Constitutional Change Without Constitutional Reform: Spanish Federalism and the Revision of Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy

Abstract

This article analyzes the constitutional change in federations that is driven by the bottom-up reform of subnational units’ constitutional arrangements as an alternative to the reforms of the federal constitution. Looking at the case of Catalonia’s recent reform of its statute of autonomy, it discusses and evaluates some of the benefits and pitfalls of the utilization of substantial subnational constitutional discretion and the likely consequences of this mode of reform for the Spanish model of federalism and others. This is done through the study of the initiation of the Catalan reform process, its content and scope, and through the investigation of the political and institutional factors that account for its occurrence and final outcomes. Federal systems transform themselves in order to adapt to external conditions and to evolving internal power relations through implicit or explicit constitutional change or through a combination of both (Voigt 1999; Benz 2008). This constitutional change in federations and its different manifestations and propensity across countries has been mostly approached by focusing on federal constitutions at the national level. More recently, however, increasing attention is being paid to change occurring at the subnational level’s constitutional arrangements and its impact on the overall rules and evolution of the federation (Williams and Tarr 2004). Component units in federations may have subnational constitutions or autonomy charters, which are usually more easily reformed than national constitutions and differ in the degree to which they confer to some or all of the subnational actors different degrees of discretion or ‘‘subnational constitutional space’’ (Tarr 2007) for changing their own governing arrangements and, indirectly, the federal constitution. Depending on several political factors, subnational governments in different federations may decide to use this constitutional space allotted to them differently,