Chapter 18. Party funding in Spain. (original) (raw)

The Carrot and the Stick: Party Regulation and Politics in Democratic Spain

South European Society and Politics, 2014

Party regulation in new democracies in general, and in the Spanish political system in particular, has not been a matter of concern until very recently. In order to fill this gap, this article explores the way political parties have been regulated not only in the Constitution, but also in the main laws regulating party foundation, organisation, dissolution and, not least, funding: namely, the 1978 and 2002 Political Party Laws as well as the 1985 and 2007 Party Funding Laws. The empirical part explores the impact such regulation has had on the Spanish party system as well as on the life of its party organisations.

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.

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

Spanish Political Parties: Before and After the Election

Government and Opposition, 1977

AS LONG AS FRANCO LIVED, ALL MILITARY, LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE powers centred on his person. Regional autonomies were suppressed, unions outlawed and political parties banned on the metaphorically medical grounds that ‘Spain’ was historically addictive to the ‘demoliberal system of inorganic democracy’. But Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s éminence grise, was assassinated on 20 December 1973. His death marked the burial of Franco’s plans to perpetuate the regime beyond his grave. Juan Carlos, son of Don Juan - the heir to Alfonso XIII’s throne - pledged at his inauguration in November 1975 to create ‘a real consensus of national concord’. Spain was to become a full member of Europe, ‘with all that this implies’. Neither pledge was attainable without at least a major reform, or at most a dismantling of the regime’s characteristic institutions: the National Movement and the state syndicates. Both were eventually accomplished by a de facto alliance between the monarch and all politica...

Party members and activists in Spain: The state of the art

Reference Barrio, A., Rodríguez – Teruel, J., Barberà, O., Baras, M. (2010): “Party congress delegates in Spain: The state of the art”, Paper presented to the XVII International Sociology Association World Congress. Gothenburg, 11-17 July 2010 Barrio, Barberà, Rodríguez-Teruel, (2011) 'Intra party democracy and middle elites in Spain', Paper presented to the Workshop “The current state of party member research”, Copenhagen, February 3rd - 4th, 2011 The aim of this paper is to present an assessment of the state of the art in the study of party members in Spain. In particular, the paper is focused on the study of convention delegates, by far the most studied topic of this literature in Spain. To that purpose it first describes how party convention works and how they have evolved over time. Then a brief evolution of the different team projects and questionnaires is presented. This finally allows us to critically review the major theoretical, methodological and practical problems raised in this research.

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.

Chapter 14. New Parties and New Ways of Candidate Selection in Spain

This chapter analyzes empirically how candidate selection has evolved in recent times in the case of Spain. As other Southern European countries, Spain has witnessed a sharp decline in institutional confidence and growing political disaffection in the wake of the Great Recession. The sharp decline in vote share of the two major parties (PP and PSOE) has eroded an imperfect bipartisanship, given rise to a more complex scenario in which two recently created parties (Ciudadanos on the center and Podemos on the left) compete to be pivotal players in the political process. This has had a major impact on the process of candidate selection. First, as the new parties were built on an anti-establishment discourse targeting the power of traditional political apparatus, both Podemos and Ciudadanos have put in place more inclusive ways of selecting candidates although with some mechanisms of control of the party elites. Secondly, in an attempt to reconnect with their traditional electorates, the established parties (PP and PSOE) have moved in the direction of opening new ways of participation. Although these changes are still in the making, the process of candidate selection in Spain is expected to change even more substantially in the years to come.