The Rise, Crisis and Decline of the System for Autonomy and Care for Dependency as an Intergovernmental Microcosm

This study subjects the Sistema para la Autonomía y Atención a la Dependencia (SAAD) (System for Autonomy and Care for Dependency) to a precise critical analysis, with some comparative references, in order to demonstrate the tendency whereby vertical-multilateral type legal and institutional mechanisms of formal intergovernmental relations become instruments for the expansion of a person’s rights to benefits, and at the same time, also, the impact of variables in public finance on this domain. Viewed from these two perspectives, powerful tensions emerge with respect to the needs for territorial autonomy. The analysis is divided into four parts: in the first, after a brief introductory summary of Spain's otherwise poor experience with respect to the use of the relations between executives in a nomopoetic role, the underlying context of SAAD and the directives followed by the legislature in 2006 are introduced. At the same time, a careful distinction is made between what is truly innovative (negotiated nomopoetics) and what is a convoluted, traditional basis of spending power. This is accompanied by a summary, from a relational perspective, of the legal framework of the three levels of protection and the peculiarities of the organizational arm that was instituted on an ad hoc basis (second part).The next two parts engage in systematic analysis and are devoted both to the subsidy structure, with extensions into SAAD’s indispensable node of powers and financial capacity, and the multiple declinations of negotiated nomopoetics. The last section sketches out some implications from the intergovernmental perspective of the very recent financial developments that have affected the SAAD in the wake of the economic and financial crisis.