Coalition Politics in Catalan Local Governments, 1979-2011

Resumen

With the exception of the different studies performed by Márquez Cruz, and the report about local government (Magre, 2006), there is no other research, in Spain, with the level of detail of the current one, in anything relating to the portfolio distribution among the elected Councillors, covering a period of 32 years, which makes possible to formulate, not only some hypothesis about the behaviour of the parties in coalition in terms of paybacks and gender, but also to conclude some trends and facts relating the morphology of the coalition. The study concludes that within the period under study, 1979-2011, covering the catalan municipalities with more than 10.000 inhabitants and County capitals, coalition has been the norm for the local governments. The study also highlights that there are two specific coalition patterns between parties, the one based on cooperation, as they exercise the PSC and ICV, and the one based on competition, usually performed by CIU and ERC. Under the cooperation pattern, the small party is rewarded with portfolios which are relevant for the execution of his political goals, improving his visibility and the possibilities to receive more votes in the next elections. The last part of the study is about gender issues, concluding that the legal equality is not guaranteeing the effective equality, understood as the balance between the percentage of elected councillors per gender, and the representativeness and power levels attributed to them. It is evidenced that the composition of the lists is the first constraint for women in local politics, since the first positions are mainly occupied by men. It is proved that the position of a candidate within an electoral list is less respected when assigning power and representativeness, if the candidate is a woman.