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To cite this article: Anwen Elias (2015) Catalan Independence and the Challenge of Credibility: The Causes and Consequences of Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 21:1, 83-103, DOI: 10.1080/13537113.2015.1003490 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537113.2015.1003490

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Catalan Independence and the Challenge of Credibility: The Causes and Consequences of Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior

ANWEN ELIAS Aberystwyth University

This contribution examines the role of Convergencia` i Unioand´ Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in putting the issue of Catalo- nia’s constitutional relationship with the rest of Spain at the top of the Catalan and Spanish political agenda. It focuses on the strategic behavior of these two parties in pursuit of their territorial goals since 1978 and identiﬁes the complex dynamics that led both parties to converge around a shared commitment to Catalan sovereignty. It is argued that the extent to which past strategic decisions have strengthened or weakened nationalist parties’ credibility on their core business of territorial empowerment has a signiﬁcant impact on the options currently available to them as they seek a satisfactory answer to the Catalan question.

On 23 January 2013, the Catalan parliament approved a declaration recogniz- ing the sovereignty of the Catalan people and asserting the nation’s right to decide on the nature of Catalonia’s relationship with the rest of Spain.1 The Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 declaration was significant, firstly, because it was facilitated by agreement of the two main Catalan nationalist parties—ConvergenciaiUni` o´ (CiU, Conver- gence and Union) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalonia)—that historically have been electoral and political rivals in Catalan politics. Such a rivalry derived in large part from the parties’ competing visions of how Catalonia should be governed, with CiU’s preference for accommodation within the Spanish state contrasting to ERC’s independentist ambitions. Secondly, the declaration paved the way for the holding of an unofficial consultative referendum on Catalonia’s constitutional status

Address correspondence to Anwen Elias, Department of International Politics, Aberyst- wyth University, Aberystwyth SY23 3FE, Ceredigion, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

83 84 A. Elias

in relation to Spain on 9 November 2014. The result—80.8% in support for Catalonia’s secession from Spain, on a turnout approximating 35%—was the latest demonstration of growing support for a radical change in the scope and operation of Catalan self-government. This contribution examines the role of CiU and ERC in putting the issue of Catalonia’s constitutional relationship with the rest of Spain at the top of the Catalan and Spanish political agenda. It does so by analyzing the electoral strategies deployed by CiU and ERC since Spain’s transition to democracy. In line with the goal of the collection as a whole, the contribution also identifies the complex dynamics that led both parties to converge around a shared commitment to Catalan sovereignty. In doing so, it starts from the observation that stateless nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) rarely confine themselves to their core territorial business when they engage in competition with other political parties who usually have a very different set of priorities. Rather, scholars of territorial politics have demonstrated that there are strong electoral and political incentives for SNRPs to position themselves on, and give salience to, other issues that fall outside the center- periphery concerns that define these parties’ raison d’etre.ˆ 2 In the Catalan context, the empirical analysis traces nationalist parties’ shifting positions on, and selective emphasis of, the two issue dimensions that have historically structured Catalan politics: the territorial and left-right dimensions.3 The contribution examines how CiU and ERC’s territorial ambitions have accommodated, and even at times been overshadowed by, socioeconomic policy ambitions in the pursuit of votes. The argument developed is that the strategic decisions made by nationalist parties over time have implications for what nationalist parties can credibly stand for in the current struggle with the central state over Catalonia’s constitutional relationship to the rest of Spain. A historical analysis of the strategic behavior of CiU and ERC thus provides significant insights into the complex dynamics that have led to the recent rapprochement between CiU and ERC and that enable and/or con- strain each party as it seeks to find a definitive resolution to the Catalan

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 question. The contribution is organized as follows. The next section provides an empirical overview of the strategic behavior of CiU and ERC in the Catalan political space since the late 1970s. The analysis draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews conducted with party represen- tatives.4 The factors driving shifts in parties’ positions on, and the relative salience of, territorial versus left-right issue dimensions, are examined in the following section. The concluding discussion reflects on the implications of nationalist parties’ past strategic behavior for their current efforts to push for a radical reconfiguration of Catalonia’s relationship with Spain. It also outlines the broader contribution of the study’s findings to scholarly un- derstandings of the strategic behavior of SNRPs in multinational, multilevel settings. Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 85

MAPPING THE ELECTORAL STRATEGIES OF CATALAN NATIONALIST PARTIES

CiU was formed in 1978, as an alliance between UnioDemocr´ atica` de Catalunya (UDC, Democratic Union of Catalonia) and Convergencia` Democratica` de Catalunya (CDC, Democratic Convergence of Catalonia). The former was established in 1931, in direct response to the declaration of Spain’s Second Republic; it combined defense of Catholic values with a clear Catalanist vocation expressed via support for Catalan self-government within a federal Spanish state.5 The latter was established in 1974 under the leadership of Jordi Pujol, an individual with a record of cultural and civic activism in defense of Catalan nationhood spanning three decades. Pujol aimed to bring together groups with diverse ideological preferences to pursue a political program anchored in the core values of democracy, Catalanism, and a center-left socioeconomic agenda.6 The creation of CiU responded to the electoral context in which the two participating parties found themselves after the 1977 Spanish general election.7 UDC’s poor showing threatened its survival as a political organization, whilst CDC’s stronger performance was nevertheless insufficient to establish the party as the principle mouthpiece for the Catalan nationalist movement.8 The formation of CiU was thus an alliance of convenience for both partners. Within the Catalan political space, CiU positioned itself exclusively on the territorial dimension, as a Catalanist party with a strong nation-building pedigree that could be trusted to govern in Catalonia’s interests. In contrast to the more traditional left-right rhetoric of its statewide rivals and in spite of the distinctive left-right profiles of the alliance’s partners, CiU focused instead on the goal of developing the Catalan nation through building up the institutions of Catalan self-governance.9 Everything else was subsumed into this overarching territorial goal: “What was important was not what political colour you were, but rather the capacity to work in the interest of the country, according to its needs.”10 This all-encompassing territorial dis- Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 course characterized CiU’s electoral strategy from the first elections to the Catalan parliament in 1980 until 2003 when the party’s 23-year period in Catalan government came to an end, albeit with some refinements (for example, to incorporate references to the party’s track record in government from 1984 onwards, and claims of being a key player in Spanish politics in the mid-1990s when CiU provided parliamentary support to the Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol˜ [PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers Party] minority government).11 At least until the mid-1990s, and in a context where statewide parties contesting Catalan elections were unable to present a credible territorial political agenda,12 CiU’s moderate territorial strategy—which sought to increase Catalan autonomy within the extant constitutional framework of the Spanish state —successfully appealed to Catalan voters across the traditional left-right ideological divide. 86 A. Elias

With CiU a hegemonic force in Catalan autonomist politics until the late 1990s, other nationalist actors struggled to compete. This was particularly true of ERC, a party established in 1931 and which became a party of the government in the Catalan autonomous institutions established during the Second Republic.13 ERC was an amalgamation of several smaller left-wing republican, federalist, and independentist groups that from the outset adopted a two-dimensional ideological proﬁle that reﬂected the diverse territorial and socioeconomic commitments of its adherents.14 The party’s political prominence, however, made it a prime target for the repressive forces of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship. The death or exile of most of ERC’s leaders and activists during this period posed a serious threat to the party’s survival as an organization.15 This organizational weakness, along with the party’s illegality until 1978, undermined ERC’s capacity to play a determinant role in Spain’s transition to democracy. In an attempt to re-establish ERC as a relevant and visible political force in post-Franco Catalan politics, leader Herribert Barrera pursued an electoral strategy based on a “politics of nostalgia”16 for the golden era of the Second Republic. Founding core principles—Catalanism, liberty, democracy, progress, and social justice—were restated, as ERC sought to occupy the moderate nationalist leftist political space within the emerging Catalan party system.17 Thus, on the one hand and with a view to distinguishing itself from statewide leftist parties operating in Catalonia, ERC pushed its left-wing credentials and presented itself as a non-Marxist socialist party committed to the creation of a classless society. On the other hand, ERC sought to compete with CiU for votes on the territorial dimension. During the transition to democracy, demands were made for a federal Spanish state, with the im- mediate restoration of the autonomous institutions provided for by the 1931 Catalan statute of autonomy.18 Once the new constitutional architecture was in place, ERC adapted its position to demand for the autonomy statute to be revised and enhanced. These demands were accompanied with continuous references to the party’s history, in an attempt to assert the authenticity of its

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 nationalism (as opposed to the “opportunistic” nationalism of CiU19)andto establish ownership of the territorial dimension. Overall, however, this two-dimensional strategy had limited impact during the early years of democratic politics in Catalonia. ERC was contesting the nationalist and left-wing political space with parties (especially CiU, Partit Socialista Uniﬁcat de Catalunya [PSUC, Uniﬁed Socialist Party of Catalonia] and Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya [PSC, Socialist Party of Catalonia]) that had been far more successful in mobilizing support in preparation for the transition to democracy.20 Nevertheless, ERC held the balance of power within the Catalan parliament after the 1980 election and, in the interests of safeguarding the stability of the new regional institutions, agreed to support CiU’s minority government.21 But this decision proved to be detrimen- tal to the party’s electoral appeal in subsequent autonomous and general Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 87

electoral contests during the 1980s. CiU was perceived by ERC voters to be too moderate on the territorial dimension and too right-wing on socioeconomic issues. As a result, ERC’s credibility as a left-wing nationalist party—an identity that had been deliberately nurtured during the transition process—was undermined.22 Cooperation with CiU also diluted the party’s Catalanist proﬁle through its association with the purportedly “ambiguous” nationalism of Pujol and his alliance. The party’s electoral decline during this period was recalled by one interviewee in the following terms: “Pujol de- stroyed Esquerra...Esquerra was at the point of disappearing...it was almost moribund.”23 The low point of this trajectory of electoral decline was ERC’s loss of representation in the Spanish Congress at the 1986 general election. The result constituted an external shock that led to substantial strategic realign- ment over the next decade. ERC sought to reposition itself within an electoral arena dominated by what was perceived to be CiU’s right-leaning nationalism on the one hand and the PSC’s left-wing statist politics on the other.24 This process of strategic reorientation took place in two stages. Firstly, ERC adopted a more radical independentist position on the territorial dimension with the intent of challenging CiU for ownership of the Catalanist political agenda. The party’s campaign for the 1992 Catalan elections, for example, placed the demand for Catalan independence center stage,25 whilst the con- tinual questioning of CiU’s nationalist credentials—“a vote for CiU is not a nationalist vote”26—intended to challenge the latter party’s commitment to Catalonia. This radicalization in ERC’s territorial ambition was legitimized by references to the independentist proﬁle of one of ERC’s founding parties, Estat Catala`27 ; this ideological pedigree served to strengthen the party’s ownership of Catalan independence as a constitutional option. Secondly, during the mid-1990s the party reasserted its left-wing agenda, both to differentiate itself from the purported right-leaning CiU and, in the context of increasing disillusion with the PSOE in the central government, to expand the party’s electoral appeal within the leftist political space in

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 Catalonia.28 The initial conceptualization of independence as a defense of Catalan identity was supplemented gradually by a “discourse about the re- ality of everyday life.”29 The party advocated independence on the basis of quality-of-life arguments grounded in long-standing commitments to equality and social justice. By the end of the 1990s, ERC located itself as “equidistant” between CiU and PSC, with a promise to pursue both social and national progress. There was little doubt about the party’s strategic ambition: “ERC wants to substitute CiU in the Catalanist space and PSC as the hegemonic party of the left.”30 This professed strategy of “equidistance” gave ERC renewed electoral appeal in Catalan and Spanish elections, and the party’s ambition was clear: to present itself as a possible coalition partner for regional government. In practice, however, ERC quickly found itself gravitating more towards its 88 A. Elias

left-wing competitors in search of possible coalition opportunities. In part, this was due to CiU’s very different strategic preferences during this time. The latter provided parliamentary support for the state-level minority government of the right-wing Partido Popular (PP, Popular Party) between 1996–2000, and this brought to the fore the competing socioeconomic priorities of both nationalist parties.31 After the 1999 Catalan elections failed to provide CiU with enough seats to form a majority government, Pujol’s preference for securing legislative support from the PP rather than a coalition with ERC entrenched the ideological distance between the two nationalist parties on the left-right axis. Furthermore, the fact that the PP’s support for CiU in Cat- alonia was conditional on the latter renouncing any intention to reform the territory’s statute of autonomy or established funding arrangements was presented as evidence of CiU’s lack of commitment to Catalan self-government.32 A further contributing factor was organizational and ideological changes within the PSC, under the charismatic leadership of ex-Barcelona mayor Pasqual Maragall.33 Having historically struggled to disassociate itself from the political priorities of the statewide PSOE to which it is federated, from the mid-1990s onwards the PSC adopted a more distinctive Catalanist agenda that sought to create an alternative leftist-Catalanist majority based on shared commitments to social justice and reform of the Catalan statute of autonomy. Whilst such a project offered clear common ground with ERC’s own left-wing principles, increasing Catalan self-government through statute reform fell far short of its ambition for independence. However, supporting the less radical option advocated by the PSC allowed the ERC to cultivate an image of itself as a pragmatic and responsible party.34 This policy moderation was crucial in making ERC an acceptable partner in coalition government for PSC and Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (IC-V, Initiative for Catalonia Greens) after the 2003 Catalan election. The formation of this government of left-wing forces in 2003 constituted a major turning point in Catalan politics, bringing to an end 23 years of CiU government. Although CiU still won the largest number of seats in this

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 election, the contest provided further evidence of CiU’s electoral decline since the 1995 Catalan election (when CiU failed to retain its governing majority in the Catalan parliament). Firstly, accusations of CiU’s corruption in public ofﬁce, combined with rival parties’ claims that Pujol’s government had run out of steam, generated a widespread sense that it was time for a change. This was certainly a prominent theme in the election campaigns of CiU’s rivals from the mid-1990s onwards. Secondly, within the nationalist political space ERC’s strategic reorientation contributed to voter ﬂight from CiU.35 On the one hand, the PP’s increasingly antagonistic attitude towards Catalan autonomy led to a questioning of CiU’s effectiveness as a defender of Catalan interests. On the other hand, as mentioned above, the collaboration gave the impression of CiU’s shift to the right on socioeconomic policy, which alienated more moderate voters of the center and allowed for a clearer Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 89

distinction to be made between left and right in Catalan politics.36 Thirdly, the strategic repositioning of PSC referred to above also had an impact. Maragall’s political project was conceived explicitly as a direct challenge to the electoral and political hegemony of CiU, and, in 2003 (as in 1999), PSC’s electoral results came largely at CiU’s cost.37 In particular, the PSC’s commitment to reform Catalonia’s statute of autonomy resonated with a growing sense of frustration in Catalan society with the framework for self- government that had been agreed in 1980. The statute’s provisions were found to be increasingly wanting in the face of new policy challenges such as rapidly increasing immigration, slow economic growth, and deteriorating public services and infrastructures.38 In such a situation, CiU’s reputation as the party of Catalonia was damaged by its association with a PP government in Madrid that declared the process of decentralization to have come to a halt.39 The 2003 alternation in the Catalan government had a significant impact on the electoral strategies of both CiU and, by the end of the decade, ERC. For the former, the challenge became that of re-establishing the party’s electoral appeal in order to regain government office in Catalonia—a goal finally achieved in 2010. This meant returning to the party’s core territorial business and countering the left-right dynamic imposed by the tripartite government and that risked taking over Catalan politics. In the words of one interviewee, “faced with this risk, through the political project of [Statute reform] we tried to impose the national axis on the left-right axis.40 In one sense, this represented an updating of Pujol’s nation-building strategy from the 1980s in so far as the aim was to convince voters to put the needs of Catalonia ahead of everything else. But it also represented an important departure from Pujol’s commitment to maximizing Catalan self-government within the constitutional framework of the Spanish state. During negotiations on reforming Catalonia’s statute of autonomy, CiU made several proposals that implied a revision of the Spanish constitution, and the party’s eventual deal with PSOE at the state level to approve a (more limited) reformed statute of autonomy allowed the Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 party to regain its status as key interlocutor with the central government and principal defender of Catalonia’s interests in Madrid.41 Ahead of the 2010 autonomous election, CiU shifted its territorial position once more with a program of government anchored in the demand for greater financial autonomy for Catalonia.42 Such a campaign responded to an economic context characterized by a deepening recession and a social context of growing popular dissatisfaction with Catalonia’s relationship with Spain.43 However, CiU deliberately eschewed the goal of Catalan independence that had gained traction amongst popular opinion and civil society in the aftermath of a decision by Spain’s Constitutional Court in June 2010 to strike down, or to modify, key provisions of Catalonia’s reformed statute of autonomy.44 This strategic choice was motivated by two key considera- tions: CiU’s superior reputation among voters for economic management on 90 A. Elias

the one hand (and contrasted with the chaotic performance of the tripartite government between 2003 and 2010),45 and internal divisions within the party on what its ultimate constitutional ambition should be (see below). The refusal of the PP—in central government from 2011—to negotiate on ﬁscal autonomy left the party little choice but to shift its position again if it was to remain credible in the eyes of voters increasingly supportive of far- reaching constitutional change: a referendum on Catalonia’s constitutional future. What this future should be, however, has divided the party. Gener- ational changes within the parties that make up CiU have given rise to an independentist majority within CDC, in contrast to minority support for such an option within UDC. However, the latter’s leadership has continued to defend a confederal vision of Catalonia’s place within Spain.46 There is a clear tension, therefore, between CiU’s strategic response to a changed economic, political, and social environment and more enduring ideological and organizational constraints. One interviewee summed up this tension as follows:

We have a lot of credibility in management of the economy. We have a lot of credibility as a party of order; that is to say, we are responsible, we won’t ruin the country or lead it into war. In all this, we have maximum credibility. But as far as independentist credibility is concerned, others have more.47

The “others” referred to here is ERC, which by the 2012 Catalan elections had reassumed support of independence as the main plank of its electoral platform. This return to core business was driven by the disastrous experience of being in government between 2003 and 2010. The fact of having collaborated with the PSC, and the willingness to compromise on the core goal of Catalan independence, was interpreted by supporters as a betrayal of the party’s core ideological principles and provoked widespread disillusion within, and scissions from, the party.48 The new political organizations that

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 emerged as a result of the latter explicitly aimed at recuperating the independentist political space that ERC was perceived to have abandoned.49 Efforts at reasserting ERC’s commitment to Catalan independence in the run-up to the 2010 Catalan elections had little effect in stemming the ﬂow of voters away from ERC. The party’s promises had lost all credibility: “people refused to believe that we would not form another coalition government.”50 By 2012, a comprehensive replacement of the party elite by new faces untainted by the experience of coalition government and an unambiguous message about the party’s priorities—“leftist yes, but no concession to parties that are not independentist or that don’t directly support the right to decide”51 —sought to re-establish the party’s ownership of the radical ﬂank of the territorial axis. ERC’s independentist pedigree (see above) brought credibility to this shift, and, in the context of a groundswell of popular support for Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 91

independence, the party saw signiﬁcant gains in the 2012 Catalan election. Whilst CiU secured the largest number of votes in this contest, ERC emerged as the second largest party in the Catalan parliament and was widely re- garded as the biggest winner of the election. ERC thus became a key player in debates about Catalonia’s future within Spain and CiU’s collaborator in the elaboration of the Catalan parliament’s “Declaration of Sovereignty and of the Right to Decide of the People of Catalonia.”

EXPLAINING THE STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR OF CiU AND ERC

On the basis of the empirical analysis provided above, a broad distinction can be made between two broad types of electoral strategies pursued by Catalan nationalists: the two-dimensional strategy of ERC, whereby the party gives importance to, and seeks to compete on, the territorial and left-right dimensions simultaneously; and the “subsuming” strategy of CiU, where all policy issues (including those related to the left-right axis) are framed in terms of, and therefore subsumed into, the territorial dimension.52 Within this broad categorization, however, there has been varying scope for both parties to shift their position on, and to manipulate the salience of, issue dimensions. In CiU’s case, this is evident in the gradual radicalization of the party’s territorial goal in recent years, with Jordi Pujol’s moderate autonomist position (up until 2003) giving way to a commitment to statute reform, extensive ﬁscal self-government, and most recently for many within the organization, Catalan independence. ERC’s territorial priorities have shifted between extensive autonomy (pre-1992 and late 1990s–2010) and independence (1992–late 1990s, and 2010–present), whilst the relative salience of the territorial versus left-right dimensions has also changed over time (with the latter given prominence going in to, and during, the 2000s as the basis for a common project with PSC and ICV). Whether or not CiU and ERC’s strategic choices have been successful

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 in meeting their electoral goals has depended in large part on the credibility of the strategies that they have pursued. Scholars of party competition have argued that voters accord their support to the most credible party proponent of a particular issue or issue position.53 This requires a party to “convince voters both that it is committed to a given policy stance and that it is the best able to implement such a policy.”54 Of crucial importance in establishing issue credibility are a party’s identity (reﬂecting the social cleavage in which a party is rooted) and its reputation (built up gradually over time and based on past performance in government and/or in “handling” a particular issue). But neither of these qualities is static. Rather, through their electoral strategies, parties can seek to reinforce or undermine linkages between political actors—themselves and others—and speciﬁc issue dimensions.55 The rest of this section looks in more detail at the key drivers of Catalan 92 A. Elias

nationalists’ strategic behavior and the consequences for parties’ credibility. It is argued that the extent to which past strategic decisions have strengthened or weakened nationalist parties’ credibility on their core business of territorial empowerment has a signiﬁcant impact on the options currently available to them as they seek a satisfactory answer to the Catalan question.

External Factors A first factor relates to the systemic context within which SNRPs operate. Although such parties seek to reform the territorial structure of the state, they must do this within the extant constitutional/institutional framework. CiU and ERC’s territorial projects have been conceived in response to, and pursued within, the framework of the “State of Autonomies” established by Spain’s 1978 Constitution. This framework was the result of a compromise between competing political forces with deeply opposed views on the extent to which political authority should be decentralized to Spain’s historic nationalities and regions. The 1978 Constitution thus recognizes the national diversity of Spain and foresees decentralization of political authority to sub- state autonomous communities.56 Crucially, however, the Constitution also limits itself to providing broad principles and procedures for implementing this territorial organization of power, allowing for flexibility in the actual con- figuration of the State of Autonomies. This has provided scope for a process of incremental evolution of the territorial organization of power in Spain, under the influence of two key sets of actors: political parties and the Spanish Constitutional Court.57 The way in which they have shaped the evolution of Spain’s territorial model has contributed to its current crisis of legitimacy and provides the necessary broader context for understanding nationalist parties’ territorial strategies in Catalonia. The statutes of autonomy for Spain’s 17 autonomous communities have been defined, implemented and reformed mainly through bilateral negotiations between political actors at the regional and state levels. Such

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 negotiations, and the implementation of Catalan self-government as foreseen by the 1979 Catalan statute of autonomy, deﬁned the gradualist approach of CiU in government until the early 2000s. At times, this dynamic also enabled CiU to extract further powers for the Catalan regional institutions. For example, the party provided legislative support for minority PSOE and PP governments in Madrid between 1993–96 and 1996–2000, respectively, in exchange for enhanced decision-making autonomy.58 However, periodic pacts between the main statewide parties (PSOE and PP) also introduced greater symmetry into Spain’s territorial model, and competential equiv- alence between autonomous communities was formally achieved in the mid-1990s.59 However, the achievement marked the beginning of a new period in the evolution of the state of autonomies, characterized by demands from Spain’s historic nationalities for a new kind of political and ﬁnancial Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 93

relationship between the regions and the state. In Catalonia, as outlined above, these demands were articulated by the new left-wing alliance that included ERC and resulted in the attempted reform of the Catalan statute of autonomy. Demands for statute reform also responded to frustration among nationalist actors in Catalonia and elsewhere60 with the growth of policy areas sub- ject to shared powers between regional governments and the central state, as a result of Constitutional Court judgments relating to disagreements over policy jurisdiction.61 But without doubt, the most signiﬁcant intervention of the Constitutional Court in Catalan politics came in June 2010, when it issued a judgment on the reformed Catalan statute of autonomy that further aggra- vated popular and partisan disillusion with the constitutional status quo.62 The declared unconstitutionality of the statute’s references to Catalonia as a “nation” was interpreted by many as a direct attack on the sovereignty of the Catalan people. This, along with the fact that a statute approved by popular referendum in Catalonia could be referred to the Court in the ﬁrst place, and the perceived politicization of the Court itself, contributed directly to the mobilization of civil society in favor of a referendum on Catalonia’s constitutional future and growing levels of popular support for Catalan independence from mid-2010 onwards. CiU leader Artur Mas pinpointed this as the moment when he shifted from supporting Catalan autonomy within Spain, to supporting Catalan secession from Spain.63 This discussion points to a second external factor shaping political parties’ strategic choices, namely the state of public opinion. Drawing on the agenda-setting literature, Green-Pedersen and Mortensen argue that individual parties both seek to shape and see themselves forced to respond to the “party-system agenda” that “emerges from the continuous political debate among political parties.”64 The efforts of political parties to shape the political agenda through the strategic choices they make are considered in more detail below. What is clear, however, is that the dramatic rise in support for independence in Catalonia—from 15.9% in November 2006 to 44.3% in

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 October 201265—as well as the strong mobilization of civil society in favor of Catalonia’s “right to decide”66 provided a strong pressure on CiU and ERC to respond by reasserting and radicalizing their territorial ambitions. Not doing so would have made the parties seem out of touch with popular opinion. This is not an isolated example of public opinion on Catalan self- government informing Catalan nationalist parties’ strategic choices. For over a decade after Spain’s transition to democracy, the provisions for self- government in Catalonia’s 1980 statute of autonomy enjoyed very high levels of popular support. The lack of appetite for radical constitutional change constrained ERC’s territorial ambitions until the late 1980s, and Pujol’s moderate autonomist territorial strategy was perceived to be successful in getting Catalonia’s political institutions up and running. Changes in attitudes, however, became apparent in the subsequent decade. Castro, for example, notes 94 A. Elias

that the PP’s increasing “Catalanofobia” in the final years of its 1996–2000 government translated into growing levels of support for greater autonomy among Catalan voters.67 This trend lent credibility to efforts at reforming Catalonia’s statute of autonomy by the mid-2000s. Public opinion on non- constitutional issues has also fed into parties’ strategic decision making. In the middle of an economic crisis that was particularly hard hitting in Catalo- nia,68 CiU’s deliberate focus on greater fiscal autonomy in the 2010 Catalan election successfully tapped into growing resentment against the Spanish government’s deficit-reduction policies and capitalized on its reputation for sound economic management.69 The party also presented the harsh consequences of economic recession as a justification of the need for greater control over its own finances, thus framing the economic crisis in explicit territorial terms.70 With such a subsuming strategy, CiU sought to respond to the two main issues—economic and territorial—dominating the party-system agenda in 2010. However, and as noted in the previous section, CiU’s demands for greater fiscal autonomy were rejected outright by the PP—in central government from 2011 onwards—and prompted the former to radicalize its territorial demands. A third external factor shaping parties’ strategic decisions thus relates to interparty competitive dynamics. In settings such as Catalonia where party competition occurs between a range of different actors (between SNRPs and statewide parties as well as between SNRPs) and across multiple levels of government (regional vs. state), these dynamics are inevitably complex. The PP has a deeply rooted ideological skepticism of decentralization, and its begrudging acceptance over time of the cultural and linguistic diversity of Spain has given it limited electoral traction in Catalo- nia where voters have tended to reward parties with a stronger Catalanist profile.71 And yet, the PP featured prominently in Catalan politics in the late 1990s, due to legislative support for minority governments between CiU and PP first in Madrid and then in Catalonia. As noted above, the first of these collaborations brought much trumpeted policy benefits in terms of a signifi-

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 cant further devolution of competences to Catalonia. However, the electoral costs for CiU of both alliances were also substantial for several reasons. Firstly, the party’s territorial credibility was damaged through its cooperating with a statewide party that espoused a very different vision of the territorial organization of the state. The PP’s ideological antipathy to autonomous politics came to the fore after it secured a majority government in Madrid after the 2000 general elections. The current PP government has been similarly uninterested in revisiting Spain’s territorial settlement, an attitude reinforced by European and international pressures to take measures to address Spain’s economic crisis.72 Secondly, CiU’s deal with the PP in the Catalan parliament not to push for further autonomy made the party appear out of touch with increasing popular and political support for reforming Catalonia’s statute of Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 95

autonomy. The party’s reputation for putting Catalonia’s interests first and foremost was thus undermined. The multilevel strategies of the PSOE and its representative in Catalonia, PSC, have also had an impact on the nature and success of CiU and ERC strategic behavior. For example, CiU was able to consolidate its position as a hegemonic party of government in Catalonia during the 1980s due to the weak territorial credibility of the PSOE from 1982 onwards, when it occupied the central government in Madrid. The latter’s centralizing tendencies in power, the slow progress on promised economic and social reforms, and the dependency of the PSC on the party elite in Madrid were arguments successfully deployed by CiU throughout this decade to question the ability of PSOE to stand up for Catalan interests.73 But PSOE’s approach to managing territorial diversity within the state has also evolved over time. From 2004 onwards, the PSOE government of Jose´ Luis Rodr´ıguez Zapatero adopted a more reformist approach and provided the political context for Catalan parties to debate reform of the community’s statute of autonomy. Key to this process was the increasingly Catalanist profile of the PSC, as outlined above. This strategic reorientation was crucial in creating the conditions for ERC’s entry into the Catalan government in 2003, with all of the electoral and strategic implications that this had for the party, as set out above. It was also, however, a strategy that successfully challenged CiU’s claim to be the only party to stand up for Catalonia’s interests and, as argued above, tapped into a broader sentiment that CiU in government had run its course. Within the Catalan nationalist movement, the key dimension of competition has been the territorial one. CiU and ERC have competed to be seen as the party best able to defend and advance the interests of the Catalan nation. In the 1980s, ERC struggled to challenge CiU’s electoral and political dominance, and cooperation with CiU in government diluted the former’s nationalist profile. The adoption of Catalan independence as its long-term goal aimed to challenge CiU’s dominance of the nationalist electoral space. This strategic move derived electoral credibility in part from the party’s inde-

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 pendentist ideological heritage. But ERC also mounted a strong challenge to the credibility of CiU as a party that put Catalonia ﬁrst. As noted above, this challenge resonated with a broader set of factors that combined to undermine CiU’s ownership of such a territorial discourse and that contributed to its exit from government in 2003. In contrast, ERC’s moderation of its territorial ambitions during the 2000s, and its prioritization in government of a left-wing policy agenda was a costly strategy. It alienated core supporters who ob- jected to the dilution of the core goal of Catalan independence and allowed CiU to reassert its territorial credentials successfully. The party’s more recent reassertion of its commitment to Catalan independence represents a return to core business, a move that is also in tune with broader public sentiment about the state of Catalan self-government. With center-periphery tensions as the key issue in the 2012 Catalan elections, ERC’s electoral success reﬂected 96 A. Elias

its superior reputation as being the party most likely to deliver on its promise of radical constitutional change. In contrast, during the 1980s, CiU’s record in implementing the provisions for Catalan autonomy brought the party considerable electoral divi- dend and a reputation for being a moderate and responsible political actor that has proved to be enduring. But as noted above, strategic decisions to cooperate with the PP from the mid-1990s onwards allowed the party to be portrayed by its rivals as having betrayed its core territorial principles. The shock of the party’s exit from government in 2003 prompted a strong and effective reassertion of its credentials as the party of Catalonia. Such a narrative sought to take full advantage of the tripartite government’s dif- ﬁculties in getting agreement on statute reform, not least the fact that the text eventually put to a popular referendum was substantially less ambitious than ERC had intended. This strategy allowed CiU to claw back much of its electoral support by the 2010 Catalan election. Against the background of growing popular and political support for a new constitutional settlement on Catalan self-government, CiU’s shift away from Pujol’s moderate autonomist position also constituted an attempt to adapt to a changed economic and social context (see above). But this position has not been easy to maintain. Pressures for adopting a clearer commitment to Catalan independence have come from society at large, from within the nationalist movement (as a result of ERC’s reassertion of its core commitment to Catalan independence), and from within the party organization itself (see below). In a political context that is increasingly polarized between the extremes of secession and centralization, CiU is struggling to present itself coherently and credibly as the best party to stand up for Catalan interests.

Internal Factors If the external factors considered above constitute the operating environ-

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 ment within which SNRPs operate, it is necessary to look inside the parties themselves to get a full understanding of why parties respond strategically to their environment in the way they do.74 On the one hand, ideological tra- ditions shape the internal discourses within parties and arguably condition the strategic options parties consider to be open to them. A party’s ideological reputation may thus dictate which policy positions a party can credibly hold, or may limit its ability to respond to new issue agendas that are important to voters, and that increasingly feature in party competition. On the other hand, political parties are rarely homogeneous entities. More typically, they are made up of coalitions of actors with different ideas that compete to dictate the party’s overall ideological proﬁle as well as its strategy. What becomes important, then, is the extent to which different groups are able to impose their preferences on the party as a whole. Party organization thus Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 97

becomes an independent variable that impacts upon the strategic choices that a party makes. The two parties considered here provide clear evidence of the different ways in which these internal ideological and organizational pressures can impact party strategy. CiU, for example, brought together two ideologically but quite distinct organizations when it was established in 1978, both in terms of positions on the left-right axis and their territorial aspirations. Over time, however, these ideological differences were largely accommodated within CiU. The structure of decision-making authority within both parties contributed to this. Whilst the formal relationship of these two parties within CiU is unequal (with the predominance of CDC over UDC reflecting the different electoral standings of the two organizations when the alliance was formed in 1978),75 the increasing centralization of power in the leaderships of both CDC and UDC resulted in a dynamic whereby party elites would negotiate bilaterally to agree party policy and strategy and to manage any intraparty tensions that did arise. Added to this, the strong leadership of Jordi Pujol facilitated the emergence of a clear Catalanist discourse that was sufficiently broad to appeal to both parties’ voters. The electoral success of this catch- all political discourse resulted in a remarkably stable organization—with an equally stable political strategy, as outlined above—until the mid-1990s. CiU’s electoral decline from the mid-1990s, and the subsequent process of replacing Pujol as party leader, challenged the internal power relations within CiU and, in turn, impacted on subsequent efforts to reposition the party within the Catalan political space. In particular, CDC’s continued dominance of the organization (in spite of recasting CiU as a federation of parties in 2001) has had important consequences. A complete renovation of the party’s leadership and activist base (the latter as a result of a deliberate strategy to broaden the party’s appeal in the late 2000s) introduced into the organization new ideas that, gradually, have come to be reflected in the party’s shifting position on the territorial dimension. In the words of one interviewee: Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015

The new generation...were people that...hadn’t experienced Francoism, that had all been educated in Catalan, and who had grown up in a democracy. And so implicitly nationalism was no longer a form of cultural resistance, but rather a matter of national sovereignty. And whilst the process was slow, the discourse of the new party leadership became increasingly sovereigntist.76

CDC’s response to its electoral decline in the mid-2000s was thus fundamentally conditioned by the changing currents of opinion within the party and the leadership’s role in taking up and incorporating these ideas into its own programs. The implications of such a shift of position, however, have been twofold. On the one hand, it has brought CDC into conﬂict with 98 A. Elias

the less radical commitment of UDC to confederalism. The latter has under- gone a far less extensive process of internal organizational renovation, and support within the party for Catalan independence remains in the minority. Current discussions about Catalonia’s constitutional future has thus placed new pressures on CiU as a political organization, and these internal divisions (between CDC and UDC, but also within the two parties) pose a challenge to its ability to appear to voters as a coherent, united party. On the other hand, and as noted above, CDC’s independentist turn risks lacking credibility in the eyes of voters who have long associated the party with a less radical political project. There is also the challenge, according to one interviewee, that a party that has long presented itself to voters as being “responsible” is seen as fundamentally irresponsible in its dalliance with secession as a realistic prospect for Catalonia.77 This is in sharp contrast to ERC, whose unambiguous reassertion of its independence credentials since the late 2000s has contributed to the recent improvement in its electoral fortunes. This constitutional goal was adopted in the mid-1990s as a result of a similar internal organizational change as has more recently been experienced by CDC. At a time when ERC’s moderate strategy of collaboration with CiU was costing the party a lot of electoral support, the entry of a new cadre of activists with a track record of ad- vocating more radical constitutional options provided an opportunity for a change of policy.78 This was realized with these activists’ gradual occupation of leadership posts within ERC,79 and they brought credibility to a change of position that chimed with increasing popular support for enhanced Catalan self-government (see above). They also attracted new members with similar views, thus transforming the ideological proﬁle of ERC’s activist base.80 However, whilst ERC was successful in establishing its credibility on this issue in the mid-1990s, it has also experienced the risks of diluting key ideological commitments in the pursuit of votes. It has already been noted above that the party’s moderation of its core goals during the mid-2000s prompted widespread disillusionment amongst the party’s membership. Cru-

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 cially, ERC’s organizational model—characterized by strong internal democracy that make it possible for the party’s rank and ﬁle to hold their leaders accountable—has served as a check on the strategic preferences of the party’s leadership. For example, the party’s grassroots succeeded in forcing the party leadership to campaign against the reformed Catalan statute of autonomy in a 2006 referendum on the proposals, in spite of having played a central role in negotiating the text as a governing party. In contrast, ERC’s exit from government in 2010 provoked a complete renovation in the party’s leadership structure; a new cadre of elites untainted by the damaging experience of coalition government provided an opportunity for refocusing of the party’s rhetoric on its core territorial business. This, combined with the incorpora- tion of a new generation of activists committed to Catalan independence, has Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 99

allowed ERC to re-establish its credibility as a party of radical constitutional change.

CONCLUSION

This contribution has examined the complex dynamics that have impacted on, and that continue to shape, Catalan nationalist parties’ positions on the question of how Catalonia should be governed. Whilst resolving this territorial conundrum constitutes the raison d’etreˆ of both CiU and ERC, understanding party positions on this dimension requires a broader analytical perspective that recognizes the broader set of issues that these parties often compete on. From such a perspective, the findings presented here suggest that nationalist parties’ decisions about what issue positions to adopt, and what issues to prioritize, in party competition have an enduring impact on which constitutional positions nationalist parties can credibly push for. The cases of CiU and ERC highlight the tensions that can arise between short-term pressures for strategic change and longer term pressures for stay- ing true to core values and protecting reputations built up gradually over time. CiU’s credibility on the issue of Catalan independence illustrates this tension clearly. Increasing support for Catalan independence within the federation reflects a broader change in social attitudes in support of radical constitutional change, itself a consequence of a range of political and institutional developments that have challenged the legitimacy of the current constitutional framework. But territorial radicalization has come into conflict both with the party’s reputation as a responsible and moderate party of government and the ideological preferences of the smaller party within the CiU organization. The dilemma facing the party is how to balance the pressure to not cede any further electoral ground to parties with stronger credibility on Catalan independence, with the desire to safeguard its reputation as a responsible and trustworthy political party as well as a party structure that Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 has been highly successful electorally and politically over the years. The dilemma for ERC is different. From a position of stronger credibility on the issue of Catalan independence, past experience has shown that compromis- ing on this core goal runs the risk of alienating the increasing numbers of voters who support this constitutional option. However, this also limits the party’s scope for negotiation in a Catalan context where it is difficult to see a way forward beyond the current standoff between supporters and deniers of Catalonia’s right to decide on its constitutional future. In addition to these insights into the role of CiU in ERC in the current debate over Catalonia’s relationship with the rest of Spain, this study adds to a body of scholarly work examining the strategic behavior of SNRPs in mul- tidimensional, multilevel settings. Whilst the conceptualization of SNRPs as 100 A. Elias

strategic actors in party competition is by now largely accepted by scholars of territorial politics, there remains little work that has explored what kind of strategies these actors deploy and why. This analysis makes a contribution to this literature in two respects. Firstly, it makes an empirical contribution through its identification of different types of strategies employed by CiU and ERC in pursuit of their electoral and political goals. The findings add to the evidence against the conceptualization of SNRPs as “niche” parties that are only interested in, and focus exclusively on, their core business of territorial politics. Rather, the analysis distinguishes between two broad types of strategy pursued: the two-dimensional strategy of ERC (whereby the party gives importance to, and seeks to compete on, the left-right and territorial dimensions simultaneously) and the subsuming strategy of CiU (where all policy issues are framed in terms of, and therefore subsumed into, the territorial dimension). These are two of the strategies proposed by Elias et al. as being available to political parties in two-dimensional competitive settings.81 Within this broad categorization, however, the study’s findings also illustrate that there is scope for SNRPs’ strategies to be dynamic, in response to a range of external and internal factors that lead parties to manipulate their positions on, and the degree of attention given to, different issue dimensions. This framework for explaining the drivers of SNRPs’ strategic behavior constitutes the study’s second theoretical contribution and suggests a set of hypotheses about the determinants of SNRPs’ strategic behavior that future work can test on different cases in different contexts.

FUNDING

The research undertaken for this article was funded by a Nufﬁeld Foundation New Career Fellowship (Ref: NCF/36360).

NOTES Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015

1. Parlament de Catalunya, “Resolucio´ 5/X del Parlament de Catalunya, per la qual s’aprova la Declaracio´ de sobirania i del dret a decidir del poble de Catalunya,” 23 Jan. 2015. http://www.parlament.cat/web/documentacio/altres-versions/resolucions-versions (accessed 28 July 2014). 2. Anwen Elias, “From Marginality to Opposition to Government: Mapping the Ideological Evolu- tion of Plaid Cymru and the Bloque Nacionalista Galego,” Regional and Federal Studies 19(4/5): 533–58 (2009); Sonia Alonso, Challenging the State: Devolution and the Battle for Partisan Credibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Markus Wagner, “Deﬁning and Measuring Niche Parties,” Party Politics 18(6): 854–64 (2012). 3. Montserrat Baras and Jordi Matas Dalmases, “Els partits politics i el sistema de partits,” in Miquel Caminal Badia and Jordi Matas Dalmases, eds., El Sistema Politic de Catalunya (Barcelona: Tecnos, 1998), 161–90. 4. Interviews were conducted by the author between June and July 2012. In order to maintain the anonymity of interviewees, interview material only refers to the date on which the interview was conducted. Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 101

5. For a detailed account of the UDC’s origins, see Oscar Barbera,` Alianzas Pol´ıticas, Relaciones de Poder y Cambio Organizativo (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas,´ 2011). 6. Astrid Barrio, Les Aliances entre Partits: El Cas de CiU (1978–2004) (Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma´ de Barcelona, 2007), 93, 95. 7. Ibid., 126. 8. Ibid., 124. 9. Jordi Pujol, Memories:` Temps de Construir (1980–1993) (Barcelona: La Butxaca, 2009). 10. CDC Interview, 22 June 2012. 11. Carles Castro, “Las claves de las elecciones autonomicas´ catalanas (1980–2010), ” in Joan Marcet and Xavier Casals, eds., Partidos y Elecciones en la Cataluna˜ del Siglo XXI (Barcelona: Institut de Ciencies Pol´ıtiques i Socials, 2011). 12. Francesc Pallares,´ Jose´ Ramon Montero, and Francisco Jose´ Llera, “Non State-Wide Parties in Spain: An Attitudinal Study on Nationalism and Regionalism,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 27(4): 161–62. 13. Jordi Argelaguet, “Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya,” in Anwen Elias and Filippo Tronconie, eds., From Protest to Power: Autonomist Parties and the Challenges of Representation (Vienna: Braumuller, 2011), 155. 14. Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Principis Basics d’Esquerra Republicana De Catalunya (1931). 15. Joan B. Culla, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya 1931–2012 (Barcelona: La Campana, 2013), 51, 55. 16. ERC Interview, 24 June 2012. 17. Culla, Esquerra Republicana, 122. 18. Ibid., 175; La Vanguardia, 11 June 1977, p. 11 and 22 Feb. 1979, p. 6. 19. See, for example, La Vanguardia, 20 Feb. 1979, p. 10. 20. ERC interview 25 June 2012. 21. Equipo de Sociologia Electoral, “Las elecciones parlamentarias catalanas del 20 de marzo de 1980,” Revista Espanola˜ de Pol´ıtica, 14 (1980), 195–219. 22. Baras y Dalmases, “Els partits politics, ” 177. 23. ERC interview 18 June 2012. 24. FundacioJosepIrla,´ 1987 L’Any de la Crida Nacional a Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Barcelona: Fundacio´ Josep Irla, 2012), 6. 25. ERC interview, 25 June 2012. 26. La Vanguardia, 2 March 1992, p. 11. 27. ERC interview 17 June 2012. 28. ERC interview 25 June 2012. Also the declarations of Angel Colom in La Vanguardia,30Oct. 1995, p. 15. 29. Vicent Sanchis, Que` Pensa Josep-Llu´ıs Carod-Rovira (Barcelona: Deria,` 2003), 95–96. 30. Josep Llu´ıs Carod-Rovira, as quoted in La Vanguardia, 25 Sept. 1999. 31. ERC interview 3 July 2012.

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 32. Ibid.; ERC interview 17 June 2012. 33. Elisa Roller and Pieter Van Houten, “A National Party in a Regional Party System,” Regional & Federal Studies 13(3): 1–22 (2003). 34. Matilde Obradors, Carles Pont, Lucia Lopez,´ and Jordi Munoz,˜ “Els partits en campanya: plante- jaments, recursos i estrategies,”` in Francesc Pallares,` Josep Gifreu, and Arantxa Capdevila, eds., De Pujol a Maragall: Comunicacio´ Politica i Comportament Electoral a les Eleccions Catalanes de 2003 (Barcelona: Documenta Universitaria, 2007), 29–54. 35. UDC interview, 15 June 2012. 36. Castro, “‘Las claves,” 35–36. 37. Josep M. Valles,` Una Agenda Imperfecta: Amb Maragall i el Projecte de Canvi (Barcelona: Llibres a l’Abast, 2008), 26, 46; Francesc Pallares´ and Jordi Munoz,˜ “Las elecciones autonomicas´ de Noviembre 2003 en Cataluna,”˜ in Instituto de Derecho Publico,´ ed., Informe Comunidades Autonomas´ 2003 (Barcelona: Instituto de Derecho Publico-Marcial´ Pons, 2003), 775–84. 38. Cesar´ Colino, “Constitutional Change Without Constitutional Reform: Spanish Federalism and the Revision of Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 39(2): 267 (2009). 39. Ibid., 264. 102 A. Elias

40. CDC interview, 29 June 2012. 41. Ibid. 42. CiU, Eleccions Nacionals 2010: Programa de Govern, Projecte de Pais (Barcelona: CiU, 2010). 43. Francesc Pallares,´ “Marc pol´ıtic i resultats de les eleccions del Noviembre del 2010 a Catalunya,” in Carles. Pont and Arantxa Capdevila, eds., La Campanya Fragmentada: ComunicacioPol´ ´ıtica i Com- portament Electoral a les Eleccions Catalanes de 2010 (Barcelona: Documenta Universitaria, 2011). 44. Jordi Argelaguet, “From Autonomism to Independentism: The Growth of Secessionism in Catalonia (2010–2013),” in Jaime Lluch, ed., Constitutionalism and the Politics of Accommodation in Multinational Democracies (London: Palgrave, 2014), 108–131. 45. For example, La Vanguardia, 3 Nov. 2010. 46. UDC Interview, 2 July 2012. 47. CDC interview, 24 June 2012. 48. Castro, “Las claves,” 39. 49. Culla, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, 650–58; Avui, 20–21 Jan. 2007; Avui, 5 June 2007. 50. ERC interview, 24 June 2012. 51. ERC interview, 2 July 2012. 52. Anwen Elias, Edina Szocsik,¨ and Christina Zuber, “Position, Selective Emphasis and Framing: How Parties Deal with a Second Dimension in Competition,” Party Politics (forthcoming). 53. Ian Budge, David Robertson, and Derek Hearl, eds., Ideology, Strategy and Party Change: Spatial Analysis of Post-War Election Programs in 19 Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); John Petrocik, “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study,” American Journal of Political Science 40(3): 825–50 (1996). 54. Bonnie Meguid, Party Competition Between Unequals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 26. 55. Eliseo Aja, Estado Autonomico´ y Reforma Federal (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2014), 14. 56. Colino, “Constitutional Change,” 264–65. 57. Aja, Estado Autonomico,´ 56–61. 58. See Field, this collection. 59. Colino, “Constitutional Change,” 267. 60. See Mees, this collection. 61. Aja, Estado Autonomico´ , 86–89; Argelaguet, “From Autonomism to Independentism,” 117. 62. Aja, Estado Autonomico´ , 88. 63. Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Peter Mortensen, “Who Sets the Agenda and Who Responds to it in the Danish Parliament?: A New Model of Issue Competition and Agenda-Setting,” European Journal of Political Research 49(2): 257–81 (2010). 64. Argelaguet, “From Autonomism to Independentism,” 120. 65. See Crameri, this collection. 66. Castro, “Las claves,” 34. 67. Cesar Colino, Ignacio Molina, and Angustias Hombrado, “Responding to the new Europe and the Crisis: The Adaptation of Subnational Governments’ Strategies and its Effects on Intergovernmental

Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015 Relations in Spain,” Regional & Federal Studies 24(3): 281–99 (2014). 68. CDC 29 June 2012. 69. La Vanguardia, 5 Nov. 2014. 70. Sebastian Balfour, “The Reinvention of Spanish Conservatism: The Popular Party since 1989,” in Sebastian Balfour, ed., The Politics of Contemporary Spain (London: Routledge, 2005), 147. 71. Colino et al., “Responding to the new Europe,” 294. 72. See Muro, this collection. 73. Equipo de Sociologica Electoral, “Las Elecciones al Parlamento de Cataluna,”˜ 219. 74. Herbert Kitschelt, The Transformation of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 75. Oscar Barbera` and Astrid Barrio, “Convergencia` i Unio,”´ in Anwen Elias and Filippo Tronconie, eds., From Protest to Power: Autonomist Parties and the Challenges of Representation (Vienna: Braumuller, 2011). 76. CDC Interview, 29 June 2012. 77. UDC interview, 2 July 2012. Catalan Nationalist Parties’ Strategic Behavior 103

78. FundacioJosepIrla,´ 1987 L’Any de la Crida, 6; Culla, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, 305. 79. Jordi Argelaguet, “Esquerra Republicana,” 159. 80. Jordi Argelaguet, Jesus´ Maestro, and Moises` Amoros,´ “Analisi` sociologica` dels assistents al XIX Congres´ Nacional d’ERC, Barcelona 1993,” Papers 54 : 187–200 (1998). 81. Elias et al., “Position, selective emphasis and framing.” Anwen Elias is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. She is the author of Minority Nationalist Par- ties and European Integration (London: Routledge, 2009) and co-editor of From Protest to Power: Autonomist Parties and the Challenges of Representation (Vienna: Braumller, 2011). Her most recent research (funded by the Nufﬁeld Foundation) examines the role of political parties in driving processes of decentralization, and party adaptation to territorial re-structuring, in the UK and Spain. Her work has been published in West European Politics, Party Politics,andRegional and Federal Studies. Downloaded by [Anwen Elias] at 13:54 16 March 2015