The paper evaluates the effect of regionalist parties, defined as those that present candidates in a limited number of territorial districts and that seek to represent primarily the interests of a regional subset of citizens, on the stability and performance of national parliamentary governments. The goal of this paper is to illuminate various factors, emanating from the multilevel state structure, that impact the performance of minority governments in Spain. At first glance, a heavily decentralized political system with a variety of regionalist parties, some that advocate greater regional autonomy or outright independence from the Spanish state, might appear to militate against effective national governance in times of minority government. However, the paper demonstrates that the decentralized state and regionalist parties operating at multiple state levels, in general, work in favor of minority government stability and governability.
