The basic problem with identifying the possible outcomes of a majoritarian decision-making process, such as decisions of unicameral or bicameral legislatures, is the fact that collective preferences, unlike individual ones, are not transitive. This means that although a legislature can prefer outcome a over b, and outcome b over c, by majority rule, it is still possible for the same legislature to prefer outcome c over a. This set of preferences results in unstable decision making; any outcome may be defeated by a majority, and that outcome in turn may be defeated by yet another majority. And the process may be repeated endlessly.

For this reason, the concept of the core became a basic tool in social choice theory and cooperative game theory. The core is the set of points that cannot be defeated by the application of the decision-making rule. So the core of a unicameral institution is the set of points that cannot be defeated by majority or any other decision-making rule; the core of a bicameral legislature is the set of points that cannot be defeated by concurrent majorities in both chambers; and so forth.

For unicameral legislatures, Plott has shown that the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a core are very restrictive (Plott 1967: 790). He demonstrated that in a legislature with an odd number of members, a core exists in an n-dimensional legislative space (n > 1) only when it is located on the ideal point of at least one member and the remaining even number of members are “divided into pairs whose interests are diametrically opposed.”

What difference does it make if a country has a bicameral legislature instead of a unicameral one? Our purpose in Part II is to outline a framework to answer this question and to analyze the historical and geographic diversity of bicameral institutions. Thus, the overarching research question is supplemented by more detailed investigations of the specific mechanisms of intercameral reconciliation. What difference does it make if the navette system can last for one, or two, or an infinite number of rounds, as exemplified in the procedural rules of Austria, France, and Italy, respectively? What is the effect of a conference committee at the end of the navette instead of a final decision by the upper chamber or the lower one, as exemplified in the procedural rules of Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Spain, respectively? Does it make any difference if the government introduces legislation in the lower house first, as required by many constitutions for budgetary matters? Do conference committees affect the outcomes of bicameral bargaining and, if so, how?

Our account demonstrates that bicameral institutions share features that differentiate their outcomes from unicameral ones. In addition, we show how the institutional variations of bicameralism affect relative house power, providing a series of hypotheses that can be tested systematically. Part II constitutes the theoretical foundation on which we conduct empirical analyses in subsequent chapters, so that, in the conclusions, we will be able to assess critically the arguments on bicameralism proposed by various analysts.

Figure II. 1 presents in a nutshell the problem we investigate in this part of the book. The current policy, the status quo, is indicated in the figure by the point SQ.

Some of the arguments made in this book, such as the proposition that bicameralism makes a change to the status quo more difficult than unicameralism, may seem intuitive, even trivial, to the reader. Other arguments, like the rarity of a bicameral core in more than two dimensions, or empirical evidence, such as the connection between chamber composition and length of intercameral negotiations, dispute the conventional wisdom in the literature or point legislative research in a new direction.

In this chapter we review the different theories and arguments presented in the literature with a critical eye, explaining which are sound and justified, which require restrictions or modifications, and which are false and unsupported by the evidence. Finally, we raise other methodological, theoretical, and empirical issues that merit a more sustained investigation.

The chapter is organized in three sections, ordered from the more specific and the less objectionable to the more general and controversial. The first section deals with topics and ideas that are considered intuitive or at least well known. We show how we generalize these ideas or how we restrict their domain of application. The second section demonstrates that on a series of issues, we disagree both in theory and in evidence with the existing literature. The third part discusses the research agenda generated by this book. Given that some items fall into multiple categories, there is an overlap of subject matter among the three parts.

A comparison of this edition with that published in 1987 will show that the basic institutional structures established during the period 1978–83 are still in place and have remained largely unchanged. This is particularly the case in respect of what might be termed the ‘bedrock’ institutions, such as the monarchy, Parliament and central government and administration which, as well as the Constitution itself, have undergone the minimum of structural change. Where most updating has had to be carried out, as far as the public sector is concerned, is in relation to those two major developments which, over the last decade, have impinged most forcefully upon the country – the decentralisation of power to the regions and the accelerating process of European integration. With regard to the latter, chapter 15 has shown how this process has been reflected in a myriad new institutions created at all levels of national life, as well as in Spain's membership of the many already existing structures of the European Union. Chapters 12 and which basically examine the private sector, reflect the considerable degree to which many of the institutions here have had to adapt to these two major transformations.

In general, it can be safely stated that those structures that have stood the test of time, while occasionally subjected to severe pressures, have been developed and consolidated.

Introduction

The political and administrative map of Spain is now radically different from what it was less than twenty years ago. Instead of a unitary state divided into some fifty provinces (figure 4.p. 47), the role of which was merely to administer the services of the central government, the country now has a semi-federal structure in which the powers of the state are shared with seventeen newly created autonomous communities (figure 7.1 and table 7.1), each endowed with its own president, parliament, executive and high court of justice. In the modern history of Spain, there is no precedent for such a major change in the structure of the state, nor for such a fundamental shift of power from the centre to the periphery.

The long and complex history of the tensions between the centre and the periphery in Spain falls outside the scope of this work and is well documented elsewhere. Suffice it to say here that, partly as a reaction to centuries of stifling centralism, culminating in the dictatorship of General Franco, and partly in response to deepseated cultural differences – particularly manifest in the case of the Basques and the Catalans – the early post-Franco era witnessed considerable popular and official support for some form of decentralisation. This was conceived as an essential ingredient of the return to democracy.

Introduction

From 1939 to 1977, Spain was endowed with a one-chamber legislature known as the Cortes. Franco, profoundly hostile to the legislative systems of liberal democracies, swept away the democratically elected single-chamber Parliament of the Second Republic, and imposed what amounted to a rubber-stamp chamber packed with his own nominees and supporters.

Although a modest attempt was made in the the Organic Law of 1967 to introduce a more democratic element, offering the voter an opportunity to elect 108 socalled ‘family MPs’, the result meant little change to the existing system. On the one hand, these comprised no more than a fifth of the membership of the House and, in any case, candidates were carefully screened by the officials of the regime to ensure that only approved figures were allowed to stand. On the other hand, in terms of its mode of functioning, the Cortes was subjected to constant interference from the executive; debates were rarely held, ministers were not obliged to appear on request before the House, and certain issues such as foreign policy and public order were not deemed to be part of its remit.

The legislature today

The above situation, however, changed dramatically in October 1976 when, in an historic decision, the Franco Cortes signed what amounted to its own death-warrant by approving Adolfo Suárez's Political Reform Law (1.1.4).

Introduction

This chapter aims to cover those sectors of the state public sector (1.2.3) which, unlike the autonomous administrative entities dealt with earlier (6.3), can be defined as entities (entidades) or enterprises (empresas) rather than bodies (organismos) because of their more active involvement in the market economy. Some attention will also be paid to their counterparts at regional and local level which, according to some definitions, do not form part of the state public sector, although they are clearly part of the ‘public sector’ in its widest sense.

The Spanish Constitution of 1978, while recognising and protecting in article 38 the right to free enterprise, also acknowledges, in article 128, the right of the state to intervene in the economy in the public interest. Article 129, as well as providing the framework for the state's substantial involvement in social security and other welfare programmes (6.for example), also states that ‘the authorities will effectively promote the diverse forms of participation in public ownership’. Thus, the Constitution appeared to be recognising the mixed economy inherited by post-Franco policy-makers – an economy in which, for historical, political and economic reasons, the state sector had acquired a large share of the economic cake (1.1.2).

Under Franco, the pragmatic approach to economic policy had led to the creation of a complex web of entities which seemed to possess a momentum of their own, often removed from their original objectives and the prevailing needs of the time.

Introduction

As with political parties (chapter 10), the fate of trade unions in the past depended very much on the kind of political system prevailing at the time. For example, while they were allowed freedom to form and operate during the Second Republic (1931–36), during the Franco era all union organisations were proscribed by law and driven underground or into exile. The major unions affected in this way – indeed the major unions in existence since the nineteenth century – were the UGT (11.4.1) and the CNT (11.5.3); the latter, having been associated by Franco with the Anarchist movement, came in for particularly harsh persecution. In the place of these unions, the dictator established his so-called ‘vertical syndicates’ (sindicatos verticales), which in reality amounted to little less than submissive instruments of offical labour policy, strongly controlled by government. The 1960s, a period of rapid economic expansion (1.1.3), witnessed growing confidence and solidarity among workers and a tendency among certain employers to prefer to negotiate with the authentic representatives of labour in order to introduce new methods and to improve productivity. For a while, there was tacit toleration of unofficial bodies, such as the Workers' Commissions (11.4.2), until they were declared illegal in 1967. With the return of democracy after all unions were allowed to operate freely again and, reflecting the changed social and labour scene of the post-Franco era, a number of new unions were created at both national and regional level.

Preliminary note

Since the Spanish and English judicial systems are in many ways very different, it is not always easy to find exact equivalents in English for some Spanish legal terms. For example, juzgado, audiencia and tribunal may all be translated as ‘court’, and the only distinction between them seems to be the level at which they operate, the juzgados always being at the lower end of the hierarchy (see figure 14.p. 294). Likewise, both the words juez and magistrado may be translated as ‘judge’ – although the latter is always senior to the former. Certainly magistrado does not equate to an English magistrate with all the connotations which the latter has for the involvement of non-professionals in the judicial system (something very rare in Spain). Thus, although the term ‘magistrate’ will be used in the course of this chapter to translate magistrado, the difference in meaning must be understood.

It should also be noted that in general terms the Spanish system is one based on civil law as opposed to the UK and American system of ‘common law’. It is created by legislation and custom, applied by the judges rather than by jurisprudence – although with regard to the interpretation and application of the laws, the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court (14.5.1) is very significant.

Preliminary note

The institutions making up what is most accutately referred to, at least in Spain, as ‘local administration’ but is often called ‘local government’ in the UK context, include the municipal and provincial authorities. In legal documents, these institutions are known collectively as local corporations (corporaciones locales). Although, since the devolution of powers to the regions (chapter 7), these local institutions are subject to the legal framework of the autonomous communities, they remain financially, to a large extent, dependent on central government. On the other hand, in recent years the trend has been towards increasing co-operation between these bodies and the regional authorities in whose ambit they are located.

Introduction

The Franco regime, in combining political repression with excessive bureaucratic centralism, presided over the effective demise of local democracy. During the Franco era, local institutions were basically instruments for administering the policies of central government and enjoyed no real autonomy. Such was the degree of central control that mayors, for example, were directly appointed by Franco's minister for home affairs or the civil governor of the province concerned, both of whom were directly appointed by Franco. Moreover, local elections were rigidly controlled by the dictator's single party, the National Movement (1.12) which ensured that, to those few seats open to direct election, only officially sponsored candidates were elected.

Introduction

Like many democratic organisations in Spain, political parties in the past often experienced a precarious existence. For long periods, they were either outlawed or saw their activities severely curtailed. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the political scene was dominated by the military, which conferred upon itself the right to intervene in political life whenever it judged that stability was threatened. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the 1970s, neither democracy itself nor political parties in particular had the most favourable opportunities to take root; prior to the post-Franco era, the party system was subject to severe economic, social and political pressures that prevented it from establishing and consolidating itself as it had done in other countries of western Europe.

After the Civil War, Franco abolished all political parties, except his own subservient National Movement which was an amalgam of loyal right-wing groups (1.1.2). With the exception of the PSOE, the PCE, the PNV and the ERC (tables 10.1 and 10.pp. 188 and 208), all the parties that had occupied the political stage in the 1930s sank without trace. However, in the wake of the Political Reform Law of 1976 (1.1.4), there occurred a veritable explosion of political parties, at national and regional level, all eager to participate in the first democratic elections for over forty years, scheduled for 15 June 1977.

The first edition of this work was published in 1987. At that time, the Franco dictatorship was still a relatively recent experience in the minds of many Spaniards; it was still arguably appropriate to refer to Spain's ‘fragile’ democracy. Now a whole generation has emerged which remembers nothing of the Franco regime, and since 1986 Spain has matured into one more stable democracy within the framework of the European Union (EU). At last the country has shaken off its one-time image of a backward and isolated Latin nation dominated by the army and the Church; no longer can it be said that Spain has no relevance to the mainstream of European and world affairs. Indeed, in recent years, in parts of Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world, Spain's relatively smooth transition from dictatorship to democracy has been seen as a model for achieving peaceful political change. On the other hand, the curve of economic development has been subject to greater instability, and Spain has only recently begun to recover after suffering severely during the world recession of the early 1990s. Spain's levels of unemployment, for example, have consistently been the highest in the European Union. None the less, many countries which still suffer the kind of backwardness experienced by Spain not many decades ago will envy the standard of living now enjoyed by the majority of the Spanish people.