Bulletin n. 1/2006 | ||
May 2006 | ||
Montero A. P. |
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The Politics of Decentralization in a Centralized Party System: The Case of Democratic Spain | ||
in Comparative Politics , Vol. 38 n. 1 , 2005 | ||
Scholars of decentralization have explained degrees and patterns of intergovernmental conflict with William Riker’s classic argument that centralized, disciplined party systems with high degrees of national-subnational concordance in partisan loyalties are able to limit such conflict. Democratic Spain challenges this argument. It mixes a centralized political party system and highly disciplined national organizations with a decentralized and decentralizing state. While subnational interests fail to aggregate with the party system and the national parliament, they organize in the poorly institutionalized arena of intergovernmental distributive conflict. Regional governments defend their interests in bilateral relations with the center that undermine national partisan and legislative attempts to control the decentralization process. | ||