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This paper highlights the classroom use of active methodologies in Political Science and International Relations in a Spanish setting. Using both surveys and in-depth interviews, it examines how extensively active methodologies are used in Spanish universities, what professors understand active methodologies to be, and how are they implemented in the classrooms. Most importantly, it seeks to understand the instructional transition made by professors that started off their professional careers as lecturers and, subsequently, decided they wanted to include active methodologies as a meaningful part of their courses. Results show an extensive use of active methodologies, although instructional choices are often made without prior pedagogical expertise, nor a proper evaluation of the student's learning experience. We conclude with some suggestions on policy recommendations that would increase the quality of teaching and improve the learning outcomes in the classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This research reveals how a virtual exchange (VE) can foster transnational collaboration in higher education, assist students acquire key learning outcomes and raise awareness regarding the complexities affecting development policy and sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach: Overall 50 students from two universities in Spain and the United Kingdom, enrolled on two different degree courses (Global Studies and Marketing), cooperated in multidisciplinary teams to analyze real development policies and initiatives. The authors collected quantitative and qualitative data to assess the students' perceptions of the methodology. Findings: The students perceived the VE to be of great value, enriching their educational experience by having a positive effect on their overall learning and fostering internationalization. A high number of participants declared the teaching and learning methodology was useful to assist them in reaching crucial cognitive, skill-based and affective educational objectives, and to help them understand how development policy works while also raising awareness regarding real-world complexity. Practical implications: This methodology proved valuable in helping students acquire the set of skills expected from today's graduates in economics, political science and marketing. This active learning and pedagogical innovation component provides some interesting conclusions contributing toward widening the adoption of VEs in higher education contexts. Originality/value: The increasing complexity of the globalized world makes it challenging for higher education institutions to develop multidisciplinary approaches to education to foster sustainable development. The experience provided offered the students an online international experience at their home institutions. Consequently, the research elaborates on how VE can be applied in economics, business, management and political science courses to enrich learning experience by applying theory in a practical way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the use of Twitter by the candidates for the presidency of the Government of Spain of the five main parties at the national level -PSOE, PP, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos- of the general elections campaigns held in April and November 2019. The main purpose of our study is to determine the strategies used of the microblogging network by the leaders, both in terms of activity, interaction and notoriety and in terms of topics and discursive development, as well as their similarities and differences. The secondary objective is to study the evolution of these strategies both between the two campaigns and with respect to previous elections. To this end, the research is based on a content analysis methodology that studies quantitative, qualitative and discursive elements. The results reveal an uneven use of Twitter in terms of the frequency of updates, but similar in terms of its unidirectionality, with scarce interaction with other users and a predominance of tweets with their own content over retweets. The dissemination of other people's content was used almost entirely to promote the candidate's political party and, to a lesser extent, to interact with journalists. Dialogue with citizens was almost always residual, both in retweets and in responses. This utilitarian conception of the microblogging network was accompanied by a polarizing thematic selection, with an almost general preponderance of political issues over policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the evolution of the electoral use of Instagram in Spain, from its origins as a political communication channel to its current consolidation. A content analysis of eleven variables is applied to the formal, spatial, personal, thematic-discursive and interactive dimensions of the activity carried out on this social network by the candidates for the presidency of the Spanish Government of the parties that ran with the highest vote expectations in the General Elections of December 2015, June 2016 and April and November 2019 (571 posts). The results show the consolidation of Instagram as a political communication tool and the growing interest of the parties in it, as well as the increasing importance of short videos as a format. The electoral use of this social network is carried out with an increasingly mobilising intention, as evidenced both by the themes chosen and, above all, by the purpose of the publications, the spatial context represented and the hashtags used. The growing characterisation of candidates as leaders of the masses is also evidence of the personalisation of political leadership that occurs in this medium during electoral campaigns. Finally, the phenomenon of polarisation and the presence of populist stylistic traits are also beginning to be noticeable, as reflected in the increase in political issues and negative emotional appeals in the messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to reflect on the political function of the arbítrios, through a memorial written by Luis de Ribera, which deals with a topic related to the ecclesiastical government of Peru. The arbítrios were proposals addressed to the king for the solution of problems in several spheres of the government, especially financial matters. They had their heyday in Spain from the middle of the 16th century, and from the first decades of the 17th century we can observe an arbitrism centered on American issues, although to a lesser extent than the Castilian arbitrism. Ecclesiastical issues were of great importance in the Spanish territories in America, due to the fact that sovereignty over the new lands was justified by the evangelization of the natives. Ribera's memorial offered a solution to one of these issues, the rivalry between the religious orders and the secular clergy; from this we will consider the influence of these writings on political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of silence in Spain's post-dictatorship memory politics. More specifically, the paper examines the forgotten Spanish colonial past in North Africa vis-à-vis the so-called pact of silence that accompanied Spain's transition to democracy after the Franco dictatorship. Drawing on various theoretical approaches in relation to collective memory, traditionally assumed associations between silence and forgetting are questioned. As is argued, silence may nurture and preserve memory just as it may also feed into forgetting. In the former case, silence typically enshrouds a living memory of a past that still weighs on the present, as the pact of silence in Spain clearly illustrates. In the latter case, silence signals a past perceived as already left behind and alien to society's current problems, as is the case of the Spanish colonial past in North Africa. In order to further explore the latter case, the notion of banal silence is introduced. Such notion points to cases where silence over certain contentious historical issues goes unnoticed by society, thus becoming naturalized. The paper concludes with some final reflexions on memory, banal silence and political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than one decade after the global crisis of 2008 had started, many Spanish cities entered a phase of post-crisis, marked by a positive macroeconomic setting. Tourism, as a coping strategy, has contributed to this growth, but it has also led to numerous conflicts, summarized by the emerging discussion about overtourism. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain), the arrival of short-term rentals is associated with a new crisis on the housing market, as the city shows one of the highest growth rates in rental prices in Spain and a severe shortage on the rental market. This paper analyzes how local stakeholders perceive the ongoing process between crisis, post-crisis and overtourism using qualitative interviews. The conducted material reveals that the housing crisis is linked to the effects of overtourism. However, the causes are multi-faceted and a consequence of the 2008 crisis. This is shown by different aspects, such as housing supply, socio-economic vulnerabilities of residents and political issues. Tourism and housing are both cause and result of this complex relationship between crisis and post-crisis. Hence, coping strategies need to address the underlying structures to overcome the crisis symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The main aims of this paper are to analyse the monetary value of informal care time using different techniques and to identify significant variables associated with the number of caregiving hours. Data and methods: A multicentre study in two Spanish regions in adult caregivers was conducted. A total sample of 604 people was available. A multivariate analysis was performed to identify the variables associated with the number of hours of caregiving time. In the monetary valuation of informal care provided, three approaches were used: replacement cost method, opportunity cost and contingent valuation (willingness to pay and willingness to accept). Results: The main determinants of the amount of time of informal care provided were age, gender, the level of care receiver´s dependence and the professional care services received (at home and out of home). The value estimated for informal care time ranges from EUROS 80,247 (replacement cost method) to EUROS 14,325 (willingness to pay), with intermediate values of EUROS 27,140 and EUROS 29,343 (opportunity cost and willingness to accept, respectively). Several sensitivity analyses were performed over the base cases, confirming the previous results. Conclusions: Time of informal care represents a great social value, regardless of the applied technique. However, the results can differ strongly depending on the technique chosen. Therefore, the choice of technique of valuation is not neutral. Among the determinants of informal care time, the professional care received at home has a complementary character to informal care, while the formal care outside the home has a substitute character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Since the 2007/08 financial crisis and during the ensuing period of austerity, government agencies and 'conventional' markets have shown little interest in meeting low-income housing demand. Land and housing are increasingly commodified and financialised, and 'formal' access to housing has become unaffordable to ever larger sectors of the population. Those excluded from formal systems continue to provide themselves with land and housing via alternative means, as has been documented for over five decades. This phenomenon has intensified in some places and reappeared in others. Despite international agreements and exhortations to recognise the urban poor's efforts to house themselves, which now also promote the notion of urban and community resilience, government agencies continue to criminalise and quash such initiatives, thus contributing to inequality. This paper aims to examine and illustrate the type of bottom-up housing process and official response that is taking place around the wold, with a focus on the role of two key actors: state and community. It adopts a transformative interpretation of urban resilience based on making the concept of resistance central to this, in order to reflect the realities and priorities of low-income and vulnerable settlements. This 'resistance as resilience' is explored in three self-built settlements by examining Giddens's structuring types of relation: allocative structures, authoritative structures and systems of meaning. These case studies are located in national contexts with different income levels: Las Sabinas in Spain (recent settlement in a high-income country); Guinaw Rails Nord in Senegal (medium-term settlement in a low-income country), Villa 31 in Argentina (long-standing settlement in a middle-income country). The case studies show how communities in all three cases have been the most active and effective in creating settlements that meet their needs in an integrated way, while government agencies have implemented policies of exclusion and abandonment. The case studies highlight that communities do not operate on a level playing field, but their actions can bring about changes in the types of relation identified by Giddens. So-called 'informality' thus becomes a political question, related to the position of low-income communities within their political economy and social structure, and their relationship with power structures. Highlights • In the last decade, commodified and financialised housing has become unaffordable to larger sectors of the population. • A transformative interpretation of urban resilience is adopted based on making the concept of resistance central to this. • Giddens's structuration theory is applied three self-built settlements around the world (Spain, Senegal and Argentina). • We show that 'informality' is a political issue, related to the relationship of low-income communities with power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the results of the research project 08/20 of the University of the Basque Country about the news published in the front pages of the basque newspapers in the years 1996, 2001 and 2006. The researchers have analyzed the front pages of the basque press to determine if they match the demands and interests of their readers. This study also shows which are the most important topics for this newspapers. This research analyzes 2.448 front pages of the main 5 basque newspapers, with a total 19.156 news items. For this work, a specific methodology has been developed, for either a quantitative and qualitative analysis. The data shown in this paper are a briefing of the more accurate results of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the reasons for the sudden rise of women in party politics and political representation in Spain. Structural explanations and the conditioning influence of the electoral system are reviewed before focusing on institutional and party-political explanations. It argues that the key factor in explaining this rise is not just the adoption of rules on the gender parity representation, but the intra-party politics that allows for effective implementation of such rules. Using insights into the internal dynamics of the PSOE gained from extensive field observations and interviews, it argues that high levels of female representation were secured via internal party procedures, coupled with political backing from the party leadership. The paper therefore takes the discussion on women' participation in representative politics beyond the question of adopting quota rules into the terrain of how, instead of remaining a dead letter, it is successfully implemented in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of feminism in Spain within the context of political transformations. It focuses on one particular strand of feminist thinking: ‘equality feminism’. The paper traces the evolution of equality feminism and its institutionalization, supported by the production and dissemination of a feminist history of the Franquista dictatorship (1936–1939). Yet, under scrutiny such narratives maintain a silence on the social, political and geographical diversity of women's experiences prior to, during and beyond the Franquista dictatorship. Drawing on women's oral testimonies (recorded in the city of Málaga, Andalucía) the paper animates the silences of this feminist history in Spain and the limits of state feminist ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon a comparison of the experiences of regionalisation in Spain and the United Kingdom. Spain's process of devolution, initiated in the late 1980s, has led to an asymmetrical structure of devolution with certain regions, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country. acquiring more autonomy than others. However, the slogan ‘café para todos’ (coffee for everyone) has in recent years been employed by Catalan and other nationalists to argue that the State of Autonomies has not respected the special status of Spain's historic communities and has diluted their claims for greater levels of self-government. It is precisely such a model of asymmetrical autonomy that has been adopted in the United Kingdom since 1997, the implications of which remain to be seen. As this paper explores, however, there are already signs emerging that the United Kingdom is following a similar trajectory to that in Spain, which is why the comparisons are particularly important and timely. Indeed, the authors argue that adopting a model of asymmetrical autonomy can lead, even at an early stage, to the emergence of regional identities in regions with no previous manifestations of regional consciousness, the rise in territorial tension after devolution, and the backlash by the historic regions against a ‘one size fits all’ or uniform approach towards devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this paper is to analyse why people go to war, despite the, at first sight, divergence between benefits and costs. This paper provides a comparison of the willingness to go to war in different OECD countries using World Values Survey data. The empirical findings in the United States, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden and West Germany, using the willingness to fight as a dependent variable, indicate that such factors as pride, trust, and political ideology significantly influence individuals' willingness to go to war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing the current political context in Spain is a major challenge to political theory. Spain is experiencing the accumulation of trends that in recent years have focused the attention of most theorists and political scientists: discrediting of the major parties, falling numbers of party members, disaffection, etc. In parallel, this trend has been accompanied by citizen mobilisations that, since 15 May 2011, are manifest in numerous channels and strategies. The aim of this paper was to analyse the complex Spanish context from the monitory democracy proposal. The results show how in recent years processes of public scrutiny have been consolidated through a range of citizen initiatives. The study offers an in-depth analysis of the main characteristics of the most notable cases and monitoring initiatives, and also reflects on their democratising potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic transitions are usually complex and uncertain processes, and specifying paths to democratisation is a tentative process. One of the controversial and less explored paths is that of regime self-transformation. An attempt is made in this paper to explain this kind of transition with the notion of regime dispensability, a situation in which the dictatorial regime is abandoned in favour of a non-dictatorial one, using two countries that experienced such regime-initiated democratic transitions, namely Spain and Turkey, in a comparative framework. Dispensability is linked to the nature of the dictatorial regime and is used as a tool to account for causes of, and regime groups that can bring about, the regime's transformation, as well as for the implications of self-transformation for the future democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial issue in the European Union (EU) is which policies should be regulated by EU and which ones by national governments. Given this situation it is interesting to study the citizens' preference for the level of political decision making. The interest of the paper is mainly empirical, which consists in the creation of a measure for supranationalism decision making from different measured policies and to study how personal variables affect the level of political decision. A combination of Item response theory (IRT) and structural equation modeling (SEM) will be used. IRT is useful to discover whether a cumulative scale for different policies exists, and SEM will be used as validity of the supranationalism scale. Multiple group Confirmatory Factor analysis taking into account invariance tests will be used to compare the differences within gender, age, education and political trust with supranationalism scale. A whole model combining all these predictors and the supranationalism scale can be done using multiple input multiple cause-MIMIC models. The application is based on Spanish data from the European Social Survey. Differences in education and age on the level of political decision making are found. The combination of IRT and SEM methods it of great interest in the case is the researcher wants to fulfill both goals, creating the construct for supranationalism and validation of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent analyses have demonstrated that personality affects political behavior. According to the mediation hypothesis, the effect of personality on political participation is mediated by classical predictors, such as political interest, internal efficacy, political discussion, or the sense that voting is a civic duty. This paper outlines various paths that link personality traits to two participatory activities: voter turnout in European Parliament elections and participation in protest actions. The hypotheses are tested with data from a large, nationally representative, face-to-face survey of the Spanish population conducted before and after the 2009 European Parliament elections using log-linear path models that are well suited to study indirect relationships. The results clearly confirm that the effects of personality traits on voter turnout and protest participation are sizeable but indirect. They are mediated by attitudinal predictors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the political thought of Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal, known as "El Tostado", in his De optima politia. This little work offers some reflections on the political community, on the city considered as centre of civic and political activity, and on the best possible forms of government, as well as criticism of some platonic elements such as the communism of wives, and the position and value of the family. He introduces Aristotle as his source and principal philosophical inspiration in pre-humanist Spain, and in the academic environment of the first half of the 15th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alejo Carpentier's novel El siglo de las luces is a fictionalized account of how Enlightenment ideals traveled during the Age of Revolution, a meditation on how European, particularly French, ideas were transformed and implemented in new and unique contexts (e.g., Spain, Cuba, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Suriname). Carpentier thematizes the passage of ideas as a process of translation, both linguistically from French to Spanish, English, or Dutch, and conceptually, from one specific culture to another with different demands of relevance and applicability. The novel complicates the classic issue of the translator's fidelity to the text in that the responsibility to convey a text's original meaning collides with a need to adapt it to the new context. In El siglo, the translator's fidelity to the original confronts the revolutionary's fidelity to the Event in the practice of translating texts, such as the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the 1793 French Constitution, as well as the Event of the French Revolution itself. This paper will explore the constellation of politics, translation, and fidelity in El siglo, with special reference to the relationship between political translation to propagate revolution and the revolutionary politics of translation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Immigration is a highly politicized issue in Europe, and yet the regulation of economic migration is often seen as a straightforward function of sectoral demands or organized interests in the policy process. This paper asks how ideas matter and how they play a role in policy change over labor migration. It develops a framework to show how ideas operate in the politics of immigration to provide a more coherent account of policy change. Drawing on debates in political theory about the politics of hospitality and using the case study of Spain, the article shows how differing justifications for immigration controls inform governmental responses and influence the timing and direction of policy change. La inmigración es un tópico altamente politizado en Europa, y sin embargo la regulación de la migración económica es a menudo vista como una función sencilla de las demandas sectoriales o de los intereses organizados del proceso político. Este artículo pregunta qué tanto importan las ideas, y cuál es su papel en el cambio de las políticas sobre migración laboral. Para proporcionar una explicación más coherente del cambio en la política se desarrolla un marco para demostrar qué tanto operan en la política de inmigración las ideas. Basándonos en debates de teoría política acerca de las políticas de hospitalidad, y utilizando el caso de estudio de España, el artículo muestra que las respuestas gubernamentales están informadas por diferentes justificaciones del control de la inmigración y que dichas justificaciones influyen en el tiempo y dirección de las políticas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a spatial analysis of the results in the general elections of contemporary Spain (1977–2007). By using electoral data at municipal level, we have traced back the evolution of the vote at high spatial resolution, thus providing a more accurate overview of the evolution of modern Spanish politics and offering empirical evidence on the nationalization thesis. We demonstrate that this approach reveals several processes that remain hidden when aggregated data are used, especially the clustering patterns in the smooth transition from dictatorship to full democracy (the so-called Spanish Transition). We found a statistical normalization process of the left/right dynamics with a growing number of balanced municipalities with a similar number of votes for left and right parties. The tendency towards a Gaussian histogram centered on a value of 50% for the left vote is an indication of political normalization after 40 years of dictatorship. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper focuses on analysis of public opinion towards European integration in Greece, Portugal and Spain, countries known for their positive attitudes toward integration. In particular, the article analyses how public attitudes towards Europe have been formed in these countries. Secondly, it examines the determining factors of citizens' positive attitudes toward integration and shows the types of variables that are essential to understanding the differences between Greeks, Spaniards and the Portuguese. It also examines traditional euro-optimism in these southern countries. The findings show the relevance of identity and the various impacts of party platforms and ideology in attitudes of support for European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to shed new light on the causes of split-ticket voting in concurrent multi-level national and regional elections held under PR electoral rules. Up to now, differences in electoral outcomes in Spanish concurrent elections have been understood as a product of the mechanisms associated with second order elections. Evidence against this interpretation is presented, and alternative explanations from the international literature are tested. We find that, on one hand, Andalusian intrablock and regionalist ticket-splitters weigh their national and regional electoral choices differently: While in the national arena ideology is the main predictor of electoral behavior, at the regional level ticket-splitters tend to cross ideological lines and vote based on the performance of regional politicians or a preference for local leaders. On the other hand, interblock ticket-splitters seem to balance their votes ideologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of women's presence in both chambers of Spanish Parliament —Congress and Senate— during the last three decades, as well as in the European Parliament since 1986. The patterns of transformation in female representation are then compared with a) other lower houses in the rest of the EU countries, b) Spanish regional parliaments and c) other levels of political power such as national, regional and local governments. Further, the question of gender in political parties is raised. Finally, we identify the main socio-demographic differences and similarities that characterize female MPs and Senators in comparison to their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linkage of development cooperation with migration policies has been promoted widely by international organizations from 2000 onwards. This paper analyses the factors that have prompted and impeded a reorientation of the dominant migration policy-frame within the EU towards the realization of a migration-development nexus. It is argued that external events such as the international debate on the migration-development nexus and the external shocks provoked by the events in Ceuta and Melilla prompted the EU to rethink its traditionally rather narrow approach, focusing on the repression of migration flows. However, the persistence of the established policy-frame and the existing institutional setting limit the scope for balanced policy coordination, introducing development mainly as an instrument of migration policy rather than the other way round. Challenging the literature that argues that there is a necessary trade-off between a development and a security-orientated migration policy, it is shown that this dichotomous juxtaposition hides the many ways in which different orientations can be combined, depending on the institutional context within which they are framed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at how cities can function in much the same way as nations in the construction of political projects. Taking Pasqual Maragall’s mobilization of Barcelona during his period as mayor of the city (1982–97) as an example, it explores how locally dependent politicians attempt to exploit ‘spaces of engagement’ (Cox 1998) to escape from the territorial and scalar limitations which city councils have to operate within. It argues that mayors can embody cities, and explores how Maragall located himself within a set of performatively, discursively and institutionally constructed visions of Barcelona embedded in wider economic, political and cultural spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]