Capacity Building in Environmental Federalism: Enhancing Governance in the decentralized Spanish system?

In multilevel democracies, responding to environmental challenges requires ambitious policy action across all governmental levels. While substantial research has focused on environmental policy ambition at the national level, subnational efforts remain less explored, particularly in comparative case studies. Understanding subnational environmental capacity and initiative are essential to assessing the relevance of different factors enabling or hindering effective policy implementation in multi-level political systems. On the one hand, constituent units, might act as “laboratories” for public policy experimentation and counterweight central government inaction and support environmental sustainability. Conversely, limited capacity, lack of "vertical coordination" or conflicts among regions and central government might hinder environmental policymaking. On the other hand, studying this level also helps clarifying to what extent such dynamics are transversally influenced by partisanship. We know that party ideology plays a key role in shaping environmental policy preferences of political parties, but other factors such as institutional and capacity building or vertical congruence (Stefiruc, 2009) between different tiers of government remains still underexplored in environmental policies at multi-level systems. 

 

To address some of these research gaps, the current study aims to comparatively assess the relevance of different factors shaping intergovernmental relations in environmental policies between the central and the regional government in Spain’s multilevel system since the early 2000s. The country’s geographical diversity and quasi-federal model provides a unique opportunity to deepen on similarities and differences among regions that have different contextual features (islands, small regions, bigger regions),  started distinct pathways to autonomy (faster and slower), have developed distinctive legal frameworks and institutions (including different coordination mechanisms with the central government), and have been governed by different parties and coalition governments influenced generating several vertical partisan congruence problems  . Thus, we will focus on the Canary Islands, Murcia Region, and the Valencian Community, all of them not particularly explored by the literature on multi-level governance or environmental policies. 

 

Drawing on qualitative documentary analysis, legislative reviews, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, the study seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding on how the above-mentioned factors have influenced institutional cooperation and coordination in environmental governance in Spain. More specifically, this paper will focus on those periods where vertical partisan congruence did not exist between the central and regional governments spanning from the adoption of the first National Adaptation Plan in 2006 to the present. By examining different capacities, institutions and center-periphery dynamics in these regions, the study aims to identify patterns and lessons that can be shared across similar political systems. Therefore, the empirical findings will enhance our understanding of path dependence, intergovernmental institutions and party politics factors shaping environmental policy implementation in multi-level political systems.