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This paper analyses the communication strategy of the main Spanish political parties on TikTok after the embryonic phase of 2020. Through content analysis, it identifies in quantitative and qualitative terms the use of TikTok by the PP, PSOE, Podemos and Vox, by observing their rate of publication, engagement and type of interaction, predominant themes and adaptability to narrative and discursive techniques. The study, which covers the period from 1 January to 31 December 2021, consists of 562 units of analysis. The results show a settlement and consolidation on the platform and a clear dominance by the Partido Popular and Podemos, as well as the firm emergence of the PSOE, absent until now. A growth in engagement can be seen, although little use is made of the interaction that the social network can facilitate in order to contribute to debate and social participation. The confrontation between leaders, accusations against the governing party and controversial topics, which reflect polarisation and emotionality, are those that achieve the greatest interaction, which shows that the spectacularisation of current politics finds in TikTok a means of dissemination that is easy to viralise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic nationalism or ethnonationalism is a fundamental feature of the ideology of the Spanish political party Vox. This connects it with the political thought of the populist radical right (as defined by Mudde) within the wider far right family. First, this paper examines what ethnic nationalism or ethnonationalism means, in theoretical terms, before going on to analyse a peculiar feature that distinguishes Vox's nativism from other European radical right parties: "ethnic Hispanicism". Finally, it studies Vox's connections with Latin America, investigating the specific conceptualisation and strategic features of the project the Spanish party calls the "Iberosphere". [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 study analyzes the use of Telegram as an electoral communication tool in Spain, focusing on the messages sent by the five major parties in the country (PSOE, PP, Vox, Unidas Podemos and Ciudadanos) during the campaigns corresponding to the general elections of April 28 and November 10, 2019. This research paper steps outside this somewhat still narrow area of methodology by combining two different research techniques on a methodological triangulation: traditional content analysis and data mining processes using Python. Results, which show how political parties in Spain use Telegram mainly as a mobilization tool while expressing closeness with the candidate, are contextualized thanks to the implementation of Big Data analysis techniques that improve and allow for an in-depth investigation and understanding of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the apparent familism of Spanish society, family policies have never occupied an important place in the political sphere. However, various issues related to family policy have started to appear in the agenda of Spanish political parties in recent years. This paper analyses family-related issues in the electoral programmes of the five national parties that stood for election on 28 April, 2019, namely, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Partido Popular, Ciudadanos, Unidas-Podemos, and VOX. A qualitative methodology was used that combined both content and discourse analysis. The results point to important ideological differences between these political parties based on their different conceptualisation of the family, but also to significant similarities on various issues related to "family pragmatics". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This paper analyses the pressures that journalism has exerted or attempted to exert from politics. Methodology: The study uses a combination of qualitative methodologies, such as focus groups discussion, and quantitative ones, such as surveys of journalists; both methodologies allows to know how politics influence journalists and how it can limit media instruments of accountability. Results: this study presents the results of an investigation that shows that journalists and citizens share the perception that political influence is one of the main assumptions that affect the development of good journalism. Discussion/conclusion: Although journalists recognize political and government pressures, the study concludes that they do not give in or feel responsible to political parties or governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This is a research paper that focuses on the Spanish General Elections of 2015 and the subsequent elections, which were held in 2016 as a result of the former ones not producing any agreements leading to the creation of a stable executive. During that period and, in particular, since 2015, politics in Spain overcame a historical two-party domination for the first time in its democracy - on the one hand, the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) - giving way to new political parties aspiring to reach national government, for example, Podemos and Ciudadanos. The main elements of the research deal with studies in agenda setting including an analysis of the Spanish public and media agendas, with a particular emphasis on political coverage. Methodology: A content analysis of the press has been carried out (El Mundo and El País) during the campaign period of the aforementioned elections, revealing the most significant topics on the agenda. Results and Discussion: The data produced by the study indicate that the problems deemed important for the country by Spanish voters have been relegated to a second tier during the electoral campaign. Leaders and different groups prefer to highlight issues linked to politics and governance called "meta-topics" in their speeches, centering on pacts, agreements and self-reference rather than the usual issues of the political agenda such as employment, health and education, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was at first intended to explore the nature and functioning of parenthetical discoursal units in the political debate genre. However, upon closer inspection of the functioning of these units, it was thought appropriate to pin down a more general criterion under which the concept of "parenthetical" could be subsumed. The notion deemed here appropriate for this purpose is that of discontinuous designation or referential twist, which will be referred to throughout this paper as referential leap or leap for short. The research presented here is not meant to be a statistical study based on large quantities of data and backed up in a scientifically rigorous way. Rather, it sets out to offer some impressionistic insights into referential discontinuities, including parentheticals, as attested in the political discussion broadcast on TVE on December 14th, 2015, between the leaders of the up to then two major political parties in Spain, namely, Mariano Rajoy, as the representative of the conservative party (PP), and Pedro Sánchez, as the representative of the socialist party (PSOE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

A common argument for the public funding of parties is that it avoids parties' dependence on interest groups to pay for their routine and campaign expenses. This paper examines the relationship between the public financing of parties and rent seeking activities, setting it in the context of the party funding reforms passed by the Spanish parliament in 2007 and 2012. Since the enacted reforms did not constraint the power of officeholders to create and distribute political rents, we should not expect a decline in the resources that the private sector commits to capture those rents. However, due to the new subsidies created by the reform laws to pay for the running expenses of parties, a greater share of the illegal funds originating in the political rent creation process may be transferred from parties' coffers to the politicians who take the decisions that generate those rents. The thesis of this paper is that public subsidies to parties have curbed neither their illegal financing nor political corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the ratio of women participation within legislatures of autonomous communities has evolved. Its purpose is to verify how effective have been into this the so-called measures for «parity democracy» or «gender balance». Such measures aim at promoting an egalitarian presence of participants of both genders in political representative bodies. Some were voluntarily adopted by political parties while, for others, lawmakers at State and autonomous communities levels were at their origin, such in the case of the recently adopted Law 3/2007 on equal treatment for women and men. Finally, an insight into our neighbouring democracies' experiences in this field completes this paper. [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]

This study is focused on the nationalization of political parties in Spain understood as the homogeneity of parties' electoral support across constituencies in a national election. The first part of the paper describes the evolution of nationalization from 1977 to the present and shows how the Spanish party system is increasingly nationalized despite the differences across parties. The second part seeks to explain party nationalization determinants. The analysis indicates that the votes received at national level increases party nationalization. The age of the party enhances national parties' nationalization while in subnational parties this variable has a negative effect, pointing to a trade-off between the two groups. Finally, the ideological distance in the left-right axis reduces national parties' homogeneity across districts while founding elections have no effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative study of political and commercial slogans in Spanish advertising. The research, unprecedented in Spain, aims to reveal the strategic, conceptual, and formal differences and similarities between both types of slogans. The results of a previous study of the author regarding commercial communication are compared with the analysis of the slogans used by the main political parties in Spain during the last general election in March 2008. The findings indicate interesting features of political slogans that should be considered by advertising researchers and professionals, such as brevity, semantic density, moderate rhetoric, obsolescence and strategic use of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to clarify and analyse certain issues that have been raised in relation to the possible need to draw up, develop and implement a standardized accounting model for political parties in Spain. Said sectorial and specific accounting regulations could mean a significant and vital stimulus for consolidating and boosting the inclusion of political groupings in the social environment to which they belong, thus increasing transparency and credibility of all their actions in the financial and economic spheres, especially in these times of severe financial crisis, when good management and availability of the money received from state public funds, becomes an unquestionable priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reviews the conventional wisdom on the positive relationship between turnout and the electoral results of the PSOE in general elections in Spain. We highlight the existence of three causal mechanisms that give rise to different predictions about this correlation and therefore undermine the existing parsimonious thesis. Some of our arguments are empirically tested with aggregate district-level data corresponding to the ten general elections held to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One common criticism to the European integration process has been the deficit of democratic legitimacy. Direct consultation through referendum has been proposed as a mechanism to bridge this gap, however, there is a debate about the potentialities and risks of direct democracy. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate by analysing the Spanish experience of ratifying the European constitution (February 2005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 shows the existence of a coordination dilemma in multi-level countries that hold elections for different parliaments, at different territorial levels, and with different electoral rules. With evidence from Spain, our analysis identifies interaction or contamination effects between national and sub-national electoral arenas that generate, just as in most mixed-member electoral systems, a centrifugal force that increases the number of electoral parties in national elections. The incentives that solve this coordination dilemma faced by small regional or local parties are theoretically discussed and empirically tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the shortcomings of the literature on strategic voting is the absence of empirical evidence in proportional representation electoral systems (PR systems). In this paper the existence of strategic voting in the 1996 regional elections in Andalusia is demonstrated using a pooled cross- section regression model. [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]