Checks and Balances and Nation Building: the Spanish Constitutional Court and Catalonia
Abstract: We examine whether the exercise of checks and balances can affect nation build-ing by studying how the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the CatalanConstitution affected Catalan support of secession, which doubled in the 2010-2012 period. Our identification strategy relies on the fact that the ruling occurred amidst a public opinion survey. We nd that the ruling led to a 20% increase in support for Catalan independence from Spain in 2010. We show that the increased support of the secessionist cause cannot be explained by the economic crisis or the political parties' strategies. Although cultural factors are a mediating mechanism, the diminished trust in institutional channels of accountability represents the main mechanism behind our result.
