The Bread and Wine of Democracy: Building Regional Norms in Spain

Abstract

This research addressed different explanations for the processes and variation of democratic quality between regions of Spain, focusing on the relationship between the civil society sector and the government. Weighing other theories of democratic quality, the study isolated norms of public-private cooperation and the advantages they bring to government effectiveness as a determinant of quality. Consequently, three hypotheses answered the central question of regional democracy patterns through proposing a relationship between different aspects of public-private cooperation and measures of democratic quality. Using a mixed-methods approach which combined coded Spanish regional election data and document analysis from the Basque Country and Catalonia, the research found conditional support for its hypotheses while opening new doors to using such a measurement for civil society activity in the future. Also included are more descriptive statistics showing the irregularities in the Spanish case which advance new questions about the types of regions and the effects of new variables on democracy. Understanding these patterns has important implications for the study of governance in 21st-century Europe and the evolving civil society sector.