The unattainable politics of child benefits policy in Spain

Abstract
Within the Southern European social model, Spain stands out because of the absence of a coherent child benefit policy. Spain not only constitutes a remarkable case of policy deactivation in the 1970s and 1980s, but also of a continuous series of instable decisions for more than three decades up until the present time.

To account for the erratic child benefit policy in Spain since the country’s transition to democracy, this article goes beyond functionalist and institutional explanations. Our main contention is that intra-party configurations, namely different power resources and conflicting preferences about redistributive issues, prevented political parties from holding consistent and stable stances over this policy sector, even when in office. In turn, this triggered a non-decision-making dynamic in the public arena, setting the path for the non-development of child benefit policies in Spain. The argument relies on quantitative data on regulatory changes in child benefits in Spain and Portugal from 1976 to 2005, and qualitative evidence on the Spanish domestic policy process through a wide range of primary and secondary resources.