When do countries recentralize? ideology and party politics in the age of austerity

The Spanish executive centralized political power to manage the politics of austerity better in the aftermath of the Great Recession. This article analyzes the reinforcement of the power of the central government and argues that three explanatory variables—economic crisis, ideology, and party politics—account for recentralization, which is defined as fiscal consolidation, concentration of competences, bureaucratic rationalization, and ideological convergence. The debate about the motives and nature of recentralization (de jure vs. de facto) further polarized the centerperiphery cleavage. Regional prosovereignty parties interpreted the reversal of decentralization as another sign that accommodation within Spain was not possible and that contestation was the way forward.