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This paper analyses relations between political parties, parliamentary groups, and members of the Chamber of Deputies, with the aim of measuring the extent of existing party discipline. Unlike other studies that have examined this issue, the current analysis is not limited to descriptive discussions of disciplinary measures, but uses quantitative tools in order to assess the extent of parliamentary discipline. As a result, we obtain crucial information on the nature of party discipline, the costs and benefits that parliamentarians face when acting individually versus collectively, and the factors that affect levels of cohesion and discipline and how we determine them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discussed the utility and reach of social networks during electoral campaigns. We presented the results of a research that analyzes the use of Twitter by political parties in the legislative elections in Spain December 20th, 2015. Presence of the candidates and political parties during the last month of campaign was quantified, and the quality and quantity of their interactions with their followers was evaluated. The results indicate that Twitter is a good social thermometer, but still it faces a major methodological challenge as a predictive tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general elections of December 2015 supposed the opening of a new political cycle in Spain. The high electoral volatility, the increase of party fragmentation (with the strong emergence of two new political forces) and the fall in the percentage of votes of the two main groups, are symptoms of change in the party system. This paper describes the Spanish elections from 1977 to 2016 and aims to delimit electoral cycles over almost forty years of democracy. For this purpose, describes the electoral results, the type of party system (focusing on electoral volatility levels, ideological polarization, party fragmentation and electoral competitiveness), the governments formation and the political parties with representation in the Congress of Deputies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of candidates on voting behaviour in the regional elections of 2007 and 2011 in a number of Spanish regions (Autonomous Communities) included in the scope of the so-called 'dominant model of competition.' These are characterised by the total predominance of Spain-wide parties—and absence of any relevant nationalist/regionalist parties—in all electoral contests: Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, Madrid region, Valencia region, Extremadura, La Rioja and Murcia region. Electoral research in Spain has focused mainly on the strong weight of ideology and party identifi cation in terms of voting behaviour, whereas the impact of the regional candidates themselves has not been analysed in so much detail. Using a series of logistic regressions, this study shows that approving of the regional leader is indeed one of the most signifi cant factors regarding voting decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish 15M movement (also known as the Indignados) was very critical of political parties and the current system of political representation. However, the protest cycle has evolved into a growing and complex process of institutionalization in which activist have been participating in the creation and development of a number of new parties (Partido X, Ganemos and Podemos). This paper analyzes the role played by new technologies in this process. The basic hypothesis is that the extensive use of digital tools, which encourage participation and deliberation in the creation and development of these new parties, in some ways reproduces essential values and practices of the movement, thus facilitating the identification between the 15M activists and the parties. In this way, the transition between movement and party has been conditioned by, among other things, a component of technological mediation, generating an environment of horizontal deliberation, participation distributed and decentralized structure. The use of these tools has been accompanied by the development of a certain technophile frame that stresses the potential of new technologies for social and political change. Thus, the classical notions of representation or participation are redrawn allowing a smooth evolution from the squares to the Parliaments. This article examines the construction of technophiles frameworks, which influenced by the presence of free software and open source, help us to understand the organization of the new movement-parties and the transition between the different forms of collective action. Likewise, some of these digital tools are mentioned and outlined and the role that they have played in order to forge new organization models for these movement-parties are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The variance in electoral magnitude and in district malapportionment is relevant to understand the political consequences of the spanish electoral system. This paper proposes a threefold classification of districts into subsystems and validates it by its diverging results in fractionalization and proportionality. The inequality of electoral magnitudes places a special overrepresentation bonus on certain parties; and the same happens with malapportionment. Both things accumulate into a geographical electoral price which results in a conservative bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the equalization hypothesis at the vote level. A good number of studies have examined whether the Internet is levelling the playing field in electoral competition by offering fringe parties opportunities to increase their visibility. To test the influence of use of the Internet in vote choice, we analyze the behaviour of ERC voters. Using survey data, we test whether online exposure to political information affects vote choice among these voters. We find that online exposure to political information increases the probability of voting for Solidaritat Catalana relatively to voting again for ERC. The analysis provides empirical evidence to support the idea that the Internet works as a differentiated media environment in which political messages compete in more equal terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The M11 massacre opened an exceptional period in the official communication, which ended with an unexpected electoral setback of the Spanish government. This paper analyses the management of the crisis communication, as its use for electoral purposes could have caused the loss of confidence in the Popular Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]