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Is the Spanish Constitutional Court an instrument of the central government against the Autonomous Communities?

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 18 November 2017

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Abstract

This paper applies various probit/logit models to a database constructed by the authors, consisting of rulings by the Spanish Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional, TC) resolving positive conflicts of competence between the central government and the Autonomous Communities from 1981 to 2014. Our goal is to empirically contrast whether the TC is predisposed to favour the central government or if their rulings are determined by other motivations. According to the results we have obtained, the TC does not seem to be an extension in the jurisdictional milieu of the central executive power.

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Fig. 1

Source: Own elaboration and State Secretariat for Public Administrations (statistics on devolution)

Fig. 2

Source: Own elaboration

Fig. 3

Source: Own elaboration

Fig. 4

Source: Own elaboration

Fig. 5

Source: Own elaboration

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Change history

  • 18 November 2017

    The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. An entry was missing in the explanatory variable. The missing “VAL/CRISIS/CAT” entry.

Notes

  1. On the “regulatoy inflation” of the Autonomous Communities, see Marcos et al. (2010). López-Laborda and Vallés-Giménez (2010) analyze the determinants of the regulatory activity of the Autonomous Communities between 1989 and 2001 and show the relevance of some variables, such as the existence of nationalist political parties in regional governments.

  2. The “negative conflict of competence” occurs when the CG (the AC) declines jurisdiction to resolve any claim, considering that the competence corresponds to an AC (to the CG or another AC): See Articles 68–72 LOTC.

  3. For the definition of conflicts of competence and actions of unconstitutionality, see Muñoz Machado (2007: 377 et seq.).

  4. Conflicts shown as filed by “both” correspond to appeals independently brought by the CG and the ACs and accrued by the TC.

  5. It should be emphasized that the government of the Basque Country decided not to go to the TC from 1990 to 2002: See García Roca (2004: 45). This explains the concentration of conflicts filed by the ACs in the 1980s, which we will take into account in the estimates presented in Sect. 5 of the paper.

  6. The President (or the Vicepresident if applicable) does have a casting vote.

  7. The ideology of the president and Justices of the TC, until 2006, were taken from Garoupa et al. (2013); from that date, from political commentators’ consensus expressed on the media.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank, with the usual clause exempting them from responsibility, the extraordinary access given them by Luis Pomed and Ignacio Martín to work with the databases of the Constitutional Court. We also thank them for their comments and suggestions, as well as José Caamaño, Manuel Contreras, Ángel de la Fuente, Nuno Garoupa, Santiago Lago, Diego López Garrido, Juan Mora-Sanguinetti, Jorge Onrubia, Eva Sáenz, Gemma Sala, and José Tudela. A special mention deserves a referee of the Journal, whose comments, observations and suggestions have allowed us to substantially improve the first version of the paper. Our research benefited from funding from the Government of Aragón-European Regional Development Fund (Public Economics Research Group, Julio López-Laborda and Fernando Rodrigo), and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project ECO2016-76506-C4-3-R (Julio López-Laborda). A version of this paper was presented at the 23rd Public Economics Meeting, held in Ourense (Spain) February 4–5, 2016, and at a workshop organized by the Spanish Constitutional Court in Madrid on December 13, 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Zaragoza, Saragossa, Spain

    Julio López-Laborda & Fernando Rodrigo

  2. University CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain

    Eduardo Sanz-Arcega

Authors
  1. Julio López-Laborda
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  2. Fernando Rodrigo
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  3. Eduardo Sanz-Arcega
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eduardo Sanz-Arcega.

Additional information

The original version of this article was revised: The missing entry of the explanatory variable has been included.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7 and 8.

Table 6 Conflicts presented by, and resolved in favour of, central government and Catalonia, 1981–2014 (in brackets, unanimous rulings).
Full size table
Table 7 Conflicts presented by, and resolved in favour of, central government and Basque Country, 1981–2014 (in brackets, unanimous rulings).
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Table 8 Conflicts presented by, and resolved in favour of, central government and other Autonomous Communities, 1981–2014 (in brackets, unanimous rulings).
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López-Laborda, J., Rodrigo, F. & Sanz-Arcega, E. Is the Spanish Constitutional Court an instrument of the central government against the Autonomous Communities?. Const Polit Econ 29, 317–337 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-017-9250-1

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