IESET.
Policies·spain_iraq_withdrawal_2004

Spanish troop withdrawal from Iraq

ESP·2004 – ·enacted 2004-04-18candidate
movesrule of law—

What the policy did

First major decision of the Zapatero government: announcement 18 April 2004 of withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, completed by late May 2004. Reversed the Aznar government's Azores-Summit alignment of March 2003. Part of broader re-orientation toward Franco-German EU axis and away from US-UK Atlanticism.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
—
rule of law
institutional.rule_of_law
Rule of law as institutional substrate — contract enforcement, judicial independence, equal treatment before the law. Upstream of most other axes.
unchanged · weak
Foreign-policy reorientation; no direct domestic axis movement.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

El Salvador's FDI inflow, real-GDP growth, tourism arrivals, and business-formation rate accelerated under the Bukele era (2019-2024) relative to a Central American peer-country donor pool (Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic).
bukele_fdi_gdp_investment_climate_2019_2024inferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — mean_gap=-0.697, |gap|/pre_sd=1.2, p_perm=1 (gap below 0.5×pre_sd or placebo p≥0.10)
partial
Following El Salvador's perceived success with the régimen de excepción (March 2022 onward) and the homicide-rate collapse, multiple Latin American jurisdictions enacted Bukele-style emergency measures: Honduras (Estado de Excepción in select municipalities, December 2022), Ecuador (Estado de Excepción + designation of gangs as terrorist organisations, January 2024), Peru (Estado de Emergencia in Lima/Callao, 2023-).
latam_bukele_imitation_effect_homicide_security_stateinferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — ATT=+0.03571, p=0.598, N=99, treated_countries=1 (above α=0.10)
partial
Across a pre-registered panel of OECD and major emerging-market economies from 1996 to 2023, stronger rule-of-law institutions predict faster real GDP per capita growth after country and year fixed effects and basic macro controls.
market_order_rule_of_law_gdp_pc_growth_panelinferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — coef=-0.08348, p=0.913 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Across a pre-registered panel of OECD and major emerging-market economies from 1996 to 2023, stronger rule-of-law institutions predict higher high-technology export intensity after country and year fixed effects and basic macro controls.
market_order_rule_of_law_high_tech_exports_panelinferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — coef=+0.621, p=0.746 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Across a pre-registered panel of OECD and major emerging-market economies from 1996 to 2023, stronger rule-of-law institutions predict higher private and total investment shares after country and year fixed effects and basic macro controls.
market_order_rule_of_law_investment_share_panelinferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — coef=-0.3477, p=0.814 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Across a pre-registered panel of OECD and major emerging-market economies from 1996 to 2023, stronger rule-of-law institutions predict deeper private credit intermediation after country and year fixed effects and basic macro controls.
market_order_rule_of_law_private_credit_depth_panelinferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — coef=+4.153, p=0.513 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
El Salvador's second Bukele term (post-2024 inauguration, with continued régimen-de-excepción and worsening institutional-quality scores) maintains FDI inflows, GDP growth, and tourism arrivals trajectories established in 2019-2024 despite mounting authoritarianism critique (V-Dem electoral-democracy decline, WGI rule-of-law score continuing to fall, Freedom House "partly free" downgrade).
bukele_phase2_post_2024_authoritarian_growth_premiuminferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
PARTIAL — mean_gap=-0.3577, |gap|/pre_sd=0.051, p_perm=0.143 (gap below 0.5×pre_sd or placebo p≥0.10)
partial
Across emerging-market and developing economies 1990-2020, stronger contract enforcement — measured by years to resolve a commercial dispute, contract-enforcement index, and legal-origin dummies — predicts whether foreign-direct-investment inflows produce productivity spillovers to domestic firms rather than enclave effects.
contract_enforcement_fdi_productivity_spilloversinferred
viainstitutional.rule_of_law
SUPPORTED — coef=+0.1145 (sign matches claim +), p=0.0196
supported

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

Belgium Sixth State Reform (2012-2014)
BEL·2012
match
0.7
rule of law
Ecuador muerte cruzada — dissolution of National Assembly
ECU·2023
match
0.6
rule of law
India — Abrogation of Article 370 and reorganisation of Jammu & Kashmir (2019)
IND·2019
match
0.6
rule of law
Italy Renzi-Boschi constitutional referendum (rejected 2016)
ITA·2016
match
0.6
rule of law
National Action Plan on terrorism (2014)
PAK·2014
match
0.6
rule of law
Soviet Union dissolution — Belovezha Accords 1991
SUN·1991
match
0.6
rule of law
BZOe split from FPOe April 2005
AUT·2005
match
0.5
rule of law
Belgium Egmont Pact failure (1977-1978)
BEL·1977
match
0.5
rule of law

References