Moderate Regionalist Parties in Spain: Convergència i Unió and Partido Nacionalista Vasco (original) (raw)

From stability to change? The evolution of the party system in Spain

Party System Change, The European Crisis and the State of Democracy, 2018

Spain's party system evolved from a swift transformation during the fi rst years after democratic transition, towards increasing stability and strong institutionali-zation from 1990 onwards. Alas, the 2008 economic and fi nancial crisis aborted this smooth evolution and triggered several alterations in the Spanish political landscape. Although the institutional framework has contributed so far to limit the scope of these changes, the 2015 and 2016 legislative elections brought many novelties to the traditional patterns of partisan competition, electoral behavior and government formation. This chapter will assess how the gradual evolution of the Spanish party system experienced an accelerated mutation during the last decade, and how the economic turmoil and the institutional malaise became catalysts of those systemic changes. Party system stability was favored for years by the continuity of the institutional framework designed during the "Transition" to democracy. Spain is nowadays a parliamentary democracy featured by a combination of majoritarian and consociational institutions. These institutional arrangements were set by the 1978 Constitution precisely to avoid some of the main burdens of past democratic experiences , like low party system institutionalization, government instability and centre-periphery tensions (Gunther et al. 2004 ; Magone 2009). On the one hand, national politics is driven by strong concentration of power around the executive , and particularly the prime minister (Presidente del Gobierno) vis à vis the cabinet and the parliament. Asymmetrical bicameralism is dominated by the low chamber (Congreso de los Diputados), where parliamentary parties play a strong role favored by internal rules promoting party cohesion and the predominance of the party in central offi ce. This is also facilitated by a PR electoral system with a strong majoritarian bias due to the low magnitude of most districts, favoring the main national parties and their respective central offi ces. This institutional setting, together with the organizational evolution of Spanish parties, and the fact that the prime minister has generally been also party leader, have produced a highly "presidentialized" political system (Biezen and Hopkin 2005). On the other hand, consociationalism is strongly fueled by the process of devolution set by the Constitution that ended up in a highly decentralized state with 17 different

Party systems and cleavages in Spain

for their assistance, the Comité Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT [SEC95-1007]) for its financial support, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Instituto Juan March, for the use of its excellent facilities.

Are Parties Domocratizing Themselves? the Evolution of Leardership Selection In Spain (1977-2008)

2010

Reference: Barberà,O.; Baras, M.; Barrio, A.; Rodríguez, J. (2010) Are parties domocratizing themselves? the evolution of leardership selection in Spain (1977-2008), Working Paper 285/10. Barcelona: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials The aim of this article is to test whether between 1977 and 2008 has been an increase in internal democracy in the main Spanish political parties, focusing on the process of selecting the party leader. Our research question is whether parties have fostered equality in the process to select the party leader, favouring representative or direct mechanisms of intraparty democracy. We also test the hypothesis that the degree of equality in the selection rules and procedures affects the degree of political competition amongst candidates for party leadership. The results show that Spanish parties have strengthened their representation mechanisms for the leadership selection. Conversely, we didn’t find empirical relation between the selection rules and the degree of competition.

Analysis of Party systems and Political Cleavages in Italy and Spain

Spain is a Kingdom; head of the state is a King Juan Carlos I and head of the government is Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Spain is parliamentary monarchy which has multi-party system as Italy and proportional representation; therefore there are many parties which compete on regional and nationwide elections. Since 2004 two main political parties dominated in Spain, these are pro-leftist Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and pro-right People's Party (PP), as both parties include both right and left political spectrum, other minor parties have hard times competing at nation-wide elections.

Intra-Party Democracy and Middle-Level Elites in Spain

The existence of a new phenomenon has been pointed out by party politics scholars: the gradual implementation of new mechanisms of intra-party decision-making more participatory and thus, more democratic. This phenomenon has been linked to party elite’s reactions to a general trend: party membership decline. Spain is a deviant case in both the party membership decline, and with the introduction of more participatory and democratic decision-making mechanisms. That is why the aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to check whether support for intra-party democracy can be found in Spanish party middle elites (party delegates), and, on the other, to explore the determinants of the support for intra-party democracy amongst party delegates. The results of our paper show that support for intra-party democracy is quite widespread in Spanish party delegates. We also detect emprirical evidence of the impact generated in the support for intra-party democracy by ideology, involvement in intra-party experiences and degree of pragmatism.