Accountability Strategies and Agency Termination: The Case of the Spanish Telecoms

In 2013, the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) -one of the older and better-established regulatory agencies in Spain- was terminated by the government. Without delving into the specific reasons behind this termination, this paper builds upon this case to explore the role that accountability failures may have in the process of consolidation of an agency. To this purpose, this paper aims to identify several shortcomings in CMT´s accountability mechanisms during the years prior to its termination, as potential drivers of agency’s weak regulatory legitimacy within the Spanish institutional environment. More concretely, our main hypothesis suggests that the agency institutional weakness was related to a pattern relying on informal accountability practices in non-hierarchical environments, and rather formal accountability mechanisms in a hierarchical milieu. Hence, this paper argues that those accountability failures threatened the agency’s consolidation, as prevented it from widening its political support beyond its traditional audiences. We rely on a variety of sources including legislation, relevant literature, media coverage and 13 semi-structured interviews.