A Political Economy Analysis of Spain’s ‘Mediterranean Neoliberalism’, 1995-2016

Abstract

This essay provides an analysis, from a political economy perspective, of Spain’s recent socioeconomic development during the last two decades. Our main research objective is to apprehend the institutional mechanisms grounding and animating the period of strong economic growth between 1995 and 2008, on the one hand, and the upcoming period of socio-economic crisis, from the onset of the Great Recession onwards, on the other. Under the presumption that both periods are ultimately indissociable, it is argued that the aforementioned period of growth was supported, in the last instance, by a set of self- defeating trends which, despite its markedly contradictory character, managed to reproduce themselves for a relatively long time thanks to the relations of mutual support provided by each to the remaining ones. Moreover, the main processes fostering such a path of economic development were not only highly contradictory when considered in isolation but had also quite pernicious social consequences. A twin goal of this essay was to investigate how such conflict-prone institutional bases had not given way to widespread political contestation. It is argued that, in order to apprehend how such a growth model could have been reproduced with virtually no social opposition, it in necessary to appraise the ways in which the worst social effects derived from the main processes governing economic expansion were prevented from coming to the fore thanks to, precisely, their mutual occurrence and successful interaction. However, once the mutual reproduction of such self-defeating trends was no longer possible, the whole institutional structure shaping them crumbled down, demolishing in turn previouslydominant social consensuses. In this respect, it is argued that, on the one hand, the length and intensity of the ensuing crisis was intimately linked to the precarious bases regulating economic expansion and that, on the other, both the timing and issues prominently at stake during the ensuing political crisis were closely related to the nature of previous economic expansion as well as to the type of economic breakdown experienced In order to analyze both periods indicated from a holistic perspective, one which analyzes both the institutional foundations of the early economic expansion and its ulterior decay, on the one hand, and the accompanying social consensuses on the other, a novel theoretical framework will be developed first, one which combines attention to both economic dynamics and political interactions on an equal footing, in the expectation that, this way, the ultimate determinants of recent socio-economic evolution in Spain will be successfully apprehended.