alejandro mújica and ignacio...

Alejandro Mújica andIgnacio Sánchez-Cuenca

Consensus and Parliamentary Opposition:The Case of Spain

ALTHOUGH THE ANALYSIS OF OPPOSITION HAS A LONG TRADITION

dating back to the mid twentieth century if not before, many schol-ars have complained that Robert Dahl’s first systematic treatment ofthe subject1 has not been matched by comparable subsequent studiesand that, as a result, opposition remains an inadequately exploredarea of political science.2 This is the case above all in fully democraticregimes, where very little research has been done into the opposi-tion and where the literature has concentrated on the outcomes ofthe legislative process rather than on the behaviour of the opposi-tion as a political actor. Thus, we know how often laws are approvedwith the agreement of the opposition, but we do not under-stand when and why the opposition decides to cooperate with thegovernment.

© The Authors 2006. Journal compilation © 2006 Government and Opposition Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 MainStreet, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

1 Robert Dahl (ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, New Haven, CT, YaleUniversity Press, 1966.

2 Klaus von Beyme, ‘Parliamentary Oppositions in Europe’, in Eva Kolinsky (ed.),Opposition in Western Europe, London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 31–2; Stephanie Lawson,‘Conceptual Issues in the Comparative Study of Regime Change and Democratiza-tion’, Comparative Politics, 25: 2 (1993), p. 203; Oreste Massari, ‘Natura e ruolo delleopposizioni politico-parlamentari’, in Gianfranco Pasquino (ed.), Opposizione, governoombra, alternativa, Rome-Bari, Gius Laterza & Figli, 1990, pp. 32–3; Courtney Jung andIan Shapiro, ‘South Africa’s Negotiated Transition: Democracy, Opposition, and theNew Constitutional Order’, Politics and Society, 23: 3 (1995), pp. 271–2; James Cotton,‘Opposition in Asian Constitutional Systems: Characteristics and Potential for Demo-cratic Consolidation’, Government and Opposition, 31: 2 (1996), p. 177; Geraint Parry,‘Opposition Questions’, Government and Opposition, 32: 4 (1997), pp. 457–8; JeanBlondel, ‘Political Opposition in the Contemporary World’, Government and Opposi-tion, 32: 4 (1997), p. 462; Gianfranco Pasquino, La oposición, Madrid, Alianza Editor-ial, 1998, p. 41. Cfr. Stefano Sicardi, Maggioranza, minoranze e opposizione nel sistemaconstituzionale italiano, Milan, Giuffrè Editore, 1984, pp. 3–8.

This article tries to fill this gap by analysing the incentives facedby the main opposition party when voting on laws in the Spanish parliament. As we argue below, Spain constitutes an interesting andrepresentative case in point for the study of the opposition in a democratic parliament, and our findings could easily be replicated in other consolidated democracies. Previous research shows that in Western democracies, and more specifically in parliamentarysystems, there is a surprisingly high level of consensus and coopera-tion between government and opposition. For long periods of time,the dominant pattern is consensus. Generally speaking, we observewhat is sometimes termed consociational behaviour.3

This pattern has been identified in countries such as Italy, GreatBritain and Germany. Franco Cazzola studied the choices made bythe Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the Italian parliament andfound that the PCI voted in favour of 75 per cent of all laws approvedin the first four post-war parliamentary terms.4 This might seem sur-prising, since the PCI has always been classified as an anti-systemparty.5 Giuseppe Di Palma continued the research into the fifth termand found that consensus voting had increased to 81.3 per cent.6

Richard Rose found similar results in his study of the British parlia-ment between 1970 and 1979. First the Labour, and then the Con-servative, opposition reached a consensus with the incumbent in 80per cent and 77 per cent of bills, respectively.7 In order to reinforcehis hypothesis about the existence of a consensual pattern in law-making, Rose also examined presidential systems. In the UnitedStates Congress, for example, he found that the opposition party in the 1970s only voted against the incumbent 37 per cent of thetime.8 As for Germany, Rose mentions that less than 10 per cent of

CONSENSUS AND PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION 87

© The Authors 2006. Journal compilation © 2006 Government and Opposition Ltd

3 Richard Rose, Understanding Big Government, London, Sage, 1984, pp. 84–5;Pasquino (ed.), Opposizione, governo ombra, alternativa, p. 15; Pasquino, La oposición, p. 63.

4 Franco Cazzola, ‘Consenso e opposizione nel parlamento italiano. Il ruolo delPCI dalla I alla IV Legislatura’, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 2: 1 (1972), pp. 71–96.

5 Silvano Tosi, ‘Italy: Anti-System Opposition within the System’, in Rodney Barker(ed.), Studies in Opposition, London, McMillan St Martin’s Press, 1971, pp. 153–67.

6 Giuseppe Di Palma, Surviving without Governing, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977, pp. 55 ff.

7 Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference?, London, Macmillan, 1980, pp. 80–1.8 Rose, Understanding Big Government, p. 85.

88 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

legislation was the object of partisan controversy.9 Thomas Saalfeld,in turn, has even written in terms of a ‘unanimous’ decision-makingstyle in German politics. His study of the Bundestag in the period1972–87 found unanimity (approval by all parliamentary groups)over 44 per cent of all major bills.10

In contrast, consensus between government and opposition isexceptional in regimes that cannot be classified as fully democratic.When disagreements exist over the basic rules of the political game,or when the opposition is blocked and cannot reasonably expect towin elections, it tends to adopt a more adversarial and obstruction-ist pattern of behaviour, trying to block or even boycott legislativeactivity. In these circumstances, the opposition tends to oppose allproposals coming from the government and hence dissent becomesendemic.11

Yet, even in consolidated democracies, consensus is neverabsolute. There is variation across different legislative periods withina single country and across different issues in the same parliamen-tary period. Spain is an interesting and under-researched case inpoint. Although we do not have strictly comparable data to thosementioned above for other European countries, when it comes tobills that require a majority to be passed, the main opposition partyhas voted with the government in around 70 per cent of cases. Thisoverall figure suggests a similar pattern to that found in Germany,Italy or the United Kingdom for the legislative production as awhole.12 Nevertheless, there is some interesting variation that needs


9 Ibid.10 Thomas Saalfeld, ‘The West Bundestang after 40 Years: The Role of Parliament

in a Party Democracy’, in Philip Norton (ed.), Parliaments in Western Europe, London,Frank Cass, 1990, pp. 77–8.

11 See, for example, the case of Bangladesh; Nizam Ahmed, ‘Parliamentary Oppo-sition in Bangladesh: A Study of its Role in the Fifth Parliament’, Party Politics, 3: 2(1997), pp. 147–68.

12 We can only calculate the percentage of consensus for all laws in the V legisla-ture (1993–96): from data provided by Guerrero, we can deduce that 63 per cent ofall laws were approved with the vote of the main opposition party. See Enrique Guer-rero, Crisis y cambios en las relaciones parlamento-gobierno (1993–1996), Madrid, Tecnos,2000, p. 163. On the other hand, Capo has shown that during the first four legisla-tures, the average number of positive votes for all laws was 214 (in a chamber of 350members), the average number of negative votes was only 36, and the average numberof abstentions was 15. We can reasonably infer from this that in order to produce these

to be explained. On the one hand, in some periods the level of con-sensus drops to just 44 per cent, while in others it reaches almost 100per cent. On the other hand, on some issues consensus is close to100 per cent, but on others government and opposition concur onlyhalf of the time.

In methodological terms, here we do not try to explain the equi-librium level of consensus (that is, why this level of consensus betweengovernment and opposition is found in Western democracies). Inthis respect we too would highlight the importance of the kind ofinstitutional incentive suggested by Maurizio Cotta, namely that bycooperating with government the opposition has a chance to influ-ence government policies, thereby demonstrating to its voters that,despite its electoral defeat, voting for the party is not completelyuseless.13 However, here we are more interested in comparative statis-tics: given the high degree of consensus, why does the extent of con-sensus vary in some cases? What factors explain deviations from theequilibrium level?

In order to account for this variation in the Spanish case, weexplore three factors, following the model suggested by FrancoCazzola.14 The first two are purely institutional: the existence of amajority or minority government; and the identity of the mover ofthe proposal (the government, the main opposition party, smallerparliamentary groups, or regional governments). The third factor ismore political: it has to do with the content or subject matter of thebill under consideration. These factors are tested through quantita-tive analysis of a database we have constructed of 221 laws of consti-tutional relevance (‘organic laws’) for the period 1979–2003.

The article is divided into three sections. The first section intro-duces and explains the significance of the Spanish case. In thesecond part we discuss our hypotheses and provide a brief descrip-tion of the dependent and independent variables. Finally, the lastsection contains the statistical analysis: we have run several logit



averages, most laws had to be approved with a high degree of consensus. See JordiCapo, ‘Oposición y minorías en las legislaturas socialistas’, in Revista Española de Inves-tigaciones Sociológicas, 66 (1994), p. 96.

13 Maurizio Cotta, ‘Parliamenti e rappresentanza’, in Gianfranco Pasquino (ed.),Manuale di scienza della politica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986, pp. 300–1.

14 Franco Cazzola, Governo e opposizione nel parlamento Italiano, Milan, GiuffrèEditore, 1974.


models to explain the variation we find in the levels of consensusbetween government and opposition.

THE SPANISH CASE

After almost four decades of authoritarian rule under GeneralFranco, Spain has been a parliamentary democracy since 1979. Theparliament is bicameral: the upper chamber is the Senate (Senado),and the lower one the Congress of Deputies (Congreso de los Diputa-dos). The lower chamber is by far the more powerful body. So farthere have been seven legislative terms: I (1979–82), II (1982–86),III (1986–89), IV (1989–93), V (1993–96), VI (1996–2000), and VII(2000–04). In four of these terms (II, III, IV and VII) the incumbenthas enjoyed a majority, whereas in the other three (I, V and VI) theincumbent formed a minority government.

The institutional system in Spain is biased in favour of majoritar-ian outcomes. In fact, Spain constitutes a good example of adversarypolitics.15 There is a clear separation between government and oppo-sition, so that the opposition does not expect to participate in government. The electoral system tends to produce four effects: (1) overrepresentation of big parties; (2) a winning party; (3) par-liamentary majorities; and (4) government stability.16 Ever since thefirst term, government and the main opposition party have togetherheld between 81 and 88 per cent of the seats in the lower chamber.

We use the term parliamentary consensus to refer to the concur-rence between the main opposition party and the government in a par-liamentary decision.17 Of all the different types of legislation andparliamentary decisions, we only consider the so-called ‘organic laws’(leyes orgánicas). A majority of seats in the Congress is required in orderto approve, modify or repeal an organic law.18 An organic law may


15 S. E. Finer (ed.), Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform, London, Anthony Wigram,1975.

16 José Ramón Montero, ‘Sobre el sistema electoral español: rendimientos políti-cos y criterios de reforma’, in Juan Montabes (ed.), El sistema electoral a debate, Madrid,CIS & Parlamento de Andalucía, 1998, p. 40.

17 Rose uses a similar definition of consent: ‘consent is given to laws by the approvalof Parliament’, see his Understanding Big Government, p. 90.

18 The Standing Orders of Congress, section 131.2, available at www.congreso.es.

derive either from a government bill (proyecto de ley), the initiative forwhich corresponds to the government, or from a proposal for a bill(proposición de ley), when the initiative corresponds to one of the parlia-mentary groups. In either case, once the bill has been approved in thelower chamber, it goes on to the Senate. If the upper chamber amendsor rejects the bill, then it is sent back to Congress for a final vote.

Organic laws belong to what Pasquino has called the grand conso-ciation type (grande consociazione), namely fundamental laws on topicsof constitutional or territorial significance. These laws are intendedto improve and reinforce the operation of the political system in par-ticular and of democracy in general. Small consociation laws, in con-trast, regulate the resources that are distributed by the State19 and inthe Spanish system they are processed under the procedure used forordinary laws, when a plurality of seats is sufficient to pass the law.

The founding fathers of the 1978 Constitution established thatorganic laws would require parliamentary consensus in order to beapproved. As the pre-constitutional elections of 1977 gave the impres-sion that minority government might be a recurrent feature of Spanishpolitics, organic laws could only be passed with the approval of opposi-tion parties. The government would need the cooperation of some par-liamentary groups in order to obtain the necessary 176 votes (out of thetotal of 350). Hence, organic laws would be used to regulate the topicson which agreement had not been reached during the constituentperiod. Organic laws, therefore, would develop and give specificcontent to some of the general principles set out in the constitution. Inpractice, however, not everything turned out as expected. The SocialDemocratic Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) enjoyed aparliamentary majority during three consecutive terms. During thattime, the main opposition party voted against or abstained on anumber of organic laws presented by the incumbent party.

The focus on organic laws is methodologically valid. Organic lawsaccount for around 15 per cent of all new pieces of legislation.20 This



19 Pasquino (ed.), Opposizione, governo ombra, alternativa, p. 17.20 Guerrero, Crisis y cambios en las relaciones parlamento-gobierno (1993–1996), p. 159.

This scholar concludes that during the first four legislative terms, organic lawsaccounted for 15.5 per cent of all new legislation. We have extended his analysis toinclude the sixth legislative term and the figure is slightly lower, 14.6 per cent. Thesepercentages are similar to those in other Western democracies, where constitutionallaws represent between 11 and 22 per cent of all laws; see Rose, Understanding Big Gov-ernment, p. 88.


is a significant amount, and one that has enabled us to construct amanageable database. More importantly, the temporal trend of con-sensus with regard to all laws can be traced back by simply lookingat organic laws. Jordi Capo has created and applied a formula for cal-culating an index of consensus for all laws approved during the firstsix parliamentary terms.21 We have applied this formula to organiclaws alone, and as can be seen in Figure 1, obtained very similarresults. This means that organic laws are a good proxy for the entirelegislative production. Yet, Figure 1 reveals some interesting differ-ences between organic laws and the rest. It seems that organic laws, particularly from the fourth legislature onwards, were more


21 Capo’s formula is , where vf stands for the number of votes for the law,

n is the number of MPs of the main party, v is the total number of cast votes, and Nis the size of the assembly. If the index has a value of 1, the incumbent party does notobtain support from any other parliamentary group. If the index has a value over 1,the incumbent gets support from other groups: the more so, the greater the number.Theoretically, the index can have a value under 1, for those rare cases in which theincumbent party is unable to obtain a yes vote from its own MPs. See Capo, ‘Oposi-ción y minorías en las legislaturas socialistas’, pp. 96–7.

vf

nvN

*

1.81.71.61.51.41.31.21.1

1

1.92

I (1979–82) II (1982–86) III (1986–89) IV (1989–93) V (1993–96) VI (1996–00)

Legislature

Cap

o’s

inde

x of

con

sens

us

All laws Organic laws

Figure 1Capo’s Index of Consensus for all Laws and for Organic Ones

Sources: For all laws: Jordi Capo, ‘Oposición y minorías en las legislaturas socialistas’,Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 66 (1994), pp. 96–7; and Jordi Capo‘The Spanish Parliament in a Triangular Relationship, 1982–2000’, Journal ofLegislative Studies, 9: 2 (2003), pp. 107–29. For organic laws, our own data.

frequently the objects of consensus. As we have just explained, thiswas precisely the aim sought by the founding fathers. Since we con-sider cooperative behaviour by the opposition as a puzzle to beexplained, organic laws reflect this puzzle in its purest form. Finally,the choice of organic laws offers a further advantage. Since organiclaws tend to involve constitutional and basic values on which partiesmay be strongly divided, it becomes easier to test the hypothesis thatpatterns of consensus are a function of the subject matter of the law.

HYPOTHESES AND VARIABLES

In this section we present our dependent variable, the hypothesesthat we use to explain its variation, and the independent variables wehave constructed to test these hypotheses.

The Dependent Variable

The dependent variable of our research is whether or not there hasbeen consensus in the approval of organic laws. Note that we are onlyinterested in the patterns of cooperation between the incumbentparty and the main opposition party. We contemplate three possibil-ities: consensus (the main opposition party votes for the bill), dissent(the main opposition party votes against the bill), and lack of con-sensus (the main opposition party abstains).

Unfortunately, we do not have data on the votes cast by parties.For each bill, we only have figures of the total number of positiveand negative votes, and the number of abstentions. Hence, we canonly establish whether or not consensus was achieved by examiningthe distribution of votes in each case. In this context, it should benoted, first, that the sum of the seats held by the incumbent partyand the main opposition party has always represented more than 80per cent of the total. On the other hand, the main opposition partyhas always accounted for over 60 per cent of all opposition seats.Table 1 shows these data for the different legislative terms. Giventhese figures, it is always possible to determine whether or not a givenlaw has been approved with consensus. For instance, if an organiclaw was passed in the fifth legislative period with 310 votes in favour,this means that the main opposition party must have voted for it,





Tab

le 1

Dat

a fo

r th

e Se

ven

Leg

isla

tive

Peri

ods

III

III

IVV

VIVI

I(7

9–82

)(8

2–86

)(8

6–89

)(8

9–93

)(9

3–96

)(9

6–00

)(0

0–04

)

Seat

s of

th

e in

cum

ben

t pa

rty

168

202

184

175

159

156

183

Seat

s of

all

oppo

siti

on p

arti

es18

214

816

617

519

119

416

7Se

ats

of t

he

mai

n o

ppos

itio

n p

arty

121

107

105

107

141

141

125

Perc

enta

ge o

f se

ats

hel

d by

th

e in

cum

ben

t an

d82

.688

.382

.680

.685

.784

.988

the

mai

n o

ppos

itio

n p

arty

Perc

enta

ge o

f op

posi

tion

sea

ts h

eld

by

66.4

872

.29

63.2

561

.14

73.8

272

.68

74.8

5th

e m

ain

opp

osit

ion

par

tyM

ain

opp

osit

ion

par

tyPS

OE

AP

AP

AP/

PPPP

PSO

EPS

OE

since the incumbent party has only 156 seats and the main opposi-tion party has 141. The great imbalance between the parliamentarystrength of the main opposition party and that of the other smallerparties removes all doubt as to how the law was passed.

Table 2 reveals that consensus has indeed been the dominantpattern in Spanish politics. Almost 71 per cent of organic laws havebeen approved with the positive vote of the main opposition party.Only 18 per cent of organic laws have been passed with dissent. Lackof consensus is the least frequent category, applying in only 11 percent of cases.

There have been, however, significant variations in different legislative periods. The highest degree of consensus occurred in thefirst term (1979–82): the main opposition party concurred with theincumbent party on 37 out of 38 organic laws. In contrast, the lowestdegree of consensus was found in the following term (1982–86),when the PSOE enjoyed a strong majority in parliament: 44 per centof the laws were approved with consensus, and 34 per cent withdissent.

Table 2 clearly reveals that the first legislative period was excep-tional. This was due to a number of factors. First, this was the firstterm after the approval in 1978 of the new democratic constitution,that is, after a period in which a high degree of consensus had beenrequired in order to reach agreement on constitutional issues. More-over, some issues of constitutional relevance had not been settled andthe rules of the game were not yet fixed. These problems requiredsome kind of cooperative behaviour among all parliamentary groups.Secondly, democracy did not have strong foundations. There was a



Table 2Patterns of Consensus in the Seven Legislative Periods:

Number of Laws (Percentages)

Legislative term Consensus Lack of consensus Dissent Total

I (79–82) 37 (97.4) 0 (0) 1 (2.6) 38II (82–86) 18 (43.9) 9 (21.9) 14 (34.1) 41III (86–89) 10 (55.5) 6 (33.3) 2 (11.1) 18IV (89–93) 16 (66.6) 2 (8.3) 6 (25.0) 24V (93–96) 29 (76.3) 4 (10.5) 5 (13.1) 38VI (96–00) 31 (77.5) 3 (7.5) 6 (15.0) 40VII (00–April 03) 16 (69.56) 1 (4.34) 6 (26.08) 23

Total 156 (70.6) 25 (11.3) 40 (18.1) 221


real threat of a coup, as the failed attempt of February 1981 madeclear to all political forces. One immediate consequence of theaborted coup was the pact signed by the government and the mainopposition party on the territorial structure of power, a highly con-troversial issue in Spain given the demands of nationalist groupingsin some regions (particularly the Basque Country and Catalonia).More generally, uncertainty about the survival of democracy encour-aged the parties to seek consensus on most matters. Thirdly, therewas a minority government and hence the approval of organic lawswas only possible with the support of some opposition parties. Finally,and more debatably, the incumbent party suffered from a lack ofinternal cohesion. During this term, almost 10 per cent of the party’sdeputies left the party (that is a total of 14 deputies, from November1981 to July 1982, the period when most organic laws wereapproved). The argument here is that the weaker the government,the greater the need to reach agreement with other political parties.

Hypotheses and Independent Variables

According to the first and most obvious hypothesis that we considerin this analysis, consensus is more likely under minority governments.An incumbent party with a majority in parliament has fewer incen-tives to seek consensus with the main opposition party, particularly ifthe incumbent party is internally cohesive.22 A quick glance at Table2 confirms that the lowest level of consensus is found in legislativeperiods II, III, IV and VII, that is, precisely the periods in which theincumbent enjoyed a majority. In order to test this hypothesis, wehave tried two specifications. In the first, we have simply created adichotomous variable in which value 0 corresponds to majority


22 See, among others, Joe D. Hagan, Political Opposition and Foreign Policy in Com-parative Perspective, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993; Lynn M. Maurer,‘Legislative–Executive Relations in a Newly-Consolidated Democracy: The Case ofSpain’, PhD dissertation, Columbus, Ohio State University, 1995; José María Maravall,‘Accountability and Manipulation’, in Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes and BernardManin (eds), Democracy, Accountability and Representation, Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-versity Press, pp. 154–96; David Altman and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, ‘Más allá de la poliar-quía: una aproximación a la calidad de las democracias’, Revista Uruguaya de CienciaPolítica, 11 (1999), pp. 83–105.

government and value 1 to a minority government. We find that 47.5per cent of organic laws were approved by majority governments and52.5 per cent by minority ones. In the second, we measure the dif-ference in the number of seats between the incumbent party and theopposition party. The greater the difference, the more powerful theincumbent party is relative to the main opposition party. In terms ofthe hypothesis, this implies that the greater the difference, the lesslikely it is that consensus will prevail. For the statistical analysis, wehave taken this second measure, namely the difference in seats.

The second hypothesis refers to the original source of the billunder consideration. We maintain that the identity of the author ofthe bill may affect the likelihood of consensus between the incum-bent party and the main opposition party. Of course, most organiclaws (63 per cent) were initially proposed by the government. Thesecond most frequent source of initiative corresponds to regionalgovernments or regional parliaments (21 per cent). The otherorganic laws (16 per cent) were proposed by other parliamentaryactors, such as the Senate, minority groups in the Congress, theentire Congress, different combinations of the main opposition partywith minority groups, or the main opposition party alone.

If our hypothesis is correct, we should find a lower level of con-sensus in the case of bills proposed by the government. It seems safeto assume that the government’s bills will be more partisan thanother proposals. If, moreover, the government has a majority in par-liament, then it will have few obvious incentives to water down ormodify its proposal for the sake of consensus.

Consensus should be more common over bills originating fromregional governments, for at least three reasons. First, these bills haveoften been already agreed by the main parties at the regional level; fur-thermore, in the national parliament, MPs tend to favour reinforcingthe powers of their home region. Second, territorial issues, whichinvolve the distribution of powers and competencies between the dif-ferent levels of government, should not be particularly controversialalong ideological lines. Hence, it should be easier for the incumbentand the main opposition party to reach agreements. This argument isobviously related to the content of the law, and therefore merges withour third hypothesis. Finally, in a country like Spain, where there is acenturies-old latent problem about the accommodation of some ter-ritories within the nation, which has resurfaced from time to time, themain parties have incentives to reach agreements in order to contain




the level of conflict on this issue. We know that minorities that seethemselves as permanent losers in the political game may question thelegitimacy of the rules of democracy.23 This could apply in the case ofregional or nationalist parties. The main state-wide parties are awarethat these minor parties have to be accommodated in the system, espe-cially if the system, as is the case in Spain, has a clear majoritarian bias.Furthermore, these nationalist parties do not try to replace the incum-bent: rather, they use the national parliament as a channel in which toexpress their grievances and demands. For all these reasons, it is rea-sonable to expect that there will be a high degree of consensus whenthe proposal comes from the regional level. The remaining cases aremixed in nature, but they tend to share some sort of consociationalcharacter, either because the incumbent party concurs with other par-liamentary forces or because some opposition forces cooperateamong themselves. This implies, again, that we should expect to findmore consensus in these cases than in the case of bills proposed by thegovernment.

A simple contingency table crossing the author of the proposaland consensus quite clearly shows that this hypothesis is not unrea-sonable. The level of consensus over government bills is 61 per cent;in mixed cases it is 81 per cent; and in the case of bills presented bya regional government or political party, it rises to 93 per cent. It isworth noting that in this final category of bill there have been noinstances of dissent.

The third hypothesis is rather more complex. As we already noted,territorial issues do not usually coincide with ideological positions onthe left–right axis.24 Political competition in Spain focuses mainly onthis axis; hence, it might be less difficult to reach agreement on ter-ritorial questions than on some other issues. We can take this argu-ment further, following the previous analysis of Klaus von Beyme andBelén Barreiro.25 Generally speaking, the more costly it is for a party


23 Giuseppe Di Palma, ‘Disaffection and Participation in Western Democracies:The Role of Political Oppositions’, Journal of Politics, 31: 4 (1969), p. 987.

24 See Lipset y Rokkan (ed.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York, Free Press, 1967, pp. 9 ff.

25 Klaus von Beyme, ‘Elite Input and Policy Output: The Case of Germany’, inMoshe M. Czudnowski (ed.), Does Who Governs Matter?, DeKalb, Northern Illinois Uni-versity Press, 1982, p. 63; Belén Barreiro, ‘Justificaciones, responsabilidades y cumplim-iento de promesas electorales’, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 1: 1 (1999), p. 167.

to deviate from its previously announced position, the less likely it isthat consensus will be achieved. The cost of deviating from the initialposition depends on the salience of the issue and on the reasonsparties can put forward in order to justify a change or a concessionwith respect to some prior policy commitment. When the issue ispolitically significant, and/or when a party cannot find a reason tojustify a policy shift, consensus becomes harder.

Technical issues, for instance those about administrative or legalprocedures, do not usually feature prominently in political debate.Hence, a high level of consensus can be expected on such issues. Incontrast, laws affecting citizens’ basic rights are politically much moresignificant and, moreover, parties find it harder to find reasons tojustify any shift on these issues. Barreiro, for instance, has studied thecase of abortion.26 This is a highly visible policy that involves funda-mental values. How can a party that has been opposed to abortionjustify a policy-shift in this area? How could such a party sell its followers a positive vote on a bill legalizing abortion? Abortion is aregulative issue, with no economic consequences, which involvesprinciples and values. Principles and values cannot be easily tradedor compromised. But the same holds for religious freedom, theguidelines of education policy, or immigration policy. In these cases,organic laws, by their very nature, cannot avoid dealing with princi-ples and values. Parties will have little room to negotiate, since theyare tied by their previous commitments.

Using these two criteria (salience and policy latitude), as well assome substantive affinity among the issues regulated by the bills, wehave classified the contents of organic laws into five categories: (1)basic rights (abortion, privacy, honour, habeas corpus, educationrights, rights of association and assembly); (2) institutions (the inter-nal rules of bodies such as the constitutional court, the state council,the court of finance, and others); (3) legal (penal code, civil and mil-itary codes, procedural rules); (4) electoral and party rules (rules onthe electoral system and the internal functioning of parties); and (5)territorial issues, including relations between the central state andboth regional governments and international institutions (especially



26 Belén Barreiro, Democracia y conflicto moral: la política del aborto en España e Italia,Madrid, Istmo, 2000; ‘Judicial Review and Political Empowerment: Abortion in Spain’,West European Politics, 21: 4 (1998), pp. 147–62.


the European Union (EU)).27 The largest category is the fifth, terri-torial issues (34 per cent), followed by legal (22 per cent), institu-tions (20 per cent), basic rights (16 per cent) and finally electoraland party rules (8 per cent).

Category (1) is the least prone to consensus: laws about basicrights are highly visible and parties have little room for manoeuvre.On the other hand, categories (2), (3) and (4) are more technicalor procedural, and hence less salient; furthermore, as ideologicalpositions are not a good predictor of the stance parties may take onthese issues, it can be argued that parties have considerable leeway.Consensus therefore should be greater than in category (1). Lastly,territorial issues may be more visible, mainly because the territorialquestion is a crucial one in Spanish politics, but parties have con-siderable latitude. Moreover, disagreement primarily arises betweenthe small nationalist parties and the two big Spanish parties, but notalways between these two parties, which are the relevant ones for ourargument. Given the potential threat of these small nationalistparties, the big parties feel that they have to behave responsibly. Onthe other hand, in the field of foreign affairs, and most importantlyEurope, there is a long tradition of consensus in Spain.28

A very preliminary exploration of the data reveals that this hypoth-esis is in fact quite convincing. In the case of territorial organic laws,91 per cent have been passed with the approval of the main opposi-tion party. Although part of the explanation for this has to do withthe fact that minority parties govern with the support of regionalparties that, in exchange for their support, ask for the approval ofterritorial laws, the level of consensus is nonetheless much higherthan in the other extreme, that of bills on basic rights, in which con-sensus was achieved in only 47 per cent of cases. The contrast is par-ticularly sharp if we focus on those laws on education that involvebasic rights. Ten such laws have been approved, and in every casethey were the objects of dissent. Although education laws account foronly 4.5 per cent of all organic laws, they represent 25 per cent of all


27 As the number of organic laws dealing with foreign affairs is quite limited (10laws) we have been forced to create a single category combining issues, regional governments and supranational institutions.

28 See Berta Álvarez-Miranda, Sur de Europa y la adhesión a la Comunidad: los debatespolíticos, Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1996.

cases of dissent (and 55.5 per cent of all cases of dissent on bills affect-ing basic rights). Education is a policy area that embodies the deeperideological commitments of parties and hence we should expect littleconsensus.

Between the two extreme categories of territorial and basic rightslaws, we have the intermediate categories (2), (3) and (4), where wefind a medium level of consensus of around 65 per cent. These lawsalso show a higher percentage of lack of consensus (abstention) thanthe extreme ones (categories (1) and (5)). Since these laws are moretechnical and less ideological, disagreement on technicalities (butnot about ‘the spirit of the law’) leads to abstention, rather than anegative vote, by the main opposition party.

Quite obviously, the classification of the content of the laws pro-posed here is not the only possible one. However, the underlyinglogic about the conditions under which we should expect consensusis constant and could be applied to any other conceivable classifica-tion. For instance, we could create a category for laws that deal withdifferent aspects of terrorism. There are 11 instances, which in ourdatabase are distributed in the five existing categories. As the fightagainst domestic terrorism largely escapes the ideological battle, weshould expect a high degree of consensus in this area. In fact, all 11laws, including two that come under the category of basic rights, werepassed with consensus. Hence, what matters is not so much the typol-ogy of laws in itself but the functioning of the logic of political com-petition indicated above.

ANALYSIS

For the sake of simplicity, the dependent variable combines the cat-egories of dissent and lack of consensus. This is convenient for atleast two reasons. We now have a dichotomous dependent variableand we can apply simple logit models. Otherwise, we would be forcedto use ordinal or multinomial logit, which produces less manageableresults. In any event, the results obtained from ordinal and multin-omial logit were almost identical.29 Secondly, given that we have fewcases in the category of abstention or non-consensus (11 per cent,



29 These analyses are available on request.


25 cases), the distribution is more balanced if negative vote andabstention are included in a single category. Value 0 corresponds toconsensus (70.6 per cent) and value 1 to dissent or lack of consen-sus (29.4 per cent).

The independent variables are (1) the difference in seats betweengovernment and opposition; (2) the author of the bill; and (3) theissue covered in the bill. For reasons explained above, we have addedas further control a dummy for the first legislative period (1979–82),in which almost every organic law was an instance of consensus.There is some overlap between author and issue, since regional gov-ernments always propose territorial laws (45 out of 45). In order toavoid unnecessary complications, the variable for author combinesboth regional governments and the mixed cases (0 is the value forregional governments and other possibilities and 1 is for govern-ment). In this way, while we do not lose much information, itbecomes easier to estimate the net effect of the government beingthe author of the bill.

The issue variable is nominal and has been broken down intodummies. To facilitate interpretation of the constant term, the basecategory is territorial issues. When both author and issue are presentin the analysis, the constant term represents territorial laws not proposed by the government: this combination of values is veryfavourable to consensus and therefore we should expect a negativeand significant sign for the constant.

We have estimated three logit models (see Table 3). In the first,the issue variable is excluded; in the second, we have left out theauthor variable; in the third, all the variables are included. The threemodels provide a reasonable fit. Clearly, the full model is the mostpowerful. In terms of predictive capacity, the full model correctlyclassifies 55 per cent of cases of dissent or non-consensus and 84 percent of cases of consensus.

The 1979–82 control variable is highly significant in every case. Itis clear that the historical conditions of the first constitutional leg-islative term were exceptional. As explained above, strong pressuresin favour of consensus existed at that time. Seat difference always hasa positive sign. Thus, the greater the difference in seats between theincumbent party and the main opposition party, the lesser the like-lihood of consensus. This variable is slightly less significant in the fullmodel (model 3), but its influence is nonetheless clear. This confirmsthe first hypothesis.


With regard to the author of the bill, the fact that the author isthe incumbent party increases the probability of dissent or lack ofconsensus. As the comparison of the coefficients between models 1and 3 shows, part of this increase is still due to some associationbetween author and issue. Although we have tried to correct thestrong relationship between regional governments and territorialissues, the government proposed 90 per cent of the bills that dealwith basic rights. This explains why the coefficient of author is



Table 3Logit Models of Consensus

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Constant -2.351*** -2.603*** -3.009***(0.387) (0.410) (0.461)

Seat difference 0.014*** 0.014*** 0.012*(0.005) (0.006) (0.006)

79 legislative term -2.860*** -2.914*** -3.012***(1.028) (0.999) (1.003)

Author 1.338*** 0.977**(0.394) (0.422)

Issues:Basic rights 2.311*** 1.982***

(0.558) (0.564)

Legal 1.374*** 1.205**(0.513) (0.524)

Institutions 1.468*** 1.181**(0.552) (0.572)

Electoral rules 1.445** 1.227*(0.648) (0.691)

N 221 221 221

Pseudo R2 0.18 0.21 0.23

Percentage of no consensus 40.0% 40.0% 55.4%correctly predicted

Percentage of consensus 85.9% 88.5% 84.0%correctly predicted

Dependent variable: 0 consensus, 1 dissent or lack of consensus.***: significant at 1%; **: significant at 5%; *: significant at 10%.Robust standard errors in parentheses.


somewhat weaker in model 3 than in model 1. In any event, hypoth-esis two is also confirmed.

In model 2 the author variable is excluded and the issue variableis included. A quick comparison between models 1 and 2 reveals thatthe issue variable is more powerful than the author one. In otherwords, the content of the bill seems to be a more powerful determi-nant of consensus than the identity of its author one. The positivecoefficient of all issue dummies means that the base category, terri-torial issue, is the most conducive to consensus. The coefficients oflegal, institutions and electoral rules are very similar to each other.By far the most influential category is basic rights, as the probabilityof dissent increases dramatically for bills of this type. In the fullmodel, all these coefficients are lower due to the association with theauthor variable, but even so the third hypothesis is validated.

Given that logit coefficients are not easy to interpret, in Table 4we have calculated some predicted probabilities for the most inter-esting patterns of covariance. The more extreme issues in terms ofconsensus are basic rights and territorial laws. Whereas basic rightsare inimical to consensus, territorial issues are almost alwaysapproved with the support of the main opposition party. To maxi-mize the contrast, we have selected these two issues for analysis inTable 4. Apart from the issue at stake, we have taken into accountwhether the bill was proposed by the government as well as the dif-ference in the number of seats between the two big parties. For dif-ference in seats, we have calculated the probabilities at the minimumand maximum values (15 and 95 seats respectively). Finally, it shouldbe noted that all the calculations refer to the post-1982 period, as weconsider the first legislative term to have been exceptional.

The numbers given in Table 4 refer to the probability of consen-sus. For instance, if the bill has been proposed by the government,the issue is territorial, and the difference between the two big partiesis minimal, then the probability of consensus is 0.86. Several con-clusions can be drawn from Table 4.

The difference between the two big parties is much more impor-tant in the case of bills affecting basic rights than in cases affectingterritorial issues. For instance, when the author is a regional gov-ernment or some combination of opposition groups, maximum vari-ation in the difference of seats brings a change of 0.07 (0.94–0.87)points for territorial issues and a change of 0.22 (0.70–0.48) pointsfor basic rights. This is interesting, since it seems to suggest that the


pressure for consensus on territorial issues is independent of the sizeof the incumbent party and the main opposition party. We arguedabove that consensus on this issue springs from the need to accom-modate nationalist or regionalist minorities, not with the strength ofthe government. Table 4 seems to endorse this view.

This point can be confirmed by examining the effect of the authorvariable. The identity of the author produces a greater change in thecase of bills affecting basic rights than in that of territorial issues.Take, for instance, a maximum difference of 95 seats. If the issue isterritorial, the authorship changes the probability of consensus in0.16 points; if the issue is about basic rights, the change is 0.22 points.

It is clear that the more important changes in probability are dueto the nature of the issue. The content of the law is more relevant tounderstanding consensus (or the lack of it) than the size of theincumbent party or the author of the law. The effect of the contentof the law is particularly strong when the author is the government.When the initiative comes from the government, the chances of con-sensus are quite low in the case of basic rights bills, and under 50 percent even when the distance between the incumbent party and themain opposition party is minimal. This is fully consistent with themechanism we have proposed. The opposition party cannot vote fora government’s proposal on basic rights due to the saliency of thebill and the scant room for manoeuvre a party enjoys given its pre-vious commitments and electoral pledges. Besides, if it is the casethat the incumbent party has a large majority and can propose its ideal policy, then it is almost certain that the opposition will



Table 4Predicted Probabilities of Consensus for Different Combinations of Strength of Gov-

ernment, Author of the Law, and Content of the Law

Difference in seats between the incumbent and the main oppositionparties

Issue Min (15) Max (95)

Author = regional Territorial 0.94 0.87government or others Basic Rights 0.70 0.48

Author = government Territorial 0.86 0.71Basic Rights 0.47 0.26


vote against the government (the probability of consensus is only 26per cent).

CONCLUSIONS

Spain shows a similar trend in consensus to those of other Europeancountries. The main opposition party concurs with the governmentaround 70 per cent of the time when voting on bills of constitutionalrelevance (organic laws). This high level of consensus takes place ina political system otherwise biased towards majoritarian outcomes.Despite the pressures of majoritarianism, the opposition in Spaintends to act cooperatively: consensus has been dominant except inthe second legislative term (1982–86), during the first parliamentarymajority of the Socialist government.

We have tried to account for variations in the degree of consen-sual behaviour displayed by the main opposition party over time andacross issues. In doing so, we have restricted ourselves to a quantita-tive analysis of all organic laws approved between 1979 and 2003.Thanks to this quantitative approach, we can cover the entire uni-verse and maximize variation in all the variables. Nonetheless, therequirements of quantitative analysis have forced us to narrow con-siderably the range of explanatory factors we consider. Thus, we haveconfined ourselves to incentives that could be measured for all laws,such as institutional and ideological ones. In contrast, in this analy-sis we do not take account of, for example, the importance of elec-toral incentives, or the role of pressure groups, or even short-termgoals such as weakening and isolating the government, or under-mining its legitimacy. A more thorough study would require a smallsample of laws for which all relevant information could be collected.

With regard to the incentives we analyse, it should be stressed thatinstitutional variables are clearly important, but much more so is thesubject matter of the bill. As for institutional variables, we have con-sidered the support the government has in parliament and the iden-tity of the author of the bill. As expected, consensus is higher underminority governments. But we can be more precise: over and abovea dichotomous classification of governments (majority and minoritygovernments), what really matters is the difference in the number ofseats between the incumbent and the opposition parties. The greaterthis difference, the less likely consensus. With regard to the author


of the bill, the data reveal that when the bill originates from gov-ernment, the likelihood of consensus decreases in comparison tobills sponsored by any other possible author.

The more innovative part of this article concerns the importanceof the content of the bill. We have argued that bills on issues withlow salience and whose content cannot be clearly reduced to a posi-tion in the left–right axis are more prone to consensus, since partiescan reach agreement without sacrificing their ideological principles.Given that parties compete mainly on ideological issues, they do nothave much leeway to shift their initial positions on these issues, par-ticularly if they are politically significant ones. Hence, the more ide-ologically loaded the law is, the less likely it is that consensus will beachieved. In the Spanish case, this finding is borne out by the con-trast between territorial and basic rights laws. While consensus isalmost absolute with respect to territorial issues (the few cases inwhich it was lacking tend to be when the government is the authorof the law), dissent is dominant in the case of bills affecting basicrights. Of course, there may be other reasons for consensus over ter-ritorial issues apart from the ideological argument; these wouldinclude the need to accommodate permanent minorities or tocontain a conflict which otherwise might lead to political turmoil.

The main lesson to be drawn from the Spanish experience is thatgovernment and opposition fail to reach agreements when govern-ment is very strong relative to opposition, and/or when the issueunder consideration is such that parties cannot find a justificationfor a compromise. In the Spanish case, the most favourable issues forconsensus are terrorism, foreign policy and regional policy; the leastfavourable is education.

These results can easily be generalized. The kind of analysis wehave presented here could be replicated in other parliamentarydemocracies. While some adjustments would be necessary for eachcountry (for instance, the prominence of territorial issues amonglaws approved by consensus may well be specific to Spain), thegeneral hypotheses can be formulated without reference to particu-lar features of the national political systems. Basically, these hypothe-ses state that institutional incentives (the balance of representationbetween the government and the main opposition party, as well asthe actor that proposes the law in the first instance) and ideologicalincentives (the ideological nature of the issue under discussion)matter in order to explain when the main opposition party is going




to cooperate with the government. Thus, we guess that for lawsdealing with basic rights, we should find a lower degree of consen-sus than for laws dealing with regulative issues such as legal and insti-tutional rules (including international treaties and internationalorganizations). Further comparative research is necessary to confirmthe validity of this claim.


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