Crisis management, re-centralization and the politics of austerity in Spain

Abstract

Abstract The main focus of the article is on understanding the role of the state as a key agent of crisis management within the context of an unfolding global financial crisis. This goes against contentions of the diminishing role of the state and the emergence of a political space that could be described as post-national. Drawing on examples from Spain, the article analyses the challenges of crisis management within the context of a high level of regional autonomy and the presence of highly charged arguments for and against decentralization. The article also argues that these debates are embedded into concrete institutional, political and economic processes that in the case of Spain are associated with the highly complex relationships between different levels of government. Building on a distinction between necessary and contingent aspects of crisis management, the article argues that one of the specificities of the Spanish case is the consolidation of a diverse set of ideas associated with the centre-right as one of the unintended consequences of the unfolding crisis and the process of its management by the Spanish state.