RT Journal Article
T1 Regional Ambassadors or State Agents? Assessing the Role of Catalan Cabinet Ministers in Spain
A1 Fernández Rivera, Cristina
A1 Harguindéguy, Jean-Baptiste
A1 Rodríguez Teruel, Juan
K1 Spain
K1 Catalonia
K1 Elites
K1 Ministers
K1 Portfolios
AB This study focuses on Catalan cabinet ministers in democratic Spain with a view to understanding what function they perform in the central government: regional ambassador or state agent? To this end, this analysis draws on a sub-dataset comprised of 22 Catalan cabinet ministers taken from a general pool of 220 cabinet ministers and 371 ministerial appointments from 1977 to 2021. Our findings demonstrate, first, that no Catalan cabinet minister has ever reached the position of Prime Minister and Catalans constitute a kind of ministerial "middle class" occupying intermediate positions in the cabinet. Second, the examination of career paths and publications of Catalan ministers shows that their role varied according to circumstances. Third, in this article we argue that those variations can be best interpreted as a delegation between principal and agent relying on two main variables, namely the type of party they belong to in Catalonia and the parliamentarian majority sustaining the party controlling the Spanish cabinet.
PB Cambridge University Press
SN 1465-3923
YR 2022
FD 2022-05-20
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10433/14203
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10433/14203
LA en
NO Nationalities papers, 2022, p.1-17
NO Identificador de proyecto: UPO-FEDER (grant number UPO-1380883)
NO Política, Territorio y Participación
DS RIO
RD May 24, 2026