Tag Archives: Catalonia

How Catalonia’s Separatists Won the Election Despite Losing the Vote

Nothing on Maryland today because I’ve been riveted by the Catalan regional elections. Instead, I wrote a piece for The Monkey Cage blog in the Washington Post explaining why the separatist victory is a manufactured product of Catalonia’s electoral system.

Despite losing the popular vote, pro-independence leaders are still claiming a strong mandate. Looks like the standoff will continue, providing for more political instability and threatening Spain’s economic recovery.

The next question is whether Carles Puigdemont, the leader of the largest pro-independence party, will try to govern Catalonia from Brussells, where he fled to avoid arrest by Spanish police after the central government ousted him from the same post.

 
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Stacked for Separatists? Catalonia’s Version of the Electoral College

Believe it or not, I don’t study Maryland much for my day job as a political scientist. Read my analysis on Catalonia in the Monkey Cage blog in the Washington Post.

Notwithstanding separatist leader Carles Puigdemont’s dramatic flight to Brussels, Catalonia’s fade from American headlines gives the impression that normalcy is gradually returning to the region in the wake of the ousting of the region’s separatist government by the Spanish central government.

Appearances are deceiving. New regional elections are scheduled for December 21 and the electoral system may yet again manufacture a separatist majority in a manner eerily parallel to the electoral college. In other words, what Catalonia has just gone through might well be the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

 

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