Decentralising under pressure: The Spanish Constitutional Court and the LOAPA ruling Fernando Gil Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Department of Political and Social Sciences
[email protected] Abstract In its early stages, the Spanish decentralisation process pursuant to the 1978 Constitution developed in an ad hoc and uncoordinated manner. Shortly after the failed coup of February 23, 1981 the two main statewide parties, UCD and PSOE, reached an agreement to “rationalise” the process and subsequently approved the “Organic Law on the Harmonisation of the Autonomy Process” (LOAPA). The law met with stern opposition from Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, as well as the Spanish Communist Party, which appealed to the Constitutional Court. By examining the framing that political actors made of the upcoming ruling, its influence on public opinion and the final Court decision, this paper analyses the impact of external pressure on a new constitutional court using a process-tracing methodology. The research question addressed in the paper is whether strategic considerations, and more specifically, the preservation and enhancement of the Court’s legitimacy had a significant influence on the LOAPA ruling. It is hypothesised that politicians successfully constrained the Court’s choices by threatening its capital of public support. This assumes that politicians use the media to convey their messages to both judges and the general public and that they are effective in politically framing the public debate and citizens’ opinions. It is argued that both the risk of having its legitimacy eroded and the political consequences of the ruling had a decisive influence on the “Solomonic” decision taken by the Spanish Constitutional Court in the landmark LOAPA case.