not only the organization of the social actors, the main claim of the neocorporatist literature, but also the interests and strategies of the actors themselves.

Varieties of Capitalism in Spain: Business and the Politics of Coordination:

This article explores the evolving interests of Spanish capital and the structural and political constraints within which employers define and defend their interests. It shows that institutional change is a political matter; it is therefore possible to develop coordination capacities in the absence of many defining features of ‘coordinated market economies’. The central argument is that successful coordination depends not only on the organization of the social actors but also on their interests and strategies.

Institutional Degeneration and the Economic Crisis in Spain

The economic crisis has had an earth-shattering effect in Spain at all levels: economic, political, institutional, and social. There are different interpretations about the causes of the crisis. Most of the analyses on the economic crisis in Spain have concerned themselves with phenomena like mismanaged banks, excessive debts, the bubble in the real estate sector, or the loss of competitiveness. Others have sought to explain the crisis as a byproduct of European Monetary Union integration. This article moves beyond those explanations and argues that a fundamental reason for the crisis is rooted in the process of institutional degeneration that preceded the crisis.

Some Lessons from the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union

Abstract This study examines the integration process and how it has affected political, economic and social developments in Portugal and in Spain over the last 15 years. Since the last century, the obsession of Spanish and Portuguese reformists has been to make up the lost ground with modernized Europe. EU membership has been a critical step in this direction. The record of the past 15 years is that this dream is becoming an economic reality. Despite impressive achievements, however, namely, since 1986, Portugals average per capita income has grown from 56 per cent of the EU average to about 74 per cent, whereas Spains has grown to 83 per cent - both Iberian countries still have a long way to go to reach the EU average wealth.

Lessons from the Integration of Spain and Portugal to the EU

Portugal and Spain have been at the heart of European history and have played a critical role in European (and world) affairs throughout the centuries. Yet decades of relative isolation under authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century left both countries at the margins of Europe, and they did not take part in the early stages of the process of European integration in the 1950s–70s. Fortunately, the success of processes of democratic transition in both countries in the second half of the 1970s paved the way for full membership in the European Community (EC). I would like to thank the participants in the conference “Towards the Completion of Europe” held at the University of Miami on April 2005, and in particular to Dr. Joaquin Roy for all his advice and support. This is an updated version of a paper that I presented at the conference published in Royo 2006. I would like to thank Jeffrey Kopstein, Ramon de Miguel, Kalypso Nicolaidis, George Ross, and Francisco Seixas da Costa for their valuable comments during the last roundtable of the conference From Isolation to Europe: 15 Years of Spanish and Portuguese Membership in the European Union at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, November 2–3, 2001. See also Royo 2003.

From Authoritarianism to the European Union: The Europeanization of Portugal

Following long and often contentious negotiations, Portugal joined the European Community (EC) on 1 January 1986.1 European integration followed the establishment of democracy in Portugal, a precondition for EC membership. My purpose in this essay is to use the experience of Portugal’s membership in the EC/European Union as an opportunity to refl ect on what has happened since 1986 and draw some lessons from the Portuguese experience. I will identify the basic changes in the economy and society of Portugal that occurred as a result of European integration. Entry to the EC has brought many benefi ts to Portugal. The country has successfully taken advantage of the conditions established in the accession treaty. EU membership has improved access to common European policies and the EU budget. At the same time, Portugal’s trade with the EU has expanded dramatically, and foreign investment has fl ooded in. One of the main consequences of these developments has been a reduction in the economic differentials that separated Portugal from the European average. Since 1986, Portugal’s average per capita income has grown from 56 percent of the EU average to about 74 percent. The culmination of this process was the participation of the country as an original founder of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999.

The 2004 Enlargement: Iberian Lessons for Post-Communist Europe

Abstract The purpose of this study is to outline the main consequences for Portugal and Spain of EU integration. It will use the integration of Portugal and Spain into the European Union as an opportunity to draw some lessons that may be applicable to East European countries as they pursue their own processes of integration into the European Union. It examines challenges and opportunities that new member states from central and Eastern Europe will face when trying to integrate in the EU. Finally, the discussion analyses the impact the 2004 enlargement will have on the Iberian countries.