Party members and activists in Spain: The state of the art (original) (raw)

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.