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Abstract
Most recent studies about internal power distribution within state-wide parties in previous unitary countries, like Spain, show that they have changed less than was initially expected. But how national party leaders are able to counteract the decentralizing pressures that the first studies in this field underlined must still be explained. In this article we reformulate a mechanism for national political leaders to keep their parliamentary parties under control that Van Biezen has suggested for new European democracies. We argue that keeping party and public offices apart at the regional level is a vital part of a chain of command whereby national party leaders are able to control their party's regional governments. Using a quantitative analysis of national and regional elites for the first time we show that office overlapping is thus substantially less intense at the regional level than at the national level in the two main Spanish state-wide parties, and that this feature is related to regional politicians' degree of autonomy. Still, this ‘divide et impera’ strategy is employed less over time.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Andrew Richards, Ana Cardenal, Sonia Alonso and the participants in the Panel ‘One Party, Two Arenas: State-wide parties in Regional Party Systems’ of the 2009 ECPR General Conference for suggestions and comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Notes
Other studies have also noted the role of some intervening variables, such as type of federalist arrangement, electoral laws, election cycle overlapping, and the existence of diverse ‘ethnic’ identities within a state in the state-wide party transformation (Roller and Van Houten, Citation2003; Deschouwer, Citation2006; Fabre, Citation2008; Thorlakson, Citation2009).
In both parties, regional branch party leaders are formally elected by regional party congresses. However, for candidate selection for regional elections, the regional party leadership draws up lists which are then submitted for approval to the national leadership.
In Spain the heads of regional governments are called ‘presidents’. This term is confusing as the official heads of party organizations in the Conservative Party are also called ‘presidents’ (‘secretary-general’ in the case of the Socialist Party). In order to avoid this confusion and use terms than can be employed for both parties, we call the first political actors ‘regional premiers’ and the second ones ‘top regional party leaders’. When we refer to both kinds of actors without specifying if they accumulate both party and public office, we call them ‘regional leaders, or regional politicians’.
Obviously personal predispositions about one's capabilities matter, but this effect should be random.
The other reasons that were studied were: upward promotion to national leadership, voluntary resignation, forced resignation by other parties in the government coalition, vote of no confidence from the opposition, and electoral defeat. This is an adaptation of Woldendorp et al.'s (Citation1998) reasons for termination of national governments applied to the regional context.
For the 1980s and 1990s the Spanish newspapers El País and La Vanguardia were used. After 2000 also El Mundo and ABC.
The results of this comparison must be regarded with caution since the PP tended to have most changes of national party leader in the first time period (3 versus 1) whereas in the case of the Socialist Party the two of them happened in the second period.
As explained, national party congresses precede regional ones. This fact rules out the possibility that national leadership changes because newly selected regional party leaders get rid of the old national leaders.
Given the small number of cases we could not study the time effect on being removed as regional premier.