Abstract

GONZALEZ, Juan Miguel Rosa  and  ANEZ, Miguel Eduardo Moreno. Rise and fall of new "Catalan Oasis" (1980-2010): an institutional perspective of Catalonia’s political organization. Rev. psicol. polít. [online]. 2011, vol.11, n.21, pp. 45-58. ISSN 2175-1390.

The article analyzes, from a neo-institutional perspective, the critical features of political and social scenario in Catalonia - autonomous community in Spain - from 1980 to the present, a politically exceptional period in this region´s history due to the recovery, after General Franco’s dictatorship, of its identity symbols and political self-government institutions. This paper focuses on the processes which took place in Catalonia the institutionalization of beliefs, social rules and political action patterns which not only affected political evolution of Catalan society and its political parties system, but also allowed the fixation of a solidification of catalanism. Based on theoretical assumptions of sociological neoinstitutionalism, this paper identifies normative, regulative and cultural-cognitive elements in focused institutionalization processes, together with some of main coercive, normative and mimetic processes through which social reproduction of behaviors and attitudes occurred in this particular period of Catalan history.

Keywords : Catalonia; Catalanism; Politics; Institutions; Neo-institutionalism.