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The failure of the Socialist government to combat unemployment in Spain from 1982 until 1996 is examined here. Sebastian Royo builds on interviews with policy makers, business and union leaders, and scholars, as well as an extensive review of the secondary literature, to support a new hypothesis: that the institutional dependence of the main labour union (UGT) on the Spanish Socialist Party led the Socialist government to default repeatedly on promises made to the union. Since the Socialist government's economic strategy hinged on the cooperation of the union, this breakdown in their relationship ultimately doomed the success of their policies. This book's main theoretical contribution is to highlight an institutional factor that has not been considered in the examination of the effect of political institutions on economies, namely, the autonomy or lack thereof of labour unions from governing parties.