Institutional Suicide and Elite Coordination The Spanish Transition Revisited

South European Society and Politics
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Institutional Suicide and Elite Coordination: The

Spanish Transition Revisited
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca & Luis Fernando Medina
To cite this article: Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca & Luis Fernando Medina (2019): Institutional Suicide
and Elite Coordination: The Spanish Transition Revisited, South European Society and Politics,
DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2019.1694282
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SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS
https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2019.1694282
Institutional Suicide and Elite Coordination: The Spanish

Transition Revisited
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca and Luis Fernando Medina
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In the literature on democratisation, the Spanish case has Democratisation; Spain;
a paradigmatic status, especially for the negotiations between elites; coordination;
the regime and the opposition. While these negotiations did parliament
stabilise the new regime, the transition was driven by the
regime’s elites. The key event was the approval of the Law
for Political Reform in November 1976, when the legislature
voted its own demise. The change was done according to the
rules of the system. To explain this reform, we offer a formal
model of coordination and a statistical analysis of an original
dataset of the 531 legislators. The reform was possible because
of elites’ belief coordination.
Although the Spanish transition to democracy has been the subject of an exten-
sive and valuable literature (exemplified, among others, by Carr & Fusi 1981;
Colomer 1995; Fishman 1990a; Gallego 2008; Huneeus 1985; Maravall 1982;
Molinero & Ysàs 2018; Powell 1989; Preston 1986; Share 1986; Weingast 2004),
its most remarkable trait, the fact that it came about through an internal trans-
formation of the legal and institutional system of the Francoist dictatorship, is still
wanting for an in-depth explanation.
The watershed event is what was at the time called the ‘hara-kiri’ of Francoism
on 18 November 1976, the vote whereby the Spanish legislative chamber passed
the Law for Political Reform establishing a bicameral system with universal
suffrage, which meant the demise of the dictatorship and the onset of democracy.
This event has been the subject of numerous descriptive accounts but it remains
an analytical puzzle: Blakeley (2016) and Sánchez-Cuenca (2014) are the only
exceptions.
Why did the legislators of the Francoist political system vote in favour of
a proposal that gave rise to a new democratic regime? Building on Sánchez-
Cuenca (2014), who suggests it was a matter of coordinating beliefs about the
future within the Francoist ruling bloc, we provide a simple model of coordination in
which legislators have both ideological preferences and incentives to side with the
majority. Technically, the model is a two-team coordination game, that is, a game
CONTACT Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca igsanche@clio.uc3m.es

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 I. SÁNCHEZ-CUENCA AND L. F. MEDINA
where the set of players is partitioned between two groups with opposing prefer-
ences and where the outcome is determined by the groups’ relative size. The
partition, however, is endogenous in that the players (legislators) can decide
which group to support. The legislators are placed at cross-purposes: if the side
they might prefer on ideological grounds is bound to be defeated, they may defect
to the other side. Typically, in situations like this the game has multiple equilibria; the
final outcome depends crucially on the mutual expectations players have about
each other’s choices.
The Spanish transition to democracy has a very peculiar characteristic that
makes it unique for the analysis of coordination. There were two reform attempts
within months of each other, the first one failed, the second one succeeded. In the
first attempt, the government pushed for only minor changes in the system,
including a new upper chamber where the Francoist elites would have retained
veto power over the laws that a popularly elected lower chamber might pass.
Despite the moderation of the proposal, the executive found overt and mounting
opposition in the legislature. The plan was eventually shelved, and the King
appointed a new Prime Minister. The new government submitted a much more
radical reform to the legislature, which implied full democratisation, but this time,
surprisingly, the vast majority of the legislators consented. Rather paradoxically,
the more moderate proposal, merely an internal reform, was rejected, whereas the
more radical one, tantamount to institutional suicide, was approved resoundingly.
Coordination emerges as the most plausible explanation for this puzzling
sequence. Using the results of the model, we can show why and how two factors
made the difference between the successful democratising reform and the
failed liberalising one. First, the initial reform attempt was incremental, with
several pieces to be voted separately, whereas the second one was a take-it-or-
leave-it proposal. Second, during the latter attempt the government was able to
convey the idea that the reform would pass by a wide margin, pushing coordi-
nation in favour of the reform.
We provide evidence of the coordination that took place along the process.
More specifically, we show that coordination was more likely to occur, as the
model predicts, among legislators with moderate ideological preferences. We test
this hypothesis quantitatively thanks to a dataset with the 531 legislators that we
have created out of archival research. This dataset contains the voting behaviour
of the legislators and presents novel information about their political, social and
demographic traits. The hypothesis is clearly borne out: those who changed their
mind from the first to the second reform consistently have intermediate values in
the traits that are measured when compared with those who always voted in
favour of reform and those who always voted against.
All in all, coordination under uncertainty emerges in the Spanish case as the
main mechanism to explain the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Previous game-theoretic explanations of this case have focused on the bargain-
ing between the different factions of the state and the opposition (Colomer
SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS 3
1995; Weingast 2004). In contrast, the present article brings to the fore the
strategic interactions within the ruling bloc.
The view of the Spanish transition supported in this article shifts the focus of
attention from the negotiated agreements between the regime and the opposi-
tion to the strategic interaction among the different factions within the ruling
bloc. Of course, external events (such as the protest of the opposition in the
streets) had an effect on the expectations and strategies of the legislators, but,
at least during this early phase of the transition, the institutional reforms were
the result of the moves made by the Francoist elites.
The article is structured as follows. Section two describes the sequence of
reforms in the Spanish transition. Section three presents the model of elite
coordination. Section four accounts for the differences in the two reforms
using the main results of the model. Section five provides quantitative evidence
of coordination. The article ends with a discussion of similar cases and some
conclusions.
The puzzle of institutional suicide: the Spanish transition to democracy

Spain’s transition to democracy has garnered enormous attention both among
scholars working on democratisation (among many others, see Bermeo 1997;
Collier 1999; Linz & Stepan, 1996; O’Donnell, Schmitter & Whitehead 1986;
Przeworski 1991) and, more broadly, among those looking for cases of success-
ful and peaceful instances of democratisation (see Gunther & Montero 2009, pp.
36–41 for a canonical presentation). In that capacity, it has served as an example
and inspiration for other democratising endeavours in Latin America and
Eastern Europe. Such attention is understandable given how inauspicious the
initial conditions were. Francoism was a highly institutionalised dictatorship,
with a strong state that was able to repress protest effectively. Besides, pre-
cedents were gloomy, as the collapse of the Second Republic and a long
tradition of political instability attest. Despite all this, Spain became a durable
and stable democracy after Franco’s death.
The dominant narrative portrays the Spanish transition as the culmination of
pacts or negotiations between the moderates of the regime and the moderates
of the opposition. Democracy became possible because the various political
forces were able to reach a compromise. Share (1986), for instance, talks about
a ‘transition by transaction’; Karl and Schmitter (1991), in turn, consider Spain to
be a pure case of transition by ‘pact’.
We do not question the historical relevance of the comprehensive pacts that
became the trademark of the Spanish transition, but we claim that these pacts
were essential to stabilise the new regime rather than to bring it about. The
transition to democracy, narrowly understood as regime change, consisted of the
internal reforms produced by the elites of the regime in response to pressures
from below. These reforms were fully institutional, without breakdown of the legal
order. Democracy arrived in Spain as a legal transformation of the constitutional

principles of the authoritarian system, carried out within those very same princi-
ples, ‘from the law to the law’ (de la ley a la ley) to use the expression in vogue.
The first part of the transition, the one composed by the institutional changes
within the Francoist legal system that made free elections possible, were driven
by the regime’s elites, with little input from the opposition, that remained
underground. Of course, the opposition exerted strong pressure through strikes
and demonstrations on the regime’s elites (Maravall 1982), but there was no
open negotiation between the opposition and the regime before the approval
of the reforms that led to the calling of the first general elections since 1936.
Negotiations and consensual decision-making happened after the general elec-
tions of 15 June 1977; they crystallised in the constitution of 1978, the law of
amnesty, and the socio-economic pacts of ‘La Moncloa’.
The Francoist dictatorship had a peculiar constitutional system based on seven
so-called Fundamental Laws. Amending these laws required a two-thirds super-
majority in the Cortes, the unicameral legislature of the regime made up by more
than 500 legislators (procuradores), and a subsequent referendum. The procura-
dores were appointed in most cases through co-option in a complex system of
quotas that were supposed to represent the three ‘natural entities of social life’:
the family, the trade-union, and the municipality. Somewhat hovering above the
Cortes, was the Consejo Nacional del Movimiento (National Council of the
Movement, being the Movement the single party), the regime’s ideological hard
core that served as something of an upper chamber, even if it did not have
legislative powers. On constitutional matters, the Consejo Nacional, whose mem-
bers were also MPs in the Cortes, had to issue a non-binding opinion that never-
theless carried enormous weight.
When Franco died (20 November 1975), the regime’s elites were divided into
hard-liners who accepted a modicum of liberalisation, and reformists ready for
democratisation although coupled with an institutional design that gave them
a reasonable chance of winning elections. The highly heterogeneous opposition
movement, which included Christian democrats, Maoist groups and everything
in between, demanded ruptura, a break with the past; this meant amnesty,
political liberties, a provisional government in which all political forces would be
represented, and a constituent assembly.
The regime elites abhorred ruptura as their eyes were trained on neighbouring
Portugal, where the regime’s collapse was followed by expropriations and land
occupations (Durán 2000). Legal continuity, embodied in the formula ‘de la ley
a ley’ (‘from the law to the law’), represented the hallowed guiding principle.
Thanks to legal continuity, regime elites thought they would retain control of
the state and expected that the resulting institutional changes would afford
them a high chance of remaining in power. Right after Franco’s death, the
opposition launched mobilisations to bring about the collapse of the regime.
During January-March 1976 there were massive strikes and demonstrations, but
they did not reach the point of paralysing the country. There was still a vast
percentage of the population who was either indifferent towards political
developments or somewhat supportive of the regime (López Pina & López
Aranguren 1976; Maravall 1982). Explicit support for ruptura was only around
20 per cent. Likewise, workers who participated in strikes were more concerned
with salary and working conditions than with revolution (Fishman 1990b; Pérez-
Díaz 1980). Furthermore, the state was able to contain protest; repression of
strikes and demonstrations (particularly those demanding amnesty and free-
dom) was frequent and effective. In Vitoria, a town in the Basque Country, the
police killed five workers during a local strike on 3 March 1976. After this event,
strikes and demonstrations declined significantly, to the point that the opposi-
tion renounced the ruptura in favour of a ruptura pactada (negotiated break),
which was merely a euphemism for the recognition that the regime would be
able to pass reforms unilaterally (Preston 1986).
Although the opposition was not able to bring about the collapse of the
regime, its actions proved that the status quo needed reform sooner rather than
later. Realising this, the regime tried some liberalisation but failed due to
disagreements within the ruling bloc. Remarkably, the second attempt suc-
ceeded despite having a more ambitious and radical goal: full-blown democra-
tisation. In what follows we examine each reform separately.
The failed liberalisation reform

After Franco’s death, Juan Carlos de Borbón became the new King of Spain,
swearing allegiance to the Fundamental Laws of Francoism. This meant that the
military would obey him as long as he respected the system’s constitutional
order. His hands were tied: if he wanted to preserve his position and to usher in
democracy, it could only be through reform within that legal framework.
The King retained the incumbent Prime Minister, Carlos Arias Navarro,
a hardliner unwilling to make any changes that went beyond the cosmetic, but
managed to persuade him to include several reformist Ministers in the cabinet.
The Vice-premier and Minister of Interior, Manuel Fraga, who favoured an incre-
mental, piecemeal reform as the best guarantee for a controlled liberalisation
process, was the main responsible of the first reform plan prepared during the
winter and the spring of 1976. The plan envisioned passing various laws and
a constitutional reform. The most important of these laws, passage of which
required a simple majority in the Cortes, were those pertaining to political rights
(demonstrations and public meetings), ‘political associations’ (the euphemism
then used for political parties), electoral rules, and union activity. In turn, the
constitutional reform envisioned a bicameral system where the lower chamber
would be elected through universal suffrage while the upper chamber, apart from
enjoying veto power, would be of mixed nature, with remnants of the old organic
system, and meticulously designed to ensure a Francoist majority. Besides, the
government would not be accountable to the legislature, so that the new system
was not conceived as a parliamentary regime. The constitutional reform, as it
affected the Fundamental Laws, required a consultative report of the Consejo
Nacional, a two-thirds supermajority in the Cortes, plus a popular referendum.
The fate of the first reform was uneven. As can be seen in Table 1, opposition to
reform increased between May and July. The first piece of the reform, the law
regulating demonstrations, obtained overwhelming support (only 4 nays and 25
abstentions) on 25 May (not included in the Table, see note 2). The second piece,
the law of associations legalising political groups, was approved on June 9th, with
greater opposition: 92 nays and 25 abstentions. The next step was to modify the
articles of the penal code that banned affiliation to parties. Here, the government,
fearing a legislative defeat, cancelled the voting. The penal code reform was
passed one month later, on 13 July, under the new government of Suárez, with
245 yeas, 175 nays and 57 abstentions. This was the highest level of opposition to
reform during 1976. More than one third of the Cortes did not vote yes: had this
been a constitutional proposal, it would have been rejected.
Table 1. Voting results in the two reforms.

Suárez democratising
Arias’ liberalising reform reform
The ‘Letter of the Law on Penal Code Law of Political Reform
126’ associations reform (LPR)
Yeas 432 337 248 425
Nays 97 92 174 59
Abstentions – 25 57 13
Absences – 77 52 34
Opposition (%) 18.3 22.0 45.3 13.6
The percentages for ‘Opposition’ are calculated as [(nays + abstentions)/531]. Further discussion of the
‘Letter of the 126’ can be found in note 2.
Sources: for the ‘Letter of the 126ʹ, Sánchez-Cuenca (2014); for the voting records, Boletín Oficial de las Cortes
Españolas, several issues.
Regarding the constitutional reform, it had to go first through the Consejo

Nacional (the consultative body, populated by the hardliners) which had to
prepare a non-binding report with recommendations. The report rejected the
reform arguing that it amounted to dismantling the regime and many under-
stood that this negative view might easily carry the day in the Cortes (Molinero &
Ysàs 2008). The King, worried about the chaotic pace of the reform (increasing
opposition in the legislature, deadlock in the Consejo Nacional), decided to
replace Arias with Adolfo Suárez on 3 July. The counter was set to zero and
Suárez launched a very different strategy.
The successful democratisation reform

Suárez took an entirely different approach, following the advice of his political
mentor, Torcuato Fernández-Miranda, the president of the Cortes, who
envisioned a fully institutional transition (Fernández-Miranda & Fernández-

Miranda 1995). Rather than following the piecemeal sequence that had failed
before, the new president proposed a new Fundamental Law, the eighth one,
called Law for Political Reform (LPR), which would establish a two-chamber system
elected by universal suffrage (the low chamber with proportional electoral sys-
tem). Furthermore, the LPR conferred constituent power, within certain rules, to
this new legislature. In this way, the system would transform itself according to its
own rules, with no constitutional breakdown. The law submitted to the Consejo
Nacional and to the Cortes was simple and clear, with only five articles. The Consejo
made several recommendations, trying to minimise the scope of the institutional
changes, but this time the government paid very little attention and went ahead
with its plans.
The LPR was to be decided in a single vote in the Cortes. The parliamentary
debate took place during three days, 16–18 November. The vote was held the
last day with 497 procuradores in the Cortes, out of 531. The LPR obtained 425
yeas, 59 nays and 13 abstentions, a margin far wider than the two-thirds threshold
of 330 votes.
The referendum on the LPR was held on 15 December. Participation was high,
reaching 78 per cent. Among those who voted, yeas were 94 per cent. Once the
LPR was passed, the Government carried out further reforms to prepare for
general elections (the Movement was dissolved, the Communist Party was
legalised, and an electoral law was approved). The elections were held on
15 June 1977, a date that marks the beginning of democracy in Spain.
Elite coordination
Why did the legislators of the Francoist political system vote in favour of a proposal
that gave rise to a new democratic regime? In the strategic analyses of the Spanish
transition (Colomer 1995; Weingast 2004), the institutional suicide of the regime is
explained in terms of negotiations within the ruling bloc. There were several factions
within the regime that bargained among themselves. According to Colomer (1995),
for instance, Suárez gets the Francoist hardliners to fall in line with his threat to
bypass them and join forces with the opposition in bringing about a regime break-
down. Since hardliners preferred legal reform rather than breakdown, they voted for
Suárez’s reform. Although a suggestive hypothesis, one that might have been part
of Suarez’s calculations, it does not come through in the documented evidence. At
no point did Suárez issue a threat of coalescing with the opposition if the hardliners
did not vote for reform. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the hardliners would have
deemed such a threat credible at all.
We also use a strategic approach, but one based on coordination rather than
on bargaining. As shown below, a coordination model can account for the
effects that the legislative process and the voting procedures had on the
legislators’ choices, as analysed by Blakeley (2016) and Sánchez-Cuenca (2014).
Our initial assumption is simple: given the volatile circumstances of

a regime transition, legislators of the pre-existing regime have strong incen-
tives to be in the winning side. As Pierson (2000, p. 258) wrote, ‘when picking
the wrong horse may have very high costs, actors must constantly adjust their
behaviour in the light of how they expect others to act’. For a legislator,
strategic calculus may override ideological conviction since, if he votes against
a political change that nevertheless arrives, he will be ostracised; whereas if he
opts for change but the regime stays, he will be labelled a traitor. In either
case, being in the minority carries significant costs but avoiding them requires
knowledge about what others will do. Chwe (2001) lays out the general logic
of the problem. When it comes to regime transitions, this can work in both
directions. In his seminal work, Ermakoff (2008) showed the key role of belief
coordination in democratic countries that transformed themselves, through
legal ways, into authoritarian regimes, as the Weimar Republic in 1933 or the
Vichy regime in 1940.
In the midst of the uncertainty that accompanies any process of regime
change, political elites run a serious risk of becoming isolated or marginalised;
this makes legislators highly sensitive to what others do in the chamber. We
model this coordination problem with the aid of a simple game. Here we offer
a brief description of the model and its main results; the mathematical details are
discussed at length in the online Appendix 1. The game consists of N players (the
legislators) who have preferences over the two possible outcomes, reform (R) or
status quo (Q). The final outcome depends on the number of votes each of the
two options has. Formally, for any strategy profile s, the function D(s), which takes
values R or Q, represents a decision rule such that if R receives a majoritarian share
of votes 1/2, then it passes (in which case we write D(s) = R), otherwise Q remains
the outcome (D(s) = Q). The players’ preferences are represented with the aid of
two parameters. Parameter γi measures how much the outcomes are valued
ideologically by the legislator; and parameter β denotes the benefit he obtains
from voting in accordance with the majority. Hence, if the legislator votes for R, his
payoff is:
ui ðRi ; si Þ ¼ fγi þ β if DðsÞ ¼ R; 0 if DðsÞ ¼ Qg:
If he votes for Q his payoff is:
ui ðQi ; si Þ ¼ f0 if DðsÞ ¼ R; β if DðsÞ ¼ Qg:
The ideological parameter γi varies across legislators, reflecting the fact that they
have different degrees of commitment to their preferred outcome. The formal
analysis will show that those agents for which |γi| > β always vote sincerely,
according to their ideology. To avoid trivial results, we further assume that none
of the two groups of legislators for which |γi| > β (i.e. neither the hard-line
supporters of the regime nor the staunch reformists) is large enough to decide
the vote by itself. (The details, as well as other aspects of the model, can be
found in online Appendix 1.)
With this setup in place, it is easy to prove that the game has multiple
equilibria. In particular, it has two pure strategy equilibria which will be of
interest:
Equilibrium 1: All legislators for which γi/β > −1 vote for R, the remaining
legislators vote for Q and the outcome of the game is R.
Equilibrium 2: All legislators for which γi/β < 1 vote for Q, the remaining
legislators vote for R and the outcome of the game is Q.
In addition, there is a mixed-strategy equilibrium but, since it rests on razor-

edge conditions of expectations, it cannot serve as the basis for comparative
statics.1 While the full-blown analysis is presented in the online Appendix 1, there
are some results that will be useful for what follows. The first and most intuitive
result is that anything that increases the value of γi increases the likelihood of
success for the reform. A second result from the analysis pertains the parameter β
representing the payoff legislators obtain from voting with the majority. Increases
in β reinforce the prevailing trends of expectations among the players. By this we
mean that if, say, under a given preference configuration reform is more likely to
pass than the status quo, increases in β will further increase the probability of R. As
β increases, players have more incentives to engage in strategic voting, that is,
voting against their preferences, thus making more likely that they will converge
on the outcome that, from the point of view of the prior mutual expectations, has
the highest support. In games with multiple equilibria, mutual expectations play
a fundamental role in determining the outcome, as the long line of work pio-
neered by Schelling (1978) makes clear. If, for instance, in the game described
every player expected the other players to coordinate around passing the reform,
it would pass independently of the actual costs or benefits the players would face
in passing it. In online Appendix 1 we discuss at length how changes in expecta-
tions play a role in determining the equilibrium that will ultimately prevail.
Coordination in the two reforms

The puzzling sequence of events in the Spanish transition, viz. the failure of
a modest and gradual plan followed by the immediate success of a much more
ambitious one, admits of two possible explanations, one emphasising structural
factors and another focused on strategic ones. According to the first type of
explanation something happened during the year 1976 that led to a massive
preference change among procuradores. Instead, the second explanation resorts
to the interaction between the key agents and their mutual expectations.
For empirical reasons, we can rule out the structural explanation. The two
reforms were concentrated in six months, from the end of May to mid-
November 1976; too short a time for structural changes. Moreover, there was
no shock during the period that could be related to changes in MPs’ preferences.
To prove our point, we have considered seven variables (measured quarterly
throughout 1976) that cover the economy, labour conflict, protest activity, and
political violence: (i) GDP growth, (ii) unemployment rate, (iii) inflation, (iv) strike
volume (number of days lost per 1,000 workers), (v) participation in demonstra-
tions (per 1,000 inhabitants), (vi) fatalities caused by political violence, and (vii)
fatalities caused by state repression. Results (and sources) appear in Table 2.
Economically, there seems to be no relevant variation in GDP growth or in the
unemployment rate. Changes in inflation are somewhat more pronounced, but
nonetheless the maximum difference during the period is only 2.7 points. Regarding
conflict, strike volume varies considerably along the year, but no obvious pattern
emerges from the data. The same holds for street demonstrations. Likewise, there is
no significant evolution either in political violence or in state repression. Table 2
leads us to conclude that the political and economic conditions were broadly
equivalent during the liberalising and democratising reforms. Given the absence
of external shocks or structural change, we now need to look at the legislators’
calculations and expectations on the two reforms.
In order to study the behaviour of the legislators in some detail, it is useful to
classify them according to their vote in the two reforms. We distinguish three
groups: those who voted both for the liberalising and democratising reforms,
those who voted ‘no’ to the liberalising reform and ‘yes’ to the democratising
one, and those who voted against the democratising reform. While codifying
the vote is easy for Suárez’s democratising reform (it was a single yes/no vote),
when it comes to the Arias’ piecemeal liberalising reform it is a bit more
complicated, since there was a separate vote for each law.2 There are four values
with regard to the Arias’ reform, from those who opposed 0 times to liberal-
isation initiatives to those who opposed the reform in all three cases. Table 3
presents the cross-tabulation of the two reforms.
Based on this cross-tabulation, Group 1 is formed by the 257 procuradores
who never opposed government’s initiatives, either for liberalisation or for
Table 2. Quarterly change of economic variables, political protest, and violence in 1976.
Arias’ liberalising reform Suárez’s democratising reform
Jan.-March April-June July-Sept. Oct.-Dec.
GDP Growth (%) .99 1.15 0.97 0.77
Unemployment (%) 4.0 3.9 4.6 4.8
Inflation (%) 4.6 6.0 3.3 4.3
Strike volume (days lost per 1,000 workers) 521.19 233.78 95.40 148.87
Demonstrators (per 1,000 citizens) 19.68 7.12 28.10 5.60
Fatalities caused by political violence 6 9 3 7
Fatalities caused by state repression 7 5 4 5
Sources: for growth, unemployment, and inflation, Serrano (1994); for the other variables, datasets in Sánchez-
Cuenca and Aguilar (2009).
Table 3. Cross-tabulation of support for the two reforms.

Democratising reform (LPR)
Degree of opposition to Arias’ liberalising reform For LPR Against LPR Total
0 257* 3*** 260
1 124** 5*** 129
2 39** 28*** 67
3 21** 36*** 57
Total 441 72*** 513
Source: authors’ dataset on legislators in 1976.
Note: Group 1 (257) corresponds to the * cells. Cells with ** correspond to Group 2 (124 + 39 + 21). Cells with ***
correspond to Group 3 (3 + 5 + 28 + 36).
democratisation (these are the moderates). Group 2 is formed by the 187

procuradores who at least on one occasion opposed to liberalisation (Arias’
reform) but voted for democratisation (Suárez’s reform) (former hardliners
who became soft-liners). Finally, Group 3 is formed by the 72 procuradores
who opposed the LPR (the core hardliners).3
Once procuradores are classified in these three groups, it becomes apparent
that the behaviour of a number of them was driven by strategic considerations.
Whereas the preferences of Group 1 and Group 3 can be ordered spatially, this
does not hold for Group 2. Unlike Group 1 and Group 3, Group 2’s revealed
preferences are not single-peaked. If we represent the three alternatives along an
ideological line (status quo, liberalisation, and democratisation), as in Figure 1, the
choices of Group 2 (the LPR over the status quo, the status quo over liberalisation)
rank the extremes above the intermediate option (liberalisation). Therefore, the
voting behaviour of members of Group 2, the one crucial to determine the
different outcomes of the two reform efforts, cannot be explained by ideological
considerations. To make sense of the behaviour of those in Group 2, we need to
introduce coordination.
Although the model specifies the various equilibria, it is silent on the reasons
why we observe different equilibria in each case. In her analysis of the variation
between the two reforms, Blakeley (2016) explores several mechanisms using the
framework of William Riker’s ‘heresthetics’ (the art of political manipulation), such
Group 1 Group 3
Breakdown LRP Arias’ SQ

reform
Group 1 (pro- Group 2 Group 3

reform) (against
reform)
Preference First LPR LPR SQ
Second Arias’ reform SQ Arias’ reform
Third SQ Arias’ reform LPR
Group size 257 184 72 (69)
Figure 1. Groups’ revealed preferences.

Source: own elaboration.
as the emergency procedure for the debate on the LPR, the framing of the debate,
and its dimensionality. Although we do agree on the relevance of the heresthetic
mechanisms, the analysis of the comparative statics of our model suggests
a simpler argument. In terms of the model, the two reform attempts differ in
two key respects: the value of parameter β and the distribution of mutual
expectations. Parameter β measures the value of being in the winning side; it is
higher the higher the stakes. In this regard, the procedures of both reforms differ
markedly: whereas Arias opted for an incremental reform, based on several pieces
of legislation plus a constitutional reform, Suárez went for a take-it-or-leave it
proposal (Carr & Fusi 1981, p. 221). In the Arias reform, no single voting round was
decisive; each was part of a larger process. Being in the losing group in some of
the various voting acts of the first reform was not so consequential, or, in other
words, the value of β was lower, reducing the incentives for coordination. In
contrast, in the vote for the LPR the value β was the highest possible in a single
law: nothing less than the country’s future regime was at stake. This difference in
parameter β may account to a great extent for the poor level of coordination
during the first reform and the strong level during the second one.
While parameter β captures the incentives for coordination, it does not estab-
lish on what alternative the agents will coordinate. The fact that β was higher
during the second reform helps to explain why coordination was more effective,
but not why the procuradores coordinated on reform and not on the status quo.
To shed light on this issue, we note that the initial distribution of expectations
about the likelihood of passage was also different in each reform attempt. During
the liberalisation reform, Arias and his government took for granted that the
procuradores would vote for it. The growing opposition that Table 1 reflects came
as a surprise to the executive. Suárez, however, learnt from Arias’ failure and
manoeuvred from the beginning to convey the impression that the democratising
reform would ultimately succeed. Members of the government declared their
conviction that the LPR would pass without trouble. The vice-premier, Alfonso
Osorio, said to the press that ‘patriotism and understanding of how the country
works, will move the procuradores to vote in favour of the reform’.4 Likewise, the
minister of labour, Enrique de la Mata, said that the reform ‘will have the wide
support of the procuradores, since they are aware of the historical importance of
the reforms submitted by the government’.5 Moreover, Suárez asked his ministers
(and intelligence services) to hold meetings with the procuradores, pressing them
to vote for the LPR.6 Regardless of how persuasive the ministers could be, the
activist stance adopted by the government may have helped to persuade many
MPs that the LPR was a truly consequential project and that the government was
sincere in its commitment to pass the reform. Nothing like this can be found in the
first reform.
More importantly, Suárez gained support from two extra-parliamentary
powers, the King and the army (Santamaría 1981). This may have affected the
expectations of many procuradores. On the one hand, the LPR had the support
of the King in a way that the Arias’ reform did not have. Arias was not appointed
by Juan Carlos, he simply was ratified (his incumbency started in 1974). For the
procuradores, opposing Arias in the Cortes did not mean opposing the King.
Suárez instead, was the King’s personal choice. Thus, opposing Suárez implied
opposing the King. The King was the last guarantee of legal continuity in the
regime. He was also the top military authority towards whom Franco had
explicitly demanded loyalty from his followers in his testament. The indirect
endorsement of the reform by the King (through the election of Suárez) may
have played in favour of the LPR, increasing the number of MPs expected to
vote for the reform.
Suárez also sought actively the support of the military. At an early point of the
process, on September 8, two days before presenting the first draft of the LPR,
he held a meeting with the highest military authorities aimed at obtaining
consent for his reformist project. The top brass had no major objections to
Suárez’s reform and simply asked from him to keep intact the unity of Spain and
the proscription of the Communist Party. This support was crucial for many
hard-liners as it conveyed to them a clear sense of isolation. Its significance
comes through in the memoirs of some Francoist personalities. Federico Silva,
a former Franco’s minister, said that ‘the regime was officially dead after the
meeting of Suárez with the generals on 8 September’ (Silva Muñoz 1993, p. 352).
And Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, also a former minister, wrote:
It must be admitted that the state based on the Fundamental Laws was not defeated
by the supposed hara-kiri of the Cortes, a chamber that was misled and subjected to
pressures, but by the military authorities that had consented to the liquidation of the
regime in the meeting of 8 September 1976 under the initiative of the sovereign [the
King]. (Fernández de la Mora 1995, p. 270)
The efforts of the government to manufacture a wide majority in the legislature, as

well as the extra-parliamentary support received by Suárez, were reflected in the
optimistic outlook of the press. The main newspapers announced that the LPR
would pass the two-thirds threshold.7 In some cases, surveys of procuradores
about the LPR were published (something that did not happen during the first
reform). Newspaper La Vanguardia interviewed some parliamentary leaders and
concluded that the LPR would be approved.8 And the weekly political magazine
Actualidad Española, based on a survey of all legislators, made this estimate three
weeks before the voting: 283 unconditional yeas, 128 potential yeas (conditioned on
some amendments being accepted by the government), 78 potential nays, and 42
unconditional nays.9 Curiously, those who were not yet certain about their vote
(potential yeas plus potential nays) are 206, a figure not so different from that of
Group 2, 187 (those who opposed the first reform and voted for the second one).
Given these favourable expectations about the democratising reform,
a number of procuradores who were reluctant to support Arias’ reforms con-
cluded that they were better off siding with the majority and voting for the LPR.
One interesting consequence of this change is that a number of hardliners who

thought that the Francoist regime was doomed, decided in October 1976 to
create a new party to compete in the new political conditions. This party was
Alianza Popular (AP, Popular Alliance), a coalition of seven informal parliamen-
tary groups led by notables of Francoism with Manuel Fraga, the former vice-
premier of Arias’ cabinet, at its head. There is no formal registry of MPs who were
part of AP. Based on archival research, we have estimated that 144 MPs were
part of the new party (27 per cent of all MPs).10 Their support was crucial for the
supermajority required for constitutional reform (two thirds). The leadership of
AP decided to support the LPR in a meeting held on November 13, conditioned
on some gains in the electoral rules that were negotiated during the debate in
the Cortes the following week (Fraga 1987, p. 61). AP became the political
organisation of the hard-liners who opted for democratisation thinking (in
a self-confirmatory way) that the reform would pass.
Evidence of coordination
Coordination is an elusive behaviour in observational terms. It emerges anecdo-
tally in the memoirs of some of the procuradores. Laureano López Rodó, one of the
most influential members of the Francoist elite (a former Franco’s minister), refers
to a private dinner of notables on 18 September 1976 in which they discussed the
chances of the LPR being passed as well as the strategy that should be displayed if
the reform succeeded. The dominant view was that the law would pass and
therefore that they should avoid open confrontation with the government on
reform, or, more bluntly, that they should side with the majority (López Rodó
1993, p. 274). Likewise, another former minister under Franco, Federico Silva,
refers to another dinner, held two days before the parliamentary debate on the
LPR, in which those present calculated that the maximum number of nays would
be 110 (the actual number was lower) (Silva Muñoz 1993, p. 350). These quotes
show vividly how concerned the legislators were about the size of the support for
the LPR among their colleagues.
Beyond these testimonies, we can detect the trace of coordination more
systematically by testing one implication of the model. Parameter γi captures
the intensity of the ideological preferences over the reform. According to the
equilibrium of the game, those who are more prone to strategic considerations
about being in the winning side are those who have values of γi close to zero,
that is, people with weak ideological convictions. Unconditional legislators had
such high values of |γi| that they were not willing to vote strategically. This
conjecture can be tested, albeit in an indirect way.
We do not have a measurement of the intensity of ideological preferences,
but we can proxy it through personal traits that are associated with political
moderation. Our analysis indicates that those who changed their vote between
the first and the second reform had intermediate or moderate personal traits
with regard to the two extreme groups (formed by those who voted in favour of
the two reforms and those who voted against both of them). In terms of the
previous grouping, procuradores of Group 2 should have values in personal
traits intermediate between those of Group 1 and Group 3. This hypothesis can
be tested quantitatively.11
In order to conduct the statistical test, we rely on the dataset of the 531 MPs
that was created by one of the authors (see Sánchez-Cuenca 2014).12 The depen-
dent variable has three categories, corresponding to the three groups in which
procuradores are classified. The traits considered in the analysis include demo-
graphics as well as political characteristics: age, gender, province of birth, seniority
in the chamber, previous participation in Francoist cabinets, fascist past, wearing
moustache (particularly the thin, rectangular one that was typically used by
Fascists, which would signal ideological commitment to the regime), and relation-
ship with AP (the political party of those hardliners who were willing to play the
democratic game).
The first three variables capture socio-demographic characteristics: age, gender
and regional provenance. The expectation is that hardliners (Group 1) should be
older than, and reformists (Group 3) younger than, those who switched their vote.
We have found that procuradores from Madrid were more likely to be hardliners so
we expect more Madridians in Group 3 than in Group 2 and more in the latter than
in Group 1. The same pattern should hold for gender since there were only 8
women in the Cortes (out of 531 members) and it stands to reason that they were
appointed as staunch Francoists.
The second bloc contains variables more closely related with political careers
and political attitudes. First, we consider seniority in the chamber. Those in
Group 3 should be the most senior MPs, those in Group 1 the most junior ones,
with those of Group 2 in the middle. Second, we examine the effect of having
been a participant in one of Franco’s cabinets (39 procuradores meet this
criterion). They could be considered as hardliners and therefore more likely to
be in Group 3. Alternatively, it could be that because of their experience in
government, they were more deferential to government’s initiatives. Whatever
the correct interpretation, those in Group 2 should have intermediate values
compared to those in the extremes.
Franco’s dictatorship was formally a single-party one, though the party, the
Movimiento, played a secondary role during the whole period. Those who made
a career in the Movimiento had often a Falangist past. We have found that this
Falangist past is present in 47 per cent of all procuradores. The expectation here is
that Group 3 and Group 1 will have respectively the highest and lowest propor-
tions of legislators with a Falangist past in their ranks. Many of them, however,
might have entered Falange and the Movimiento for purely careerist reasons. As
said before, the moustache turns out to be a helpful control for that possibility
since, given the context of the moment, a mere personal taste became something
of a political statement. Again, there should be more procuradores with mous-

tache in Group 3 than in Group 2, and more in Group 2 than in Group 1.
Finally, regarding the new party, AP, since it brought together the hard-liners
who were willing to participate in the elections under the new democratic rules,
serving as their vehicle to coordinate, we should expect a higher number of
procuradores associated with AP in Group 2 than in either Group 1 or Group 3.
This is the only variable in which Group 2 might not be intermediate regarding the
other two. Finally, we have controlled for the profession of the legislator and the
type of organic representation (see the online Appendix 2 for a full description).
Since the dependent variable has three categories, we have estimated
a multinomial logit model in which the base category is Group 2. Thus, the
coefficients of the equations corresponding to Group 1 and Group 3 should be
interpreted as the distance to the coefficients of Group 2, which are set to 0.
The multinomial estimates are reproduced in the online Appendix 2. Here we
simply examine coefficient plots, calculated with 90 per cent confidence intervals.
Since the coefficients of Group 2 are set to zero, a simple visual inspection of the
coefficient plot allows us to check whether the hypothesis is confirmed: according
to the hypothesis, the point estimates of Group 1 and Group 3 should appear on
opposite sides of the zero line except for association with AP, where the coeffi-
cients should both have a negative sign. Figure 2 represents the coefficients of the
three socio-demographic variables (age, gender, and being born in Madrid). Each
variable appears with two coefficients, one for the comparison between Group 1
and Group 2, and the other for the comparison between Group 3 and Group 2. In
Figure 2. Coefficient plot of demographic variables (multinomial logit results).

Figure 3. Coefficient plot of political variables (multinomial logit results).

the three cases, the coefficients of Group 2 are in between those of Group 1 and
Group 3, confirming the initial hypothesis.
Figure 3 displays the coefficient plot for the political variables (seniority, Franco’s
minister, Falange, moustache, and association with AP). Regarding seniority, being
a former Franco minister, involvement with Falange, and wearing a moustache, the
coefficients of Group 2 have intermediate values with regard to those of Group 1
and Group 3, broadly confirming the initial hypothesis. But the crucial test here is
that of association with AP: the expectation is that the largest coefficient will be that
of Group 2, since the new party was crucial for the realignment of many procuradores
who had opposed Arias’ reform. As Figure 3 clearly shows, the percentage of
procuradores in AP was highest for Group 2 (the coefficients of Group 1 and Group
3 are both negative and significantly different from 0).
Summing up, the hypothesis that the procuradores who coordinated in Group
2 had moderate ideological preferences compared with the sincere voters of
Group 1 and Group 3 is confirmed. Confidence in these results is bolstered by the
fact that the coefficient of AP is greater for Group 2 than for the other groups,
confirming that this party attracted those hard-liners who decided to vote for the
LPR sensing that the reform would obtain wide support in the chamber.
Discussion and conclusions

Institutional suicide looks puzzling at first glance: a power system is willingly put
to death by its very beneficiaries. But beneath the surface, in processes of
regime change uncertainty looms large and concerns about being in the win-
ning side become paramount, giving rise to seemingly disconcerting phenom-
ena of coordination. If the expectation of democratisation is widespread, many
legislators who ideologically prefer the status quo may end up voting for
political change. The model we have presented shows the power of strategic
considerations among the legislators, especially their need to be seen quickly as
part of the winning side in a context where who will be the winner is not
immediately clear. The model reveals that such considerations are much more
likely to sway groups when both the costs of being left out and the benefits of
betting on the right horse are large.
The analysis of coordination in the early phase of the transition to democracy
puts the Spanish case under a slightly different perspective to the standard one.
We emphasise coordination within the ruling bloc rather than negotiations
between the regime and the opposition. The final outcome depended on the
stakes of the actors, but also and crucially on their ability to coordinate their
beliefs about what the future might bring. The regime could have stabilised
with the initial liberalisation package, or the democratisation package of Suárez
might have failed to pass in the Cortes. In the long run, given the modernisation
of Spanish society, the country would have been a democracy anyway, but in
the short run several developments were possible.
The best proof of the high contingency in which the whole process was
embedded is that, in a rather counterintuitive way, the moderate reform raised
more disagreement and acrimony among Francoist elites than the radical one. Since
most factors are held constant due to close temporal proximity between the two
reforms, the continuity of the legislators throughout the process, and a very similar
institutional and political context, the different outcomes in each case respond to
minor variations in the parameters governing the coordination process.
In the context of a strong dictatorship such as that of Franco, democracy was
the result of the strategic moves made by the elites under the pressure from the
street and the factory. Since the elites controlled the internal transformation of
an authoritarian regime into a democratic one, they imposed legal continuity as
sine qua non condition. Once democracy arrived and the opposition gained
institutional power, the politics of consensus that it is indelibly associated with
the Spanish transition became possible.
Spain represents an early example of a pattern that would be later repeated
on several occasions during the Third Wave of democratisation. Similar cases of
institutional suicide can be observed in highly institutionalised dictatorships,
that is, authoritarian political systems that have a strong state, a constitution,
a legislative assembly and sometimes political parties. Under these circum-
stances, democratisation comes through some sort of institutional suicide,
that is, a legally binding collective decision that implies the end of the regime:
the legislative assembly votes for a reform that ends with the system whereby
legislators were appointed (through co-option or rigged elections). Since 1970,
we have counted ten more or less ‘pure’ cases of institutional suicide apart from
the Spanish one: (i) South Korea in 1987: the National Assembly passed
a constitutional amendment that opened the way for direct presidential elec-
tions; (ii) Chile in 1989, when, after General Pinochet having lost the referendum
in October 1988 for his re-election, the military junta approved a constitutional
package in 1989 that set into motion the democratisation of the country; (iii-viii)
Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic in 1989,
Mongolia and Albania in 1990: the legislative chambers of the six countries
passed reforms that put an end to the single-party regime; (ix) Cape Verde in
1990, when the single party regime opened electoral competition in a new semi
presidential regime; and (x) South Africa in 1993, when a new constitution
ending the Apartheid system was enacted. Brazil (1985) and Mexico (2000)
might also qualify as instances of institutional suicide, but in these countries
the transition was incremental and it is hard to identify a critical moment in
which the regime mutated.
As this brief enumeration of cases shows, institutional suicide is not a negligible
phenomenon or a historical curiosity. In this regard, the strategic analysis of the
first wave of democratisation studies, initiated with the path-breaking project
O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead (1986), gave pride of place to the interaction
between the regime and the opposition. The significant advances made possible
by that line of inquiry came at the expense of an understanding of the phenom-
ena of elite coordination pervasive in times of political uncertainty. With its focus
on the micro-level coordination mechanisms that drive the macro process of
political change in democratising regimes, this article contributes to restore
some of the needed analytical balance. In this analysis, Spain is still a crucial
case for democratisation studies, and not only for the encompassing pacts after
the 1977 elections, but also for the intriguing dynamics of coordination in the
ruling bloc of the dictatorship.
Notes
1. See, for instance, the discussion of this issue in Medina (2007).
2. As shown in Table 1, these were the law of demonstrations, the law on associations
(parties) and the amendment of the penal code. The first law, however, was not
passed through a roll call vote and, moreover, there was no significant opposition.
Hence, it is not included in the Table. To maximise variation, we have replaced the
law on demonstrations with the so-called ‘Letter of the 126ʹ (Escrito de los 126),
a protest document against the government’s lenient policy towards the unions
(which were still underground). Those who signed, truly hard-liners, were alarmed
by the scope and velocity of the Arias’ reform. All legislators had the opportunity to
sign it, but only 97 eventually did (for the sake of consistency, support for the ‘Letter
of the 126ʹ has been codified in Table 1 as a nay to the reform). In every case,
abstention has been grouped with nays, as it was a form of mild opposition. We
consider that those who were absent the voting day do not count as opposition to
the reform. This is a reasonable and convenient assumption that allows us to classify
the entire set of procuradores.
3. Out of these 72 legislators, 69 voted also against the liberalising reform on at least one
occasion. Three of them, however, voted for liberalisation but against democratisation.
Given its limited number, we have not created a separate category for these three
procuradores.
4. ABC (26 October 1976, p. 10).
5. ABC (28 October 1976, p. 15).
6. See for instance, Peñaranda (2012, p. 126), Pradera (1996) and Prego (1995, pp.
555–556).
7. See, e.g. ABC (26 September 1976, p. 7), El País (9 October 1976, p.10), Ya
(28 October 1976, p. 12; 7 November 1976, p. 14).
8. La Vanguardia (28 October 1976, p. 13).
9. Actualidad Española, no. 1295 (25–31 October 1976, pp. 19–22).
10. See the online Appendix 2 for a full description.
11. Apart from Sánchez-Cuenca (2014), the only other quantitative study on the LPR is that
of Sánchez Navarro (1990), which is purely descriptive, with no multivariate analysis.
12. The dataset is available at https://ignaciosanchezcuenca.com/data/.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca is the Director of the Carlos III-Juan March Instute of Social Sciences
and Associate Professor of Political Science at the Carlos III University of Madrid. He is the
author of The Historical Roots of Political Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2019) as well as
of many papers and books on comparative politics, conflict, electoral behaviour and demo-
cratic theory.
Luis Fernando Medina is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Instituto Carlos III -
Juan March of the Carlos III University de Madrid. His is the author of two books on collective
action and voting, A Unified Theory of Collective Action and Social Change (University of
Michigan Press, 2007) and Beyond the Turnout Paradox: The Political Economy of Electoral
Participation (Springer Verlag, 2017) and papers on the political economy of developing
countries and normative theories of justice.
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ISSN: 1360-8746 (Print) 1743-9612 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fses20

Institutional Suicide and Elite Coordination: The

Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca & Luis Fernando Medina

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Institutional Suicide and Elite Coordination: The Spanish

CONTACT Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca igsanche@clio.uc3m.es

The puzzle of institutional suicide: the Spanish transition to democracy

order. Democracy arrived in Spain as a legal transformation of the constitutional

The failed liberalisation reform

Table 1. Voting results in the two reforms.

Regarding the constitutional reform, it had to go ﬁrst through the Consejo

The successful democratisation reform

envisioned a fully institutional transition (Fernández-Miranda & Fernández-

Our initial assumption is simple: given the volatile circumstances of

ui ðRi ; si Þ ¼ fγi þ β if DðsÞ ¼ R; 0 if DðsÞ ¼ Qg:

If he votes for Q his payoﬀ is:

ui ðQi ; si Þ ¼ f0 if DðsÞ ¼ R; β if DðsÞ ¼ Qg:

In addition, there is a mixed-strategy equilibrium but, since it rests on razor-

Coordination in the two reforms

Table 3. Cross-tabulation of support for the two reforms.

democratisation (these are the moderates). Group 2 is formed by the 187

Breakdown LRP Arias’ SQ

Group 1 (pro- Group 2 Group 3

Figure 1. Groups’ revealed preferences.

The eﬀorts of the government to manufacture a wide majority in the legislature, as

One interesting consequence of this change is that a number of hardliners who

of a political statement. Again, there should be more procuradores with mous-

Figure 2. Coeﬃcient plot of demographic variables (multinomial logit results).

Figure 3. Coeﬃcient plot of political variables (multinomial logit results).

Discussion and conclusions

Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2014) Atado y mal atado. El suicidio institucional del franquismo y el

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