The Institutional Foundations of the Modernisation of Economic Policy: The Case of Spain, 1975-1991

This paper analyses the transition process in Spanish economic policy throughout the period 1975-1991, from a new institutional economics approach and a Transaction Cost Politics perspective that point out the relationships among institutions, polity and economy. During these years, the political mutation of the Spanish State and the path of the Spanish economy impelled a process of institutional change that triggered the birth of a modern economic policy, and became a key explicative variable for understanding the Spanish economic change. This was clear for fiscal, monetary and financial policies, whose complete reorientation appears as a direct result of the reconstruction of the system of political rules. The Spanish case is a source of knowledge for developing economies and countries in transition.