Checks and Balances and Nation Building: The Spanish Constitutional Court and Catalonia

We examine whether judicial review can affect political attitudes by studying how the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Catalan Constitution affected Catalan support for secession, which doubled in the 2010-2012 period. Our identification strategy relies on the fact that the ruling occurred amid a public opinion survey. We find that the ruling led to a 20% increase in support for Catalan independence from Spain in 2010. The ruling exacerbated the preferences for decentralization (up to secession) and ignited a backlash against institutions (courts, democracy, etc). Additionally, the polarization of political attitudes depended on (endogenous) identification: the ruling strengthened Catalan identity and increased political polarization in that dimension between people with and without Catalan heritage. Polarization around this issue came at the expense of depolarization in the economic dimension. All of these results are consistent with the predictions of identity politics theories