SPAIN

Although meetings between Prime Minister Zapatero and strategic planning staff are not frequent, the Prime Minister’s Private Office (PM’s Private Office) is a large advisory department which includes a research and analysis unit, and more importantly the Economic Office of the Prime Minister (formerly a separate department, but merged with the PM’s Private Office in 2008). The director of the Economic Office is also the national coordinator for the implementation of the National Reform Program (the so-called post-Lisbon EU 2020 Strategy), and is thus quite influential in defining mid-term Spanish economic policy and goals regarding job creation, education, R&D, poverty and climate change.
The cabinet office or Ministry of the Presidency (Ministerio de la Presidencia), whose minister is also the first deputy prime minister, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, whose minister is also the second deputy prime minister, are responsible for some strategic tasks as well, as they play a coordinating role with regard to the other ministries. Furthermore, during the preparation of Spain’s turn in the rotating EU presidency (which took place in the first half of 2010), the Spanish government created a special unit and reinforced the horizontal powers of the Secretariat of State for the EU to define the strategic framework for the EU Council during 2010 and 201, along with the Belgian and the Hungarian governments, the other two member states of the EU presidency trio.

Non-governmental academic experts do not have a dominant influence on Spanish decision-making. There are no formal and systematic meetings between external specialists and the government as a whole. Nor does the government rely on experts for advice on matters of political strategy.
However, university scholars and other researchers are often summoned by line ministries for consultation on economic and technical issues. This is particularly common as legislative bills are initially being drafted, and as the impact of proposed legislation is being assessed. On the other hand, non-governmental experts whiled considerable influence through debate in the media. Moreover, academic experts are often recruited for senior government positions, although this may be considered internal rather than external influence. Many members of the government in fact come from the academic world (a pattern more typical when the socialist party is in office, since the conservatives tend rather to select ministers and top officials from among businessmen and career civil servants close to the party). For example, just to mention some of the appointments made in 2009, Ángel Gabilondo is a philosopher who presided over a public university before being chosen as minister of education, while the new secretary of state for the economy, José Manuel Campa, taught in a prestigious business school and had no previous ties with the government or the socialist party.

The cabinet or government office (Ministerio de la Presidencia) and the prime minister’s office (Gabinete del Presidente del Gobierno) are the administrative departments associated with the Spanish premiership that are tasked with evaluating line ministry proposals from a political point of view. These two bodies are from a functional and even physical point of view nearly one, and form the very powerful political core of the executive (often called the Moncloa, after the name of the main palace hosting the prime minister in the outskirts of Madrid). The economic dimension of ministerial initiatives are evaluated by the Economic Office of the Prime Minister (formally joined to the PM’s Private Officein 2008) and by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, whose minister also acts as the second deputy prime minister. In general, these different units have ample staff with specific policy expertise, whose task is to substantively assess draft bills and other important sectoral initiatives to ensure they are compatible with the government’s strategic and budgetary priorities.
The internal organization of the PM’s Private Officevaguely reflects the various ministerial portfolios, although without achieving a comprehensive policy expertise that enables perfect oversight throughout the executive. Moreover, evaluations made by the advisors working in the PM’s Private Officeare not truly independent, since most of them are insiders. Nevertheless, and despite the extensive constitutional and political strength of the Spanish premiership, these units enjoy only limited administrative resources. Their relatively small size is perhaps explained by the hierarchical, single-party nature of the Spanish government, in which it is not particularly necessary to monitor sectoral ministers from the center.

Though the return of materials earmarked for cabinet meetings is not a frequent occurrence, the government office (Ministerio de la Presidencia) and the prime minister’s office are do have this power, applicable to all items on the basis of either formal or substantive considerations. The head of the government office (who is also the first deputy prime minister), which since 2004 has been Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega, can reject initiatives in her position as chair of committee that prepares Council of Ministers meetings (the Comisión General de Subsecretarios y Secretarios de Estado). The powerful director of the PM’s Private Office, José Enrique Serrano, can also return items, but only de facto, taking advantage of his proximity to the prime minister. This is typically done through informal instructions to the sectoral department responsible for the item. Finally, the minister for economy and finance, who is responsible for coordination on economic matters and chairs an important specialized cabinet subcommittee (the Comisión Delegada del Gobierno para Asuntos Económicos), also has also the capacity to accept or return any item submitted by a ministry on economic policy or budgetary grounds. Initiatives subject to this evaluation and possible return for reconsideration include draft bills and even internal appointments.

Although line ministries are formally autonomous from the government office and the Prime Minister’s Private Office (PM’s Private Office), these core executive bodies are regularly briefed by the ministries on new developments affecting the preparation of policy proposals. This consultation does not only focus on formal or technical issues, but on political and strategic considerations as well. This process takes place weekly, since representatives of all ministries gather at the cabinet meeting preparatory committee (Comisión General de Subsecretarios y Secretarios de Estado), which is held every Wednesday, chaired by the government office head and first deputy prime minister. Advisers from the PM’s Private Office also participate in this committee and in other specialized cabinet committees.
However, even if the primary role of the government office and the PM’s Private Office is horizontal coordination, their administrative resources are limited, and the first deputy prime minister and prime minister’s advisers cannot be briefed on the whole range of government activity. Therefore, they normally focus on each ministerial department’s most important sectoral developments, as well as the prime minister’s particular interests. These interests include foreign, EU and defense policy; economic measures associated with the financial crisis; reforms to the regional statutes of autonomy; relations with the unions; and justice and home affairs. Consultation between the PM’s Private Office and the rest of the government could be compromised if line ministers fear that the prime minister and his advisers might as an unwelcome filter of ministry proposals. Equally, line departments may seek to influence the prime minister’s advisers in order to secure backing at a higher level. Nevertheless, all legal proposals are sufficiently vetted by the government office before they are drafted as laws through: (1) the setting of the cabinet meeting agenda and (2) the centralization of all legislative relations with the parliament.

Apart from the weekly cabinet meeting, Spain’s only cabinet committee composed exclusively of ministers is the so-called Foreign Policy Council (Consejo de Política Exterior) which meets no more than twice a year. This council is governed by royal decrees 1412/2000 and 1389/2007.
Similarly, there is not a strong tradition of ministerial committees (composed of several ministers and individual non-cabinet members such as secretaries of state), in the Spanish administration. With the exception of the Committee for Economic Affairs, no other committee meets regularly or helps to prepare the Council of Ministers meetings. From 2004 to 2009, only other two committees existed, but since April 17, 2009 (and according to the Royal Decree 639/2009), there are in theory eight specialized ones (known formally as Comisiones Delegadas del Gobierno). These ministerial committees respectively deal with economic affairs, emergency situations, relations with autonomous regions, scientific research and technological development, immigration, climate change, gender equality, and development aid. Until December 2010, a ministerial Committee for the Spanish Presidency of the EU also existed.
The ministerial Committee for Economic Affairs normally meets on Thursdays to review and schedule economic or budgetary interministerial coordination. This committee is chaired by the minister for economy and finance (who is also second deputy prime minister). The other members of this committee are five ministers with responsibilities in economic areas (including territorial policy, infrastructure, employment and immigration, industry and trade, and environment and agriculture), the secretaries of state for economy, finance and budgeting, and the civil service, and the director of the PM’s Private Office. A representative from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the secretary of state for the European Union are also summoned when EU issues are discussed. This committee effectively filters out or settles issues a day before the cabinet meeting, but only discusses economic issues.

Senior ministry officials (the Spanish junior ministers, known as secretaries of state, and leading civil servants in the 17 ministries, known as undersecretaries) effectively prepare the cabinet meetings. They meet every Wednesday in a preparatory committee (the so-called Comisión General de Subsecretarios y Secretarios de Estado), two days before the weekly Friday Council of Ministers meeting. All issues arrive in time to be reviewed and filtered first by this committee. The government office, directed by a minister who is also the first deputy prime minister, chairs the meetings of this preparatory committee in which all draft bills, all appointments and any other ministerial proposals are discussed and scheduled as a part of the cabinet agenda. The government office also collects and circulates all relevant documents for the cabinet meeting among line ministers.
A provisional agenda (known as the “black index”) is published a week before the cabinet meeting. On Tuesday mornings, senior PM’s Private Office officials assess the relative importance of agenda items on the black index and identify where there are likely to be divergent positions. Thus, the Wednesday meetings of the preparatory committee perform an important gatekeeping function in returning problematic proposals to the appropriate line ministry and forwarding the remaining proposals to the cabinet (now classified into two indexes: the green index, which covers ongoing administrative matters, and the red index, for issues which are more political either by nature or because a lack of ministerial consensus). Nevertheless, although the senior ministry officials effectively filter out and settle almost all issues, allowing the cabinet to focus on strategic policy debates, the truth is that important political discussions in the Spanish cabinet are rare.

Although departmental fragmentation is high in Spain, or perhaps precisely because of this, there is no tradition of interministerial administrative coordination. To be sure, the role of high-ranking civil servants (normally the so-called subdirectores generales) is crucial in the preparation of policy proposals within every line ministry, but their subsequent involvement in horizontal coordination with other ministries is very limited. In fact, and as a consequence of the difficulties of interministerial coordination, every ministry tends to act within its area of competence or jurisdiction, avoiding proposals which may involve other ministries. Although many administrative committees formally exist, in practice these committees do not coordinate the drafting of policy proposals or decision-making between different ministries. As administrative committees do not tend to work efficiently, they have fallen by the wayside and now usually simply facilitate the exchange of information or try to settle jurisdictional conflicts.

In Spain, the weakness of formal coordination among ministry civil servants (see Line Ministry Civil Servants) is to some extent compensated for by relatively effective informal procedures. When administrative coordination is needed because interministerial problems are real and cannot be solved by invoking vertical hierarchy, informal contacts or meetings between officials of the various ministries involved are organized. Many policy proposals can in fact be coordinated in this fashion (ad hoc working groups are rare but may also be created). As Spanish senior civil servants are clustered into different specialized bureaucratic corps, informal mechanisms rely often on the fact that officials involved in the coordination may belong to the same corps or share a network of old colleagues.
At a more political level, informal coordination procedures include weekly meetings of an inner core of ministers politically close to the prime minister. These meetings, held every Monday morning have been dubbed “matins” by journalists, and among others include the three deputy prime ministers and the ministers of the interior and for Infrastructure. Relations with the party governing structure are channeled through the prime minister himself (who is secretary general of the PSOE) and post-2009 Minister for Infrastructure José Blanco, the party’s deputy secretary general.

In July 2009, general regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) were established for the first time in Spain by Royal Decree 1083/2009. Previously, Law 30/2003 had already introduced a gender impact assessment (GIA). The new law facilitated the RIA process by specifying a general procedure to be applied across content area. The decree emphasized the contents of RIAs performed on draft legislation must address economic and budgetary considerations as well as any other relevant aspects, such as environmental impact, gender equality concerns, and any possible effect for disabled people.
Because this is a relatively new obligation, it is difficult to determine precisely how effectively impact assessments have been performed thus far. With respect to gender impact assessments, longer application does not necessarily reflect satisfactory results. In some occasions, the GIA has been efficiently used; in others, it seems to have been a formal requirement fulfilled by the public administration by simply asserting the legislation would not produce any differential impact from the perspective of gender.

RIA has just been introduced in Spain, and it is not yet possible to assess how effectively this activity deals with needs analysis.

RIA has just been introduced in Spain, and it is not yet possible to assess the extent to which it effectively considers alternative options.

Until the emergence of the economic crisis in 2008, and the realization of its serious consequences in terms of the public deficit and the destruction of jobs, the Spanish government held the engagement in social dialogue high on its agenda. This took place most prominently with the two main trade unions UGT and CCOO, but also with the leading business association CEOE and other civil society organizations. However, though facilitating acceptance of government policies among social actors continues to be an important goal, its main priorities have changed to focus on the launch of structural reforms and adjustment measures (affecting the labor market, the pension system and public employee salaries) which are strongly opposed by the unions. Thus, the government is becoming less successful at motivating economic and social actors to support its policy, and by the close of the survey period in May 2010, UGT and CCOO had begun signaling that a general strike was likely.
Regardless of this general trend, line ministries still tend to consult with the economic and social actors important in their various sectoral areas, both private (businesses, trade unions, NGOs, Catholic Church associations, environmental groups) and public (other ministries, autonomous regions, parties), in the course of making decisions. The extent and success of this consultation in preparing policy initiatives depends on the particular sector. In some cases, consultation and exchange of views is institutionalized through advisory bodies that exist in various policy areas.

The government tries to speak with one voice. A communication office (Secretaría de Estado de Comunicación) exists within the government office, led by First Deputy Primer Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, who also serves as the government’s primary spokesperson. The communication office is responsible for coordinating all the government’s information policy both internally (through a consultation procedure with the ministries, and by providing a press service for the entire public administration) and also externally (by informing the mass media of the government’s activities). The communication office and the spokesperson try to conduct coherent communication planning (and ministries tend to align their statements and press releases with government strategy). In addition, in August 2007 the government unified its institutional image under a single logo that must be used in the communication campaigns of all ministries.
Nevertheless, contradictions do occur from time to time. Two of the most important examples include the absolute lack of coordination between the ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs with respect to the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Kosovo (announced in March 2009 as a consequence of Spain’s opposition to Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia), and several declarations by the minister of employment and immigration on the possible contents of the labor market reform, which were subsequently denied by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Elena Salgado. In addition, Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs Fernández de la Vega, who has performed the double role of governmental communication coordinator and spokesperson since 2004, has somewhat diminished her political profile within the executive in the last two years.

The Spanish government has been relatively successful in implementing its major policy objectives. Two main obstacles stand in the way of better performance: the weak mechanisms of coordination among autonomous regions (i.e., the 17 autonomous regions are responsible for implementation in many policy areas, and the government cannot fully guarantee the achievement of its objectives) and the fragmentation of sectoral policy networks (which include private groups and even line ministries more oriented toward their individual institutional or ministerial interests than to governmental strategic objectives).
Despite these constraints, internal executive power has gradually been redistributed in favor of the prime minister and the generalist ministries during the last 35 years, thus creating conditions under which a coherent set of major objectives can be developed, and policy priorities successfully achieved at the national level. This centralization and strengthening of coordination has been used to promote a transformation of the welfare capitalist model in Spain, which was linked to extreme fiscal austerity and dirigisme until 1975. The growing power and autonomy of the government as a whole has also benefited from EU membership since 1986.

In principle, both from a legal and a political point of view, the organization of the Spanish government provides very strong incentives for all ministers to implement the overall government program rather than seeking the sectoral interests of their individual departments. The prime minister’s powers over personnel is extraordinary; not only because of articles 99 and 100 of the constitution, which stipulate that parliamentary confidence rests personally with him and his comprehensive government program (all other members of the cabinet being appointed and dismissed by the king at the individual prime minister’s proposal), but also as a consequence of the fact that all Spanish prime ministers in the last 30 years have simultaneously been the strong leaders of very disciplined parties (and all have presided over single-party governments). Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is no exception, and has the capacity to impose his views in the cabinet and party meetings he chairs, and to dismiss those ministers he does not consider able or willing to implement the government’s program.
However, the fact that the Spanish government’s hierarchical organizational devices provide these potentially strong incentives does not necessarily ensure that ministers always subordinate their sectoral self-interest to the general interests of the government. In fact, perhaps with the exception of former Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Pedro Solbes (who was critical of some prime ministerial economic decisions), many recent dismissals were motivated neither by a lack of compliance nor by improper implementation of the government’s program. The reasons behind retaining a given cabinet member are not clearly connected to policy evaluation, and in fact, an amicable relationship with the sectoral network of interests around the line ministry is usually a very practical way to receive a positive judgment from the prime minister.

The cabinet or government office (Ministerio de la Presidencia) and the PM’s Private Office (Gabinete del Presidente del Gobierno) shadow the activities of all line ministries, but this monitoring by the GO or the prime minister cannot completely guarantee that no sectoral ministry will ever prioritize vertical over horizontal interests.
The government office monitors the activities of line ministries only through weekly meetings, while the PM’s Private Office oversees the flow of political and sectoral information, and keeps the prime minister abreast of the activities of all government line ministries. The PM’s Private Office thus plays a key role in interdepartmental monitoring, but its resources are limited and it has no direct involvement in coordination (only the prime minister or the deputy prime ministers are entitled to play this role).

Until 2006, the Spanish administration did not have true executive agencies, although around 150 semiautonomous public bodies (formally known as organismos autónomos, or entidades públicas empresariales) existed. The regulation on state agencies for the improvement of the public services (Law 28/2006) allows the transformation of those administrative organs into genuine executive agencies (nine agencies have already been created in areas such as scientific research, migration, theatre and music, meteorology, development cooperation and air transport security). Thanks to this legislation, agencies are now able to function more flexibly, with increased administrative and financial autonomy and fewer bureaucratic constraints. The relationship with the government is maintained through programs planned throughout the year. The government exercises full control of these agencies by monitoring the agencies’ level of program execution. Agency funding depends on performance, so agencies have adequate incentive to implement programs. Furthermore, the recently created AEVAL (an executive agency itself, dealing with public policy evaluation and services quality) prepares an annual report for parliament that evaluates the agencies’ activities (first report was published in January 2009).
Despite these improvements, the majority of old executive bodies are not covered by this new regulation, and the process of transforming them into agencies was stopped in April 2010, following generalized cuts in public spending. Ministries can generally monitor the activities of their subordinate semiautonomous bodies to ensure they act in accordance with government policies. However, ministers sometimes have difficulties in effectively monitoring the largest and most important ones (such as the National Institute of Social Security in the case of the Ministry of Employment and Immigration, or the Taxation Agency in the case of the Ministry of Economy and Finance).

Although Spain can be considered a semi-federal system, the very high degree of regional decentralization has been occasionally associated with deficiencies in the process through by which tasks are delegated. Thus, competences have in some cases been transferred to the regions in the absence of adequate funding sources. The existence of such unfunded mandates may indicate the lack of a previous impact assessment (as, for example, during the difficult implementation of the ambitious 2006 law to support care of dependent people). However, this in some cases may be part of a deliberate political aim by the center to weaken the new autonomous governments by reducing their spending discretion. It is also true that since the 1980s, and particularly since the late 1990s, regions have enjoyed some power to raise revenue in order to counterbalance this insufficiency of funding, but they have tended not to use this power for fear of political costs.
In December 2009, the general funding system of 15 of the 17 autonomous Spanish regions was profoundly revised (the Basque Country and Navarre have a distinctive privileged system of funding, since they collect all taxes and then contribute to the general expenses of the state by transferring a fixed amount to the central government). Because of the 2009 reform in the general system, the 15 regional governments affected will receive roughly an additional €11.7 billion to fulfill both their independent devolved powers and the delegated tasks. While the main force behind this change was the pressure exerted by the more affluent and populated regions (and particularly by Catalonia, after the approval of its new statute of autonomy in 2006), no region rejected the final agreement reached through bilateral and multilateral negotiations (however, the conservative People’s Party and some peripheral nationalist parties voted against the reform in the final parliamentary vote). The debate on the criteria by which solidarity funding should be allocated between regions and territories continues to be intense in Spain.
After this reform, the central government has increased the capacity of the richer and more populous regions to fulfill most of their tasks adequately (giving the autonomous governments more access to taxes collected in their territories as well as to new revenue-raising powers). At the same time, interregional redistribution to the poorer, less populous or outermost regions has been preserved, taking into consideration a variety of factors.
In practice, however, this funding system may produce growing divergence, depending on each region’s revenue-collecting capacity. For their part, local governments (with responsibility for roughly 15% of total public spending in Spain) are without doubt inadequately funded given their responsibilities, but municipalities have less political power than regions to improve the system.

The central government usually enables the 17 regional governments to use their substantial autonomy fully and (as an additional feature of the semi-federal nature of the highly decentralized Spanish system), the Constitutional Court protects the regions in cases of formal or de facto unconstitutional interference. As discussed above (see Task Funding), the decentralization process has not always been characterized by loyalty to the center, and in some cases the central government has reduced the scope of discretion of the new autonomous governments (at times inadvertently, but also in deliberate attempts to weaken them politically).
From 2008 to 2010, some regions (particularly Catalonia and the Basque Country) complained about several initiatives of the center that had reduced their economic capacity and political autonomy. For example, the active involvement of the central governmental in policy areas such as housing, care of dependent people or even culture has been criticized. Fiscal measures (such as some aspects of the Spanish Economy and Employment Stimulation (Plan E), or the recently approved restrictions on regional public deficit and public debt), the strengthening of the central level government thanks to the EU integration process, and an expansive interpretation of what framework legislation involves (even including administrative regulations) are often mentioned by the regions as having undermined their autonomy. In the last two years, some laws passed by the central parliament encroach on or overlap with regional laws, leading to political conflicts which ultimately will have to be resolved by the Constitutional Court. Nevertheless, the limitations imposed by the government on regional autonomy may be in accordance with the constitution, while tending toward continued centralization.

The Spanish central government is in principle committed to ensuring that regional governments meet uniform national standards for public services, but it is not completely effective in this aim. In some cases, regional governments design and implement their own public policies without following clearly defined national standards. As a result, there may be some variation in the quality of public services offered by Spain’s regions. In general, minimum standards are set by basic national legislation, but are not afterward enforced. In fact, instruments of enforcement vary greatly according to policy field, with education and the pension system perhaps being the best defined areas, while housing, family policy and social care are among the most heterogeneous. The formal administrative method for monitoring the provision of services by the autonomous regions through supervision (the so-called Alta Inspección) has not been effective.

The Spanish government has largely adapted its domestic structures to agreements made at the international and supranational level, although this adaptation has not always been implemented effectively. The most important impact has been produced by European Union membership, which has included such significant developments as the monetary union, the internal market, access to EU funds, the Lisbon Agenda (now renamed the EU 2020 Strategy), the forthcoming launch of the External Action Service and the different sectoral aspects of EU law (competition, environment, transport, justice and home affairs, etc.). The coordination and adaptation of the Spanish government to the EU is mainly the task of the Secretariat of State for the EU (an efficient department within the less efficient Ministry of Foreign Affairs), which successfully managed the country’s turn at the rotating EU Council presidency during the first half of 2010.
For obvious reasons, and considering the economic predominance of the EU agenda, the Prime Minister’s Economic Office (dealing with the post-Lisbon agenda) and the Ministry for Economy and Finance also have important responsibilities in terms of cooperation among ministries on EU matters. More generally, all line ministries have to some extent Europeanized their organizations, although most ministries lack units dealing specifically with the European Union, and interministerial coordination among them is weak. Links with subnational levels of government (since the European Union has a strong impact in many policy areas handled by the autonomous regions) are made through the network of intergovernmental councils or conferences (conferencias sectoriales), but this system offers considerable room for improvement if it is to better address the effects of the European Union on policy formulation and implementation. Nevertheless, the latest Internal Market Scoreboard, issued in March 2010, showed that Spain had decreased its deficit with respect to the transposition of EU directives (less than 1% of directives had not been transposed to the Spanish domestic legal order), achieving its best result ever.

The government has also responded to other international developments (such as NATO membership and the Kyoto Protocol). In 2009, it created the Secretariat of State for Climate Change within the Ministry for Environment and Agriculture, as well as the Coordination Unit for International Terrorism some years before.

Since 2008, Spain has actively participated in the international coordination of joint reform initiatives such as the response to the financial and economic crisis (as one of the leading EU member states, and as a guest at the G-20 summits held in Washington, London, Pittsburg and Toronto). It has participated in international forums and actions responding to challenges such as climate change (including the 2009 Copenhagen summit), energy supply, illegal migration (in part through bilateral agreements in Northern Africa), global terrorism (mainly through transatlantic relations), and peacekeeping (with Spanish troops deployed as a part of UN, NATO and CFSP missions in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Somalia, and until 2009, Kosovo). This international engagement was particularly active during the second half of 2009 and the first half of 2010, coinciding with the preparation for and exercise of the country’s EU Council presidency.

In recent years, the Spanish government has actively favored a multilateralist approach, but has also pursued a specific set of goals through its international cooperation (including economic development in the poorest countries of Latin America and Africa, institutional strengthening of weak states, a death penalty moratorium, gender parity, access to water, etc.). This broad agenda is among the current government’s most prominent priorities, and after several years of increases in spending on bilateral and multilateral initiatives, Spain reached its highest level ever in international development aid during 2008 and 2009 (around €5 billion, or 0.45% of its GDP), the seventh-highest level of aid among the world’s donor countries according to the OECD annual report. In some initiatives (such as humanitarian aid after the 2010 Haiti and Chile earthquakes, or the United Nations Development Fund for Women) Spain is even the world leader. However, despite Spain’s relatively recent democratization and the high international reputation of its transition to democracy, the country is not particularly active in supporting democracy abroad or in adopting a hard-line behavior vis-à-vis authoritarian regimes.

At the diplomatic level, Spain cosponsors the UN-affiliated “Alliance of Civilizations“ initiative, and generally acts as a medium-sized world power with global interests, although these are concentrated in the Western Mediterranean and Latin America. In the latter region, Spain takes advantage of its cultural, historical and more recent economic and business links (institutionalized today in the Ibero-American Summits), playing a fundamental role as a bridge between the European Union and Latin America.

The capacity to formulate institutional governing arrangements in Spain are both constitutionally and de facto concentrated in the powerful prime minister. Without any legal constraint, he personally decides on the organization of the core executive and the portfolios of ministries. This means that an overloaded prime minister cannot devote much attention to the most effective way to manage those arrangements, and can monitor only sporadically to ensure the current ones are working. Though Prime Minister Zapatero has introduced alterations in ministries’ portfolios, names and jurisdictions, often without a previous impact assessment, the internal structure of the administration has remained almost unchanged, as have the institutional procedures of governing.
The three deputy prime ministers (respectively dealing with political, economic and territorial affairs) may also contribute to self-monitoring, but they do not genuinely focus on ensuring the appropriateness of governing mechanisms. They are embedded in a highly legalistic framework, which is very difficult to transform lacking strong political will. In fact, a very important reform initiative (the “Joan Prats report,” after the name of the expert who chaired a government working group on this issue) was not even considered for discussion once submitted to the government in 2008.

The main changes in the institutional governing arrangements during 2008 – 2010 were related to Zapatero’s two important reorganizations in ministerial portfolios. The rules of procedure and the work formats of the cabinet, the core executive, the PM’s Private Office and the ministerial advisory staffs, as well as the management of relations with parliament and the conduct of public communication, have been nearly untouched. One reorganization of note was the formal merger of the Prime Minister’s Economic Office and the PM’s Private Office in 2008. The ministerial committees were also rearranged in 2009, but the new configuration in nine committees, most of them without regular meetings, is very recent and has not yet had an impact on governing.
The prime minister’s tendency to introduce alterations in ministerial portfolios, names and jurisdictions cannot be assessed as positive from the perspective of improved capacity or a long-term orientation. In 2008, the Ministry of Environment was merged with the Ministry of Agriculture, while the Ministry of Education received jurisdiction over social policy and sports (although only one year later, the social policy area was relocated to the Ministry of Health, and the management of sports was peculiarly placed under the direct responsibility of the prime minister). Two new ministries were also created in 2008 (the ministries of Gender Equality and Science & Technology) while the experienced Ministry of Public Administration disappeared in 2009, divided into a unit dealing with civil service policy (given to the government office) and a new ministerial department on territorial policy, whose minister was ranked as the third deputy prime minister for party political considerations rather than for organizational strategy reasons. None of these changes, which were made without a previous assessment based on expert opinion or external advice, have substantially improved the capacity of the government to take and implement political decisions, although there has not been a noticeable loss either (in fact, after every change in portfolios, the internal structure of the administration has remained almost unchanged).
It is interesting to note that even given the government’s comparatively weak parliamentary position after the 2008 general elections, the unit dealing with parliamentary relations (the Secretaría de Estado de Asuntos Constitucionales y Parlamentarios) has not been reinforced. The process of transforming the semiautonomous administrative bodies into executive agencies was also stopped in April 2010, and the decision to reduce some high-ranking administrative units (secretaries of state and directors general) was motivated only by the need to curtail public spending.

In general, most Spanish citizens are little interested in politics (including the details of government composition or power struggles), and are thus little aware of specific policies as well. According to a variety of polls, levels of interest in politics have remained stubbornly low, and expressions of complete disinterest in politics are more widespread among Spaniards than among citizens of any other West European country. As an approximate average of different results found in several national and regional opinion polls conducted recently by the official sociological research institute (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, CIS), only about 5% of Spaniards declare themselves to be very attentive to political events (and 25% to be somewhat interested), while 40% describe themselves as little interested and 30% do not care at all. Less than 20% of Spaniards follow politics by reading newspapers regularly, as compared to a Western European average that fluctuates near 65%.

According to Article 109 of the Spanish constitution and the Standing Orders of the Congress (Article 44, No. 1), both the plenary and the parliamentary committees may request any kind of information or help they may need from the ministries, or from any other authorities of the central public administration or the autonomous regions “for the better fulfillment of the parliamentary duties.” Requests for any such desired information are made through the speaker.

The information and documentation requested from the government must be made available within a period not exceeding 30 days and in the most suitable manner to the applicant. If this is not done, “the legally justified reasons preventing the supply of such information” must be provided. This legal margin allows the government not to deliver some important documents (for example, on the grounds of secrecy) or to deliver them incomplete or late to the parliamentary committee. Furthermore, although every member of a committee is in principle entitled to request any information or document, they only can do it “with the prior knowledge of their respective parliamentary group.” Access to documents may also vary depending on the ministry.

Nevertheless, documents are generally delivered in time and in full, with only some occasional de facto ad-hoc limitations.

Article 110 of the Spanish constitution and Article 44, No. 2 of the Standing Orders of the Congress (the lower chamber of the Spanish parliament) state that parliamentary committees “may summon members of the government” to ask them questions. This also means that ministers and top officials are entitled to attend committee meetings and to be heard, and they may also request to be allowed to attend. The only legal limitation to this mechanism of control is that an individual deputy cannot initiate a summons (this requires 70 deputies or one-fifth of the members of a committee). Initiatives are subsequently voted on (in the Bureau of Congress and the Board of Spokesmen), and once approved, ministers “shall appear before such committee” to report on matters relating to their respective departments.
Thus, ministers are obliged to attend and to answer questions raised in these hearings. Of course, the party supporting the government, which is always disciplined and easily able to get a majority of votes, may reject some of the requirements made by the opposition, but in practice the mechanism of summoning ministers is used very often, with rejections being quite rare (although the timing of the minister’s appearance can be controversial for some sensitive and very politicized topics). Ministers are regularly summoned by the committees overseeing their policy areas (see Task Area Coincidence), and it is even quite common for ministers themselves (who have parliamentary advisors in their private offices) to voluntarily request attendance at a hearing in order to report to the parliament on decisions or events affecting their policy concerns.
In conjunction with the preparation of the 2010 Spanish EU Council presidency, the number of appearances by ministers and other officials to provide in-depth information concerning their European agendas significantly increased.

The standing orders of the Congress and the Senate state that parliamentary committees may request, through their respective speakers, “the attendance of persons competent in the subject-matter for the purposes of reporting to and advising the committee.” University scholars, think-tank experts and other researchers are sometimes invited by the parliament for consultation on specialized issues. In principle, the rights of parliamentary committees to invite experts are not limited by any legal or de facto constraint, although it is also true that it remains unclear whether a person who is not a member of the government can refuse a request to attend a regular parliamentary committee session (in the case of inquiry committees set up to investigate specific questions, it is set in law that “any person” summoned must give evidence and information).

There is nearly exact correspondence between the number and task areas of the 17 ministries and those of the Congress’ 19 regular legislative committees. In fact, the restructuring of ministerial portfolios in 2008 and 2009 was immediately mirrored by a reorganization of the composition and names of the permanent legislative committees in both the Congress and the Senate. The only exceptions are the International Development Committee, which does not match up with any particular ministry, and the split of the task areas for the Ministry of Economy and Finance into two different committees: Budget, and Economy and Finance. For all the others, each parliamentary committee corresponds to one existing ministry. In the case of sports (an area under the direct responsibility of the prime minister), the parliamentary committee in charge is Education and Sports, which also oversees the Ministry of Education. The Constitutional Committee, apart from other functions as its name denotes, monitors the activities of the government office (Ministerio de la Presidencia), which has had responsibility for public administration policy-making since 2009. The Senate has 21 regular parliamentary legislative committees (the two additional ones deal with autonomous regions and local government).

Nonetheless, even if the task areas of parliamentary committees and ministries fully coincide, the legislature fails to monitor ministries effectively on the basis of factors which are connected to the much broader structural features of the Spanish parliamentary system such as the electoral system, party discipline or the constitutional powers of the executive.

Article 136 of the Spanish constitution regulates the audit office (Tribunal de Cuentas or, literally, Court of Audit) as the organ that exercises the function of auditing the state’s accounts and the financial management of the whole public sector. This office is accountable primarily to the parliament, although is not an integral or exclusive part of it. The offices’ members are appointed by a qualified majority agreement of the two main parties, and thus may not be sufficiently independent, particularly when auditing the political parties’ accounts (see Party Financing).
State and public sector accounts are submitted annually to the audit office, which sends an annual statement of its auditing activities to the parliament, identifying where applicable any infringements that in its opinion may have been committed, or any liabilities that may have been incurred. According to the 2009 statement, 90.9% of all state public sector organizations (including the central public administration, the executive agencies, and the state-owned enterprises) delivered their 2008 accounts to the audit office for inspection, although only 48.9% did so within the ostensible deadline
The audit function, which politically connects the audit office with the parliament, refers to the subjection of the public sector to the principles of legality, efficiency and economy, in connection with the execution of the revenues and expenses budgets. The results of the office’s procedures are expressed in reports, motions and notes addressed to the parliament, through the Joint Committee of the Congress and the Senate for Relations with the Audit Office.

Article 54 of the Spanish constitution establishes the Office of the Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) as a high commissioner’s office, whose holder is appointed by the legislature to respond to requests, and to protect and defend basic rights and public freedoms on behalf of all citizens. He or she is authorized to supervise the activities of the government and administration, expressly forbidding any arbitrariness. The ombudsman is elected by both houses of parliament for a five-year period (thus, not coinciding with the legislative term of four years) by a qualified majority of 3/5. The office is not subjected to any imperative mandate, does not receive instructions from any authority (including the parliament), and performs its functions autonomously. The officeholder enjoys immunity and inviolability during his or her time in the post. During the period under review, the ombudsman appeared several times in parliament.
The Ombudsman’s mandate covers all central government authorities, the autonomous regions (the Constitutional Court recently annulled an article of Catalonia’s 2006 statute of autonomy rejecting the capacity of the Spanish Ombudsman to monitor the Catalan autonomous government) as well as local governments. The Ombudsman is authorized to appeal before the Constitutional Court and may also initiate any habeas corpus proceeding. The ombuds office publishes annual reports for the parliament and “monographic reports” on particular themes, as well as recommendations regarding the public administration’s legal duties toward citizens. According to the last annual report, submitted to the parliament in October 2009, the Ombudsman handled nearly 25,000 complaint cases; most of them related to the functioning of the Spanish judiciary, the worrying growth of the prison population, some cases of alleged abuse by the police, the need for better protection of undocumented migrants, inefficiencies in education grants and scholarships, the bureaucratization of the health care system, the slow implementation of the Dependency Law, or errors detected in the levy of taxes.
The advocacy role of the Spanish Ombudsman is limited by several factors: (1) a lack of resources, (ii) inadequate collaboration on the part of some public administrative departments, and (iii) its incapacity to ensure that the administration complies with its recommendations.

There are at least two daily news programs on all main TV stations that coincide with lunch and dinner prime time (that is to say 14:00/15:00 and 20:30/21:30). These are followed every day by close to 70% of the population. Even if TV channels have their political leanings, news programs are fairly objective and balanced, since it is not a common practice in Spanish TV journalism to mix opinion-based or “op-ed” statements along with information. Quite long “infotainment” debate programs are broadcast every workday morning, and some evenings as well. While political programs tend to be superficial on private TV stations (focusing on talk shows and polarized arguments rather than contextualized analysis or substantive reports), the public television (Televisión Española (TVE), a ratings leader that has gained much objectivity and political independence from the government since the mid 2000s) produces some high-quality programs, particularly during the weekends (although often relegated to time slots with relatively small audiences), analyzing government decisions, parliamentary affairs and international relations events. According to the most recent ratings as of the time of writing, pure news channels (TVE 24 horas and CNN+) are followed by only a 2% share of the total TV audience.
The main radio stations devote much more than seven hours a week to information on government decisions. Even if they are in general quite ideologically biased (with the participants in the radio debates blatantly biased in favor of or against the government), all main radio stations have a morning program combining background news and political debate (normally from 6:00 to 10:00), two afternoon/evening programs restricted to a straight news format (from 14:00 to 15:00 and from 20:00 to 21:00), and a late night one (from 22:00 to 24:00) which reproduces the mixed style of the morning programs with some in-depth information and much infotainment controversy. There are also daily radio programs of reasonable quality focused on business, and therefore on economic policy-making.

During the last general elections, held in 2008, the only two “major” Spanish parties (the PP and the PSOE, since no other party was supported by more than 10% of voters) did comply with the requirements of plausibility and coherence. The fact that the Spanish party system is actually a two-party one makes it quite plausible that either might take office. It is even usual that one of the two parties may enjoy an absolute majority, and indeed, in the current Spanish parliamentary system’s 33 years of existence, all governments have been single-party ones without need of coalition with minor parties. Thus, electoral manifestos may easily become governmental programs, and because of this major parties not only devote a lot of energy to their preparation, but also tend to be careful when making electoral proposals. These therefore tend to be realistic and moderate.

Nevertheless, coherence or consistency (not making internal contradictions) is easier to achieve than plausibility (providing diagnosis, defining policy goals, suggesting measures and foreseeing expected impact). It is also interesting to note that the two main parties’ electoral programs manifested more substantial differences along policy lines than similarities, contrary to the hypothesis of ideological convergence. Those differences were usually perfectly consistent with the ideological images developed by PSOE and PP along the left-right continuum and the other subordinate cleavages they tend to represent: more or less conservative in religious/moral issues and more or less federalizing along the center-periphery division. In addition to this, electoral offers have mainly been stable with respect to each party’s ideological emphases (PSOE focuses on rights, welfare and modernization while the PP looks to security, entrepreneurship and family values). From 2008 to 2010, both parties strengthened their particular think tanks (the social-democratic Ideas Foundation and the conservative FAES).

The two most important Spanish trade unions (UGT and CCOO) and the largest employers’ association (CEOE) tend to propose reasonable, relatively moderate and feasible policies, although they obviously have partial and rather ideologically infused viewpoints about the reforms needed to deal with the post-2008 crisis. This was demonstrated during the difficult negotiations with the central government over labor market reforms and the best strategy to reduce the staggering unemployment level.
Unions and business groups have improved their substantive competence in the last years through specialized research, contacts with scholars, and their own training centers and foundations that help them to identify the causes of problems and analyze policy effects while taking long-term interests into account. Nevertheless, they find difficulty in proposing strategic and structural socioeconomic reforms. UGT is associated with the Fundación Francisco Largo Caballero, CCOO with the Fundación 1 de Mayo, while employers, apart from the training centers linked to the CEOE, have recourse to the Círculo de Empresarios and the Círculo de Economía (based in Catalonia) think tanks. The chambers of Commerce and Industry also promote training at all levels within business (for example, through the Business Training Institute IFE).
Other economic private groups include some farmer’s associations (such as COAG and ASAJA), the national federation of fishermen’s associations, some consumers’ associations (CEACCU and UCE) and the Spanish confederation of cooperative business. Most of these are too small and sectoral (or in some cases do not enjoy enough autonomy vis-à-vis the political parties) to have competence on their own to propose reasonable policies. However, they are sometimes able to make high quality and independent diagnoses, appraisals or proposals.

The competence of social interest groups, environmental groups and religious communities is somewhat limited in Spain. Despite some characterization of Spain as a corporatist regime with a complex civil society, the truth is that interest associations (economic and noneconomic) are relatively weak, and are not generally able to overcome the majoritarian style of governance or the autonomy of state actors in establishing policy priorities and controlling decision-making processes.
Apart from the unions and the business interests’ associations (see Association Competence), not many social groups have the will or the capacity to invest resources in producing “reasonable” policy proposals. For example, women’s associations are remarkably weak; the organizations representing immigrant workers or the minority religious communities are still very young; and even more surprisingly, the supposedly powerful Catholic Church has no research unit or think tank capable of technically supporting its discourse in policy areas such as education, family or moral issues.
Representing exceptions to this rule are the leading environmental groups (e.g., Ecologistas en Acción, Greenpeace España, WWF/Adena, etc.) and some NGOs devoted to human rights or international development (Amnistía Internacional, Intermón-Oxfam, etc.), which rely increasingly on academic expertise. As is evident, many are in fact local divisions of international associations. These groups tend to influence policy-making through publicity and political pressure, but their policy recommendations are often based on research undertaken by their own expert staff. They also organize technical seminars and issue publications aimed at shaping the public opinion. Their policy suggestions are sometimes taken into consideration by the government, although many of their proposals are not politically feasible because of their understandable impracticality.
Finally, the promotion during the last years of government consultative committees in policy sectors such as education, international development, environment, migration and more, in which broad social interests have to be represented, is fostering the creation and strengthening of nonprofit associations focused on specific policy areas, with a national perspective that may generate substantive policy know-how in the future. In some cases, trade unions are the societal groups that perform this task.