Introduction

As democratically elected institutions responsible for nearly half oftotal public expenditure and for more than 20 per cent of nationalgross domestic product (GDP), regional governments are one of thekey actors in the provision of public policies in Spain. With thewidening of the welfare state, the Europeanisation of domesticpolicies, and the emergence of intricate policy issues(digitalisation, sustainability, urbanisation, to name only some ofthem), the role of regional governments as policy analysts hasincreased notably. Today, regional governments participate in thepolicy analysis process and generate their own information andtechnical knowledge about policy problems. These instances ofregional government activity have evolved from policy analysisprocesses characterised by the participation of a few actors in theproduction of information for the policy process to a new model inwhich more public and private organisations interact in theconstruction of policy analysis strategies (Mota and Subirats,2000).

Among the European Union (EU) member states, Spain has provided oneof the most relevant examples of decentralisation by moving, in thelast four decades, from a centralised state to a decentralised statein which up to six levels of government coexist (Heywood, 1995; seeChapter 6 in this volume). Spanish political articulation stillremains a very complex system regarding the territorial distributionof powers among national, regional, provincial, and localgovernments (Agranoff, 2010). Understanding how policy analysis isperformed at the regional level thus requires analysing how regionaland central governmental actors cooperate in the definition andimplementation of multilevel domestic public policies. It alsorequires considering how regional governments gather information,data, and knowledge for the definition of evidence-based regionalpolicies in those sectors that fall under their responsibility.

In this chapter, we focus on regional governments as policy analystsin a context of increasing state intervention, greaterdecentralisation, and growing policy complexity. The main researchquestion concerns how policy analysis is performed at the regionallevel by focusing on: (a) how regional governments have becomecrucial actors in the articulation of policy analysis over time; (b)to what extent they coordinate their activities with the centralgovernment; and (c) the main characteristics of policy analysisprocess at the regional level.