ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIVENESS OR ENVIRONMENTAL

ACCOUNTABILITY?

THE ANALYSIS OF CITIZENS’ PROTESTS AROUND LOCAL

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN MURCIA (SPAIN).

Alfonso Egea (aegea@ceacs.march.es, Instituto Juan March, Madrid) Mireia Grau (mgrau@um.es, Area of Political Sciences, Universidad de Murcia)

Paper to be presented at the Workshop "Environmental politics at the local level". ECPR Joint Sessions, Grenoble 6-11 April 2001

(work in progress; the paper has not been revised by any English native speaker)

1. Introduction

The aim of this paper is to explore citizens’ protests on local contexts

through the analysis of four case studies in the Región de Murcia, Spain. More in

concrete, the paper is focussed on the analysis of citizens’ platforms created as a

reaction to decisions made by local governments on environmental issues. At a

first sight, some of these reactions could be simply characterized as “not in back

yard” (nimby) behaviours since they involve the firm opposition of the citizenship to

the construction of certain collective infrastructures near their respective villages,

such as a solid urban waste treatment plant. However an although some of the

egoistic aspects of the nimby protests exist, the analysis of both the composition of

the citizens’ movements as well as their objectives, brings the key issue of those

protests towards another interesting aspect: the claim for citizens’ participation on

local politics. Thus, one question this paper points out is whether local

environmental conflicts, because of the features involved in local politics and, also,

the characteristics of environmental policy , can eventually work as engines for a

change on the way local government and local democracy are thought and

perceived.

Citizens’ protests are, therefore, taken here as an indicator that citizens’

perceptions and expectations about local democracy are changing or being re-

defined in, at least, two directions: one concerns the meaning of citizenship, and

the other concerns the nature of the relationship between citizenship and local

government. As for the former, both the objectives of the protests and the

composition of protest platforms show that the issue of the involvement of

citizenship in local public life is addressed as the involvement of citizens as one

single block (“citizenship”), rather than different interest groups. In which concerns

the latter, reactions organized by citizens point out that political responsiveness is

being perceived as a missing aspect on local public life.

The paper is divided into three main sections:

The first relates to the general theoretical and analytical perspectives. It

addresses the question of participation and democracy at the local level; it briefly

reviews the main theoretical questions about the relationship between citizenship

and local government through the concepts of accountability and responsiveness.

In order to put the analysis into context, this first section introduces as well the

principal features of local government and local power in Spain, as well as the key

aspects for understanding the Spanish trends and characteristics of environment

and environmental policies, and their links with the local government.

The second section explores the four case studies. Briefly, the first of the

cases is about citizens’ mobilizations against the construction of a water

purification station; the second is about the construction of a waste treatment

plant; the third about the actions to re-forest a burnt countryside area , and fourth

is about the plans to repair the serious ecological damages provoked in a natural

bay after decades of filling in with mining spoil heaps . The cases are analyzed

separately and, in the conclusions (section three) they are compared according to

the framework established in section one, that is, according to whether the

relationship between local democracy and citizens is changing.

1. Local government and representative democracy

1.1 The Analytical Perspective

Citizens’ mobilizations and protests are indicators of disagreement between

incumbents and society, whether such a disagreement is rooted in the content of

public decisions (and no-decisions) or in the form these decisions are made. From

an analytical perspective, these two different roots of disagreement can be linked

to two main questions about democracy:

One question refers to the extent to what incumbent politicians can be sensitive

about citizens’ preferences and, as a consequence, to what extent they can

decide to act accordingly;

The other question refers to the consequences of incumbents’ decisions when

these decisions do not correspond to the implicit and explicit terms of the

electoral agreement.

The first of these questions relates to the nature of the relationship between

citizens and incumbents; that is, to the concept of responsiveness. The second

question is linked to the evaluation, by citizenship, of incumbents’ actions, that is,

to the concept of accountability. These two questions and their corresponding

concepts are at the core of theories of democracy, and, more in concrete, of

representative democracy and its principles.

Our main interest in this paper is to explore whether the principles of

representative democracy and the questions it arises about the relationship

between citizenship and incumbents, can take particular features when applied to

understand local representative democracy.

The basis of such a question is the fact that local representative democracy

contents a singular and particular variable which can be expected to have

consequences on both local political responsiveness and accountability: the

proximity between citizenship and incumbents. Such a proximity is built upon

several factors although these are, mainly, the size of the political entity, the type

of public services provided by local institutions (focussed on the daily life of

citizens and on personal needs -health care, social assistance), and the way these

services are provided. Unlike other levels of government, the provision of local

services is structured through the direct relationship with citizens. Whether local

government implements policies defined by other levels of government or it

implements its own policies, the direct provision of services to citizens allows to

empirically contrast the appropriateness between formal definitions of political and

social problems and needs, and their realities. Local governments are, in this

sense, the closest political sensors of citizens’ problems and needs.

Thus, although some variables can, of course, modify the nature and intensity of

this direct relationship between citizenship and their political representatives (i.e.

the demographic and socio-economic bases of local government units -urban or

rural; metropolitan areas or medium-sized towns- the structure of the local power -

partisan or personal-, the political relationship between local governments and

other levels of governments -collaborative or conflictive, authoritarian or

permissive-, and the type of policy issue) the main question here is whether

proximity works, at the local level, as a mechanism which balances out the two

separate worlds of representative democracy: that of citizens and that of elected

politicians, two worlds which are only and briefly connected at the electoral time.

In this sense, the analysis of the four cases of local protest is an attempt to explore

this question in a concrete policy area: that of environment. There are some

reasons which make local environmental issues appropriate examples for the

analysis of our main question: issues related to environment at local level affect

and involve, directly or indirectly, explicitly and implicitly, the whole local

community; in other words, local policies related to environment are not target

policies as local social policies can be. Local environmental issues tend to mobilize

the whole citizenship, independently on whether mobilization is actually articulated

through large and heterogeneous citizens platforms, or through different and

opposite groups of citizens (i.e. ecologist groups, neighbours): the analysis of

these large mobilizations can provide some hints about how the relationship

between citizens and their local political institutions is understood and expressed,

how, in other words, the two worlds of democracy are shaped at the local level.

Furthermore, the subsidiary principle entails political powers to the local level.

Hence, local government is supposed to provide public services and to make

decisions that broadly affect citizenship’s life.

Bearing in mind that local government is the framework where the concepts of

accountability, responsiveness and proximity are analyzed, it is worth to provide a

description of the local system in Spain. The level of local autonomy and the role

of local government in providing public services will be addressed. Once the main

characteristics of the Spanish local government are caught up, we will turn to

analyze the cases. The exploration of the cases will allow us to suggest several

points about both the relation between citizens and incumbents and concept of

citizenship at local level.

1.2 The Spanish local system: some features

In Spain there are 8077 units of local government. The powers of local government

institutions and their relations with central and regional levels are inspired on the

French model (as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon one): local government is

constitutionally recognised as well as it is its principle of autonomy which it enjoys

for the managing of its own interests (article 137 of the Spanish Constitution). In

this sense, local government takes part of the constitutional framework of the state

and, as such, its own existence and its autonomy cannot be altered by law

(Sánchez Morón, 1998: 29-34; Brugué and Gomà, 1998: 15-16). However, one

thing is the recognition of its internal margin of manoeuvre (autonomy) which

involves that local governments are not subordinated entities, and quite another is

the powers and the financing its is entitled to have. In other words, the Spanish

local government enjoys of full autonomy to do very little. (Brugué and Gomà,

1998:15-16).

The general powers of local government are established according to law (Ley de

Bases del Regimen Local, law enacted in 1985) and according to the constitutional

distribution of the legislative powers between central government and the

Autonomous Communities. In this sense, local government will find its powers

regulated by both national and regional legislation (Sánchez Morón, 1998: 42-47).

As for the latter, it brings about a variety of legislative situations since neither all

the Autonomous Communities have the same level of powers, nor their ruling

institutions share (or have shared) the same political approaches and relationship

regarding local government. Other factors such as the regional balance of powers

and the partisan competition will interact in this dimension and shape a Spanish

map of local government that can be characterized as of political variety.

Another aspect that has to be taken into account is the role that Spanish local

governments have had, at the return of democracy, in the establishment of the

Welfare State and in the particular way they have contributed to establish it. After

the first local democratic elections (1979), local governments had to face the

construction, from scratch, of most of the basic welfare infrastructures. During the

1980s and with the visa and support of citizenship, local governments built up the

net of basic social and health services. Local governments had, thus, both from a

political and managerial perspective, a very clear, legitimate and agreed margin of

action. The needs, problems and expectations of citizens were, therefore, as

transparent as they could be and local governments took a clear administrative

and technocratic profile (Brugué and Gomà, 1998: 19-23; Brugué, Gomà,

Quintana and Subirats, 1999).

Given this situation and coming back to our analytical perspective, it can be said

that during the 1980s, in Spain, there was a high coincidence between citizens’

expectations and local authorities on the content of local policies. This could have

had, as a consequence, the relax on the capacity of local governments to detect

new problems, and, a trend to act unilaterally. Therefore, during the 1980s,

proximity was neither an important variable to understand the relationship between

citizens and elected local representatives, nor the absence of “proximity” became a

conflictual issue. Electoral accountability was, in this context, enough as a

constitutive element of the relationship between citizens and incumbents.

The crisis of the Welfare State and its consequences on the local sphere (the loss

by local authorities of mechanical and clear directions and actions on “what to do” -

Brugué and Gomà, 1998-), have also modified the terms of the relationship

between citizens and local authorities: the coincidence between citizens and

politicians’ expectations that characterized the contents of local politics and

policies in the 1980s does not exist any more. Another question is whether local

governments continue to act and behave as if it did.

In fact, during the 1990s, some local governments have gone through new

experiences that have tried to reform and keep them closer to citizens: these

experiences show that the relation between citizens and the local institutions

matters at the eyes of the latter (Brugué, Amorós, Gomà, 1994). However, whether

this is a common trend or whether this is applied to all local policy areas is

something to be tested empirically.

Although the relation between citizens and local institutions has become an issue

in many local governments all across Spain, such a relation of proximity (to keep

close to citizenship) does not always take similar patterns: basically, citizens can

be understood as individuals or as members of a collective (Brugué, Amorós,

Gomà, 1994) and whether they are understood as individuals (voters, customers,

clients) or as members of a collective changes the nature of the relationship that

citizens may expect to have within local institutions and with incumbents. A

collective meaning of citizenship can emerge from local institutions or from citizens

themselves, but, in any case, it implies a public dominion reference, that is, the

emergence of collective perceptions of citizenship is always addressed as the

other face of public accountability and responsibility.

In the next section, we will explore the four cases of citizens’ protest according to

the terms we have set in this section, that is, according to whether proximity has

worked as a mechanism approaching citizens and elected politicians within the

general trends taken by Spanish local government.

2. Environment, a chance for responsiveness? The analysis of the

case studies.

The aim of this section is to describe the processes of four local contests

related to environmental issues. Bearing in mind the features described in the last

section, this one is focussed in providing a rather detailed picture of the

institutional settings where political and social actors interacted.

In order to proceed, we will, first all, depict the general context of the Región

de Murcia in which concerns general economic features, the type of local

government units, the main trends characterizing the inter-governmental, as well

as some indicators about “environment” (ecologist movement, environmental

awareness, main issues etc.). We will, then, describe and analyze the four cases.

2.1 The economic, the local and the environmental contexts

The Región de Murcia is placed in one of the more active geo-economic

areas of the European Union: the Mediterranean Arch (Consejo Económico y

Social, 1996: 159-182; Consejería de Economía y Hacienda, 2000). It is, thus, a

region with high levels of economic growth. An outlook at the relative proportion of

its economic sectors within the Gross Added Value (GAV) shows, as Table 1

illustrates, the following trends:

Table 1. Relative Proportion of the Economic Sectors within the GAV

MURCIA MEDITERRANEAN

ARCH

SPAIN

1980 1992 1980 1992 1980 1992

Agriculture 8.03 10.62 4.47 3.35 6.83 5.14

Energy 17.37 10.56 5.46 5.69 6.07 6.06

Industry 18.5 17.17 31.26 27.96 25.67 22.5

Construction 6.28 8.99 7.3 7.51 7.31 8.25

Services

(direct)

39.59 37.22 43.33 44.43 42.64 43.59

Services 10.23 15.43 8.17 11.07 11.47 14.48

TOTAL 100 100 100 100 100 100

Source: CES, 1996: 174.

AGRICULTURE

Comparing the three economic areas (Spain, the whole Mediterranean Arch and

the Region itself), it is important to highlight how the agriculture sector takes

different trends in Murcia: whilst the shared trend between the Mediterranean Arch

and Spain is a loss of its weight, in Murcia the relative proportion of such a sector

is not only higher but it is also increasing. This shows a very well-known fact: the

economic specialization of the region on export agriculture, or, in other words, on

industrial agriculture. The environmental impact of such a sector is very high:

pesticides, fertiliser products, wastes such as plastics sheets used as protectors

for crops, and an abusive use of water for the growing of vegetables that require

high levels of irrigation. At the same time, the economic benefits generated by the

industrial agriculture have also worked as strong incentives to abandon traditional

forms of agriculture, and they have promoted the conversion of traditional

cultivated lands into irrigated cultivation. The extension of highly-irrigated

agricultural activities to quasi-arid zones of the Region has been done with the

silent agreement of the Regional government ( the regional government denies this

is happening since it contravenes the European law derived from the Common

Agriculture Policy) and with the criticisms of the ecologist groups.

ENERGY

The proportion of the energy sector is also quite higher when compared with the

Spanish and Mediterranean averages. Within the Region, this sector is

geographically placed in the north coast (Cartagena) and it is mainly based upon

the oil industry. Its direct environmental impact is related to air pollution, but it has

secondary effects such as being, for decades, a pole of attraction for other heavy

polluting industries such as gas industry, as power related industries (the

multinational General Electrics, for example, has one of its biggest European

plants in there), as fertilisers industries, as well as mineral related industries. It is

also important to highlight that previous to the establishment of this sort of

industries, the same geographical area had been suffering from another highly

polluter activity: mining. The environmental impacts of mining are huge:

abandoned spoils heaps containing high concentrations of dangerous minerals

and the complete destruction of near-by ecosystems.

INDUSTRY

A comparative outlook at the industry proportions of each area shows how, in the

Region, the weight of industry is relatively low but it is, as well, a high polluter: one

of the main polluters of the region is the leather industry. Although its percentage

on the industrial GAV is relatively low (2.2% - Consejo Economico y Social, 1996),

such an industry has become one of the main water polluters of the region.

From the point of view of the local government and its structures, the region shows

a very interesting characteristic:

LOCAL GOVERNMENT’S STRUCTURE

Compared to the Spanish averages and to the averages of other Autonomous

Communities, the Region de Murcia has a structure of medium-sized local

government units (45 in total), both in terms of inhabitants and geographical

extension. It shows a particular pattern on territorial distribution of population:

instead of the polarised pattern followed by most of the Autonomous Communities

(more than 75% of local units have less than 5000 inhabitants and less than 10%

of local units have more than 50000 inhabitants), the Region de Murcia shows a

quite homogeneous distribution of population across the territory.

The medium-sized pattern of local government units can also have effects upon

the nature and structure of local power: the units are big enough to articulate the

political conflict through the party system, but, at the same time, personal sources

of power are much more intense than they can be in larger towns. Local power is,

in this sense, quite related to personal networks.

LOCAL AND REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT

From an objective point of view, the economic activity of the Region together with

the quasi-arid geo-climatic conditions, have made the whole Autonomous

Community to suffer from environmental degradation. We have already pointed

out some of the most acute environmental problems derived from the economic

activity of the Region. Others derive from the process of desertification (worsened

by the abandonment of rural areas and by forest fires), the permissive position of

local and regional governments, as well as from the lack of environmental

practices shown by the citizens of the Region, although the latter trend is not at all

different of that shown by Spaniards as a whole: according the surveys, the

Spanish green awareness is not very different from that of its European partners,

differences are revealed when awareness has to be put into practice.

The ecologist movement is composed by five associations: a regional branch of a

state-level association (Ecologistas en Accion); a regional association, the

Southeast Naturalist Association (Asociacion Naturalistas del Sur-Este, ANSE),

and three local groups: Carayuma (from Caravaca, a north-west town), ANIDA

(from Yecla, a north-east town), and Juncellus (from Jumilla).

The two big groups are ANSE and Ecologistas en Accion. Whilst ANSE is

more addressed to environmental education and to act in punctual actions,

Ecologistas en Accion is rather addressed to react against any institutional any

private action that could entail environmental damages. Its priority issues are

centred on, first of all, the protection of natural spaces, secondly, on problems

derived from waste and water, and, thirdly, the effects of electromagnetic pollution

(linked to mobile phones and their aerials), leaving besides other aspects such as

urban ecology (recycling, noise, green spaces etc). Ecologistas en Accion works

very closely to the three local groups (Carayuma, ANIDA and Juncellus). Their way

to detect problems is double-based: one is through their own members and the

other is through citizens. Citizens usually address their problems and claims to the

ecologist movement after they have not found any answer within the

administration. The trust citizens seem to have given to the ecologist associations

is confirmed by a survey carried out in 1999 in Murcia: at the question “who do you

trust more in questions related with the environment?”, 46% of citizens answered

“the ecologist organizations” (see Table 2); it is interesting to see the ridiculous

level of environmental trust that citizens give to political institutions (2%); even

political parties reached higher levels of trust (6%).

Table 2. Environmental Trust

Political Parties 6% Trade Unions 1% Employees 0% Regional and local institutions 2% Ecologist Associations 46% Scientists and University professors

11%

Technicians 24% Journalists 3% None 8% DNK/NA 13% Total 100%

Source: Consejo Economico y Social, 2000: 425.

The perception citizens have about the environmental actions taken by the

regional and the 45 local institutions is, thus, very negative and it reveals, as well,

the little role institutions play in “giving example” to citizens in environmental

practices. As an example, the regional law on wastewater treatment is one of the

most severe and restrictive laws in Spain on the subject: the levels of permitted

pollution are very high and fines to industries for not respecting these levels are

very expensive. Such a model law has promoted a process of industry de-

localisation or, at least, has promoted the use of such a de-localisation as a threat

to the regional and local governments. It has to be taken into account that the

industrial area of the region follows the Segura river which also flows across

another Autonomous Community, the Comunidad Valenciana. Wastewater laws in

the Comunidad Valenciana are much less restrictive, and given the proximity to

this Autonomous Community, Murcian industries have moved to the nearest

possible Valencian area. When de-localisation has been used as a threat, eco-

fines have been converted by local councils and industries into an agreed irregular

punishment and into a way to obtain local taxes.

2.2 The case studies

Environmental policy-making is a long-term process which involves several

level of government -local, regional, central and European. All through this

process, any environmental policy will have to be handled by different ruling

parties and given the duration of environmental actions, political changes will also

imply the replacement of those politicians in charge of the issue by new ones. It is

in this context were the four cases took place during the 1990s in the Region de

Murcia.

The selection of these four cases of study is connected to two factors:

firstly, environmental policies concern different government levels due to the

constitutional distribution of powers and to the subsidiary principle; secondly

environmental issues have provoked, independently on the degree of green

awareness shown by citizens, wide reactions in local communities.

In order to provide a better understanding of the cases, this sub-section

refers to the description of each case, leaving the comparisons among them to the

conclusions.

The selected cases are four examples of environmental conflicts between citizens

and their local incumbents and institutions. The conflicts took place in the 1990s in

four different municipalities. Some of them are still in development. In the span of

time the conflicts took place, local and regional elections were held and derived in

in governmental changes. Whether changes resulted from the electoral

punishment expressed by citizens, the fact is that governmental changes has not

modified either the nature or the intensity of these conflicts. Electoral accountability

has not worked as a form to give and define solutions to the problems detected by

citizens. On the contrary, in spite of the governmental changes they have

provocked, citizens have insisted in their claims and struggles for having a say in

the policy-making process; citizens are, thus, claiming for rather more participative

processes of policy-making.

a) The plant for the treatment of urban water in Abarán.

In January 1998, the Abarán council decided to build a water purification

plant in a countryside area known as “Cañada del Hidalgo”, at 1 Km away from the

city centre, following the measures established by the 98/15CE European

Directive. The news about the construction of the plant and about the chosen area

provoked a wide reaction within the local community: citizens immediately reacted

against such a decision and co-ordinated their protests through the creation of a

wide citizens' platform, the Plataforma ciudadana en defensa de Cañada del

Hidalgo, composed by neighbours' associations, ecologist groups, youth

associations and the youth branches of two state-wide parties (the Spanish

Socialist Workers Party -PSOE- and the Spanish Communist Party -PCE). The

objectives of the common platform were that of making the local government to

change its decision on the geographical placement of the plant. The reasons for

such an opposition were linked to the environmental value of the area so they

presented alternative locations; but apart from the environmental profile of the

citizens' claims, another issue was also included within their protest: the use of the

institutional resources held by the Abarán's mayor for his private interests; the

lands the council decided as the most appropriated for installing the plant,

belonged to one of his close relatives.

The actions taken by the platform in order to make the council to reconsider

its initial decision consisted in several public demonstrations and other

mobilizations addressed to attract the media attention, as well as rather

confrontative events such as more or less violent interruptions of local council

meetings. In spite of the different actions and the social mobilization against the

local council's decision, the latter did not either rectified its initial position, nor

consider any possible negotiation with the platform. The compulsory evaluation on

the environmental impact did not reject the location chosen by the council but it

pointed out at other alternative locations which were not taken into account by the

municipality. Thus, so far the location was not a technical question, the platform

demanded to have a say. However, the local council, legitimated by the non-

conclusive environmental evaluation. It carried on with the project. In February

2000, the works to build the plant started and the platform, given the situation,

addressed its complaints towards the European Union.

From an analytical perspective, through the development of the conflict,

three aspects should be highlighted: we have already mentionned two of them,

that is, the environmental content of the protest as well as the claim for a more

participative local policy-making process. However, another aspect revealed its

importance: the impact of party politics and local-regional intergovernmental

relations upon the whole process of decision and policy-making.

The 1998 local council's decision on the construction of the water

purification plant had been preceeded by some years of discussion on the subject

among the two institutions involved in the policy implementation: the Regional and

the local council's government. However, when the project for the water purification

plant started to be considered (1994), the party membership of each level of

government was quite different from that of 1998. In 1994, the regional

government was ruled by the Socialist Party (PSOE) whilst the Abarán's local

institutions were already ruled by members of the Popular Party.

The socialist regional government launched, thus, an initial project spurred

by European funds which were addressed to such an objective. It planned to build

a water purification plant embracing two municipalities: Abarán and Blanca. Both

local governments (PP ruled) refused the initial plans. Confrontation between the

two local governments and the regional government worked as an obstacle to

reach an agreement on where to place the plant. After 1995 regional and local

elections, the PP went into power at both the regional government and the

Abarán’s mayoralty., transforming, thus, the previous balance of powers. The

partisan change promoted a more collaborative scenario where to negotiate the

project.

b) Where to place a regional urban waste treatment plant? The case of the

macro-plant of the Región de Murcia

Some of the features of the nimby's protest characterize this local contest,

that is, citizens considered that such a plant for the treatment of solid urban waste

is necessary for the collective well-being but, at the same time, they did not want to

be those who have to suffer the negative effects derived by the plant. Apart from

that, the analysis of the local contest also highlights that another keystone: the

lack of local government's responsiveness.

The project implied the building up of a plant that has to face the treatment

of the growing amount of solid urban waste of the region. This plant was supposed

to provide a satisfactory answer to 35 out of the 45 municipalities of the Region.

The negotiation on the location started in 1996 but it did not progress notably until

1999. These municipalities joined their efforts through the articulation of one single

association (consortium) which was in charge of the management of the plant. At

the initial steps of the project, there was a wide agreement that included the two

main political parties (PP and PSOE) as well as the ecologist groups fully

supported the project.

Initially, the location of the plant was easly found and agreed among most of

the crucial actors; one of the 35 municipalities, Torres de Cotillas (ruled by the PP),

offered lands for the construction of the plant. The PP regional government and

the local institutions reached an agreement which had, in addition, the visa of the

ecologist groups. However, before the implementation of the project started, the

1999 local elections brought about some governmental changes: the PP

governmental team at Torres de Cotillas was substituted by a new one ruled by the

former opposition party, the PSOE. Some months after the governmental change,

the local council withdrawn the support to the construction of the plant. The local

government argued that the previous governmental team had undermined the

environmental effects carried by the plant, so, they eventually considered the

construction absolutely inappropriated. After that, a next step was taken: to decide

on another location where to place the plant.

Following attempts to find a location were increasingly harder because of

the rejection-effect, that is, once one facility had been refused by a local

government for its potential negative effects, other local collectives did not need

many excuses to organize their opposition. In fact, successive attempts to find a

location immediately aroused wide local contest and the mobilization of citizenship

through large platforms. Politicians became unable to reach a consesual

agreement with all involved actors (farmers, neighbours associations, ecologist

groups) and had to unilaterally made an impopular decision just because of one

fact: timing. Time started to be a key resource for those who opposed the

construction of the plant since the European Union funds provided for this had a

clear deadline: december 1999.

c) Reforestation actions in Cieza: local grievances as electoral resources

The starting point of this local protest was a reforestation project launched

by the regional government with the support of the Cieza's local council. The

objectives of the reforestation were to recover a large burnt area; the regional

government had asked the technical and scientific assesment of a research centre

on biology which evaluated positevely the effects of the potential reforestation.

Immediately after the project was proposed by the council, the head of the Cieza’

hunters association started a campaign against such an initiative; the conflict,

then, developed its own dynamics.

As in the rest of the cases, the content of the project was not the conflictive

issue, but it was the decision-making process through which the project was

defined. The relationship between political elites is one of the key features in this

case: the head of the one of the local political parties, the Spanish Democratic

Party (PADE) was as well the president of the hunters association, that which

initiated the social mobilization. The importance of this point has to be understood

in the context of the conflict: it raised some months before the 1999 local and

regional elections. In this sense, those political actors who were involved in the

conflict, used the latter as an electoral weapon: all of them, by means of their

active role within the contest, claimed to really represent the interests of the

citizens. Thus, such a partisan implication explains, to a certain extent, the

evolution of the local protest. The potential local grievances were make to be

perceived as a political resource, therefore, it can be said, in this case, that the

electoral timing made the issue of the reforestation to arise both within the

systemic and institutional agenda.

It was in the 1999 local and autonómicas elections when one of the local

opposition parties, the PADE, denounced the government project because of its

environmental impact. The PADE´s position was based on a technical evaluation

carried out, independently, by the Ecology Department of the University of Murcia..

However, the political implications of the controversy were early noticed by

the citizens. They realized that the campaign lead by the PADE was biased by

electoral aims but that, on the other hand, also noticed that the reforestation plan

of the local government was exclusively monitored by the regional government. In

this sense, local institutions left besides any possible political responsiveness: it

was a matter of the regional government; local institutions had a very clear role:

that of being the implementation arm of the regional government.

d) Regeneration of the Bay at Portmán

For more than thirthy years a mining entreprise thrown tones of spoils to a

large natural bay north to Cartagena, the bay called Portmán. The decline of the

mining industry came together with the first environmental regulation in Spain. The

entreprise closed in 1991, at the same time that most of the mining industries of

the area, but the bay has disappeared under tones of spoil heaps; the question is,

now, what to do. Different posible alternatives have raised deep conflicts at several

dimensions: conflicts between citizens and ecologist groups; and conflicts among

the different administrations involved in the conflict: local, regional, national and,

as well, European.

Two characteristics feature this case: firstly, the case offers one common

trend in environmental policy-making: the difficult combination between

environmental protection and economic development; and, secondly, it shows the

difficult co-operation between ecologist groups and citizenship.

The case of the bay in Portmán presents a setting where economic

development interacted with the environmental protection. The long-standing

process taken by the conflict together with the Spanish fragmentation of the policy-

making process determined a complex network of actors as well as the dynamics

of the project. In this sense, the two political parties which have been ruling at the

regional levele (the PP and the PSOE) have proposed and defended very different

projects. The PSOE, in office between 1987 and 1995, launched a proposal at the

end of tis tenure -in 1994- which received a high social support and it was

successfully submitted to the compulsory environmental impact assessment.

However, the change of government in 1995 also changed the regional

governemntal preferences on the problem. In fact, the new regional abandonned

the previous project and designed another one which aims at combining the

regeneration of the bay with the enlargement of the near port of Cartagena within

a global economic development project.

The failure of the successive projects and the turnout of political parties in

office (at the central, autonomic and local level) made citizens not to rely on

politicians as promoters of solutions. On the contrary, citizens consider that the

lack of political determination in solving the problem was due to the political

implications of the project: the results of the regeneration programme would be

long-drawn-out and political parties do not have incentives to carry out such a long,

time-consuming and expensive project. Furthermore, citizens did not either trust

that ecologist groups (Greenpeace, Asociación de Naturalistas del Sureste ANSE-)

could provide a higher expectation of solution. The conflict between citizens and

ecologist group lays in the different points of view about the relationship between

environmental protection and economic development. While ecologist group

fostered environmental implications of the project, citizens focussed on the need to

find a way out to the socio-economic recession of the former mining area. This

situation of confrontation is underlined by politicians and the media in electoral

term. Consequently, the citizensship argues that politicians are blurred by the

complexity of a policy-making process that demands the co-operation of different

level governments that are not necessarily ruled by the same political party.

3. Comparative approach

The analysis of the four cases has pointed out that the aim of local protest

seems to deal with the policy-making process styles rather than with its specific

outcomes. In other words, local protests have not disapproved so much the

content of the public policy as the lack of citizens’ participation in the local

decision-processes. Citizens demand further responsiveness as far as electoral

accountability is hardly effective and feasible due to two main reasons: the first

refers to the institutional context: the highly decentralized political government

demands high levels of co-ordination between different level of powers which are

not often achieved; the second reason is related to the fact that environmental

policies generate a long policy-making process that is not adjusted to elections in

temporal terms: electoral accountability cannot work, in this sense, as a control

mechanism.

As for the former, the decentralization process does not make local

governments completely autonomous, and the responsibility for the political

outcome would be addressed, almost unevenly, to different levels of government.

Furthermore , this co-ordination is not supplied by any institution but it only seems

to be achievable by means of political parties. As for the latter and taking into

account that the implementation of any measure related to any environmental

policy would probably take more than the period in tenure, elections would not be

an effective mechanism to evaluate local institutions. An evaluation of the election

effects in term of accountability and responsiveness can be obtained by

considering separately the collective and the individual effects of elections. The

collective effects are linked to the selection of incumbents; the individual effects

should be linked to the potential transmission of preferences from citizens to

politicians. In this sense, electoral accountability at the local level does not derive

in a better transmission of policy preferences and citizens' moods. Therefore, from

the point of view of citizenship, local elections do not generate political

responsiveness among local politicians.

Taking into account the analyzed citizens' protests, their message seems to

point out at one aspect: the lack of responsiveness and the failure of electoral

accountability as mechanisms to transmit citizens' preferences to their incumbents.

Local protests, sometimes in co-ordination with ecologist groups (Cieza, Abarán,

Solid Urban Waste Treatment Plant) and sometimes in clear confrontation with

them (Portmán) were not focussed on the achievement of one specific goal but on

the promotion of citizens' participation within the local decision-making process.

Protests pointed out that the current political system is not politically responsible, in

other words, it lacks mechanisms of responsiveness.

The existence of a possible closer relationship between citizens and

incumbents is vanished because of the features of the policy making. In other

words, the Spanish almost-federal system and the subsidiary principle do not give

a higher level of autonomy to local entities; rather, the fact that policy making

requires co-ordination amon the different levels of government, cuts it up. In this

sense, two different scenarios of policy-making can be distinguished:

a) Homogeneous/one colour multilevel policy-making: local and regional governments

are ruled by the same political party. In this scenario, the common party

membership variable reduces the chances of confrontation between institutions.

This scenario corresponds to the cases of Cieza, Abarán -since 1995- and

Portmán. However the economic dependency of this entity requires that local and

autonomic governments look for economic resources at the central and European

levels.

b) Heterogeneous/ two colours multilevel policy-making: different political parties rule

at each level of government. This scenario tends to generate partisan conflicts

(Abarán, Solid Urban Waste Treatment Plant) which monitor the development of

other protests. However neither the local or the regional government have used

citizens' protest as a means to struggle for popular support against the different

colour level of government.

Summing up, none of the processes has dealt with citizens' participation

within the local policy- and decision-making. On the contrary, these processes

have fostered a partisan dynamics by which co-operation or confrontation

strategies depend on which party is in office. Protest platforms have addressed

their claims in two directions: to re-consider the role of local government as their

main interlocutor within the multi-level policy-making and to increase the levels of

political responsiveness as a means to built up channels of communication

between citizens and incumbents' ideas and preferences on their local context.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Consejería de Economía y Hacienda, 2000 Anuario estadístico de la Región de Murcia,. http://www.carm.es/econet/eco_menu.htm. Brugué, Quim; Moisès Amorós and Ricard Gomà 1994 La administración pública y sus clientes: ¿moda organizativa u opción ideológica? in Gestión y Análisis de Políticas Públicas, nº1, September-December 1994. Brugué, Quim and Ricard Gomà (coord) 1998 Gobiernos locales y políticas públicas, Ariel: Barcelona. Brugué, Quim; Ricard Gomà, Imma Quintana and Joan Subirats 1999 El gobierno local in Informe España, Fundación Encuentro: Madrid. Consejo Económico y Social de la Región de Murcia (CES) 1996 Estrategias para el desarrollo de la Region De Murcia, CES: Murcia. Consejo Económico y Social de la Región de Murcia 2000 (CES) Competitividad y Medio Ambiente en La Región de Murcia, CES: Murcia (available at http://www.cesmurcia.es/estudios/estudios_10/Indice_del_Estudio_10.html).

CASE STUDIES: Miñano, Roberto and José Israel Carrión 2000. “La estación depuradora de aguas residuales de Abarán”, mimeo. Universidad de Murcia.

Barrionuevo, Mª. Dolores; Alfonso Egea and Patricia Pérez 2000. “La Regeneración de la Bahía de Portmán, el Medio Ambiente en cautividad: ¿técnica o política?”, mimeo. Universidad de Murcia.

Martínez, Sonia; Mª Teresa Moreno and Mª José Cantero 2000. “La ubicación de la planta de residuos sólidos urbanos”, Mimeo. Universidad de Murcia.

Martín, Fernando; Manuel Llamas, Antonio José Blázquez and Fernando Jiménez 2000. “Las acciones de reforestación en la Solana del Pinacho y los Parajes de la Chiripa y La Torca y sus Efectos Medioambientales”, mimeo. Universidad de Murcia.