¿Quién ganó qué? La asignación de cargos políticos en los gobiernos de coalición suscritos en la comunidad autónoma de Andalucía

Resumen:

El trabajo analiza la obtención de cargos políticos por los distintos partidos tras las negociaciones de los cuatro gobiernos de coalición formados en Andalucía en la quinta, sexta, novena y undécima legislaturas. Se contempla el reparto de Consejerías, de puestos de segundo nivel, personal eventual y de confianza. Sugerimos cuatro hipótesis: 1. La distribución de poder en los ejecutivos se proyectó según patrones de proporcionalidad no ajustada ni perfecta, en base a la representación parlamentaria de cada partido. 2. En todos los gobiernos, el socio menor obtuvo una proporción ligeramente mayor de recompensas en el reparto de consejerías, lo que no ocurrió con el resto de los puestos, donde los mayoritarios lograron una presencia superior a su peso real en la coalición. 3. La distribución de créditos presupuestarios resultó más ventajosa para los socios mayores. 4. El reparto de los beneficios, pese a regirse por la regla de la proporcionalidad, devino en un escenario de ventaja para los partidos mayoritarios.

Abstract:

Since the first elections to the Parliament of Andalusia were held on May 23, 1982, until the date of publication of this article, Andalusian citizens had gone to the polls to elect their regional representatives on eleven occasions. As a consequence of the results obtained in each of these elections, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party of Andalusia (PSOE-A) was able to form a government ten times, alternating five periods of absolute majority (1982-1986, 1986-1990, 1990- 1994, 2004-2008 and 2008-2012), with five periods of simple majority (1994-1996, 1996-2000, 2000-2004, 2012-2015 and 2015-2018). Of these last five, on three occasions (1996, 2000, 2012) the Socialists headed coalition executives; two thanks to an agreement with the Andalusian Party (PA) and one after agreeing with Izquierda Unida Los Verdes, Call for Andalusia (IULV-CA). Only once, after the regional elections held in 2018, the Popular Party of Andalusia (PP-A) managed to form a government, using the minority coalition formula, with Ciudadanos (Cs) as a partner of the Executive. This snapshot of the processes of government formation in Andalusia allows us to affirm that coalition politics, although at a certain moment it was, no longer constitutes a singular exception of the autonomous political-institutional panorama and, consequently, it is of great interest the examination of some of its most relevant features. Bearing all of the above in mind, this article analyzes the obtaining of political positions by the different parties after the negotiations of the four coalition governments formed in Andalusia in the fifth, sixth, ninth and eleventh legislatures. It is known that the main consequence of the negotiations leading to the formation of coalition governments is the distribution of rewards or payoffs, and that these take the form of obtaining political positions and/or achieving influence in certain political areas. It is also known that, a posteriori, both issues can have a positive or negative impact on intra-party cohesion and on the electoral performance of competing parties. Well, on this occasion it has been decided to analyze the distribution of ministries and, within each of them, the distribution of second-level positions, temporary staff and trusted staff. In view of the distribution referred to in this article, four different hypotheses are suggested. On the one hand, it is understood that the distribution of power within each of the Andalusian regional executives that have been the object of study was projected according to patterns of neither adjusted nor perfect proportionality, based on the parliamentary representation that each had. party participating in the coalition executive. Secondly, that, in all the governments that have been the object of analysis in the article, the partner that had a lower relative weight always obtained a slightly higher proportion of rewards in the final distribution of advisory services, which did not occur in the same way with the rest of the posts, where the majority parties managed to gain a presence greater than their real weight within the coalition. On the other hand, it is also argued that the distribution of budget credits consigned in each of the legislatures in which a government coalition agreement was signed was more advantageous for the larger partners. Lastly, it is stated that the distribution of benefits among the partners of the coalition executives, despite the fact that they were carried out in accordance with the rule of proportionality, always resulted in a scenario of greater advantage for the majority parties. In the task of preparing the article, various sources of information have been examined. In the first place, the coalition agreements that emerged from the negotiation processes and that were approved by the negotiators of the different political forces have been considered, all of them available in the Observatory of Coalition Governments in Spain and, also, in newspaper sources. consulted in the MyNews online database, available at the University of Granada Library access. Subsequently, the articles and press references related to the different stages and milestones of the negotiation processes between parties have been analyzed, as well as all the information available in the database of the Official Gazette of the Andalusian Government (BOJA) in relation to , on the one hand, to the structure of second-level positions and to other institutional positions that are considered when distributing benefits and, on the other, to the consolidated budgets corresponding to the four legislatures that are the object of attention. From the analysis of the data used in the investigation, it can be concluded that the rule of proportionality in the distribution of benefits or payoffs between the partners of the coalition governments was the one used by the negotiators appointed by each party. It is also observed that while the distribution of the ministries existing in the analyzed governments gave rise to a certain disproportionality favorable to minority political formations, what happened in the rest of the assigned resources did not respond to a similar pattern. Beyond the fact that the majority partner, in all the governments studied, assumed ministries of high political value, such as finance, the presidency and public administration, it has been possible to verify that the assignment of responsibilities for second-level positions, of the peripheral administration and temporary personnel, yields favorable results for the majority party within the Government. Although it is not the subject of this article, the benefit of the majority parties was also observed in terms of electoral performance. The majority partner, in all cases, obtained very favorable results (absolute majority in 2004 and 2022), while the minority partner either stagnated electorally (2000 and 2004) or experienced a strong decline (2015 and, especially significant in 2022). The same occurs when the figures studied refer to the distribution of the budget credits consigned for each of the ministries, being the ones in the hands of the senior partner the ones with the most credits. In short, it is concluded that in the distribution of benefits between the partners of the coalition governments signed in Andalusia between 1996 and 2022, the slight disproportion of the same in benefit of the partners with the lowest contribution was more than compensated by the allocation of ministries of great relevance, with the majority of second-level positions, temporary personnel, peripheral administration positions, as well as with a higher allocation of budget credits for ministries, than those managed by the parties with the greatest representation.