A laissez-faire democracy. Employers’ intervention in the political system of the Spanish transition

Abstract

This article examines the intervention of the main Spanish business organizations, the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (CEOE) and Fomento del Trabajo, in the political system of the Transition. The proposed outline begins with both the economic context —the end of the Thirty Glorious Years and boom of neoliberalism— and the political context —conservative counterrevolution— of the 70´s in the West, in order to study the ideological foundations that led Spanish organizations to interfere with the irregular financing of political parties and launching an underground scheme a covert plan to influence the vote towards the centre-right parties. To understand the characteristics of the network structure created to influence the vote in the electoral cycle of 1980-‍1982, as well as the responsibility of economic pressure groups in the crisis of the Governing party, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), I have used some previously unpublished documentation: the personal records of Carlos Ferrer Salat, first president of the CEOE. In light of the objectives and results of this strategy, the article evaluates the success of an intervention that raises some doubts about its possible incompatibility with the principles of representativeness, participation, and transparency on which liberal democracies are built.