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In recent years the debate on territorial organization of political power in Spain has become particularly intense. The failure of the political process of reform of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia and the current debate over the right to decide, or the problems associated with the Basque context, raise many questions about the future. This paper attempts to relate some concepts of contemporary political theory with that scenario, focusing on issues such as constitutional recognition of the right of secession or proposals for multinational federalism. To do this, we review different theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of multinationality and present some considerations on the possible reform and/or reinterpretation of Spanish law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Castilla-La Mancha reached its political autonomy 35 years ago, nine regional elections have been held for choosing the representatives for the regional Parliament. The electoral system has been changed in four occasions, the most recent three in the last two legislatures. This paper aims to identify the effects of the different components of the electoral system on issues such as the value of the vote, its proportionality, the regional party sub-system, or regional political pluralism. Also, the paper will examine the arguments set forth by parties defending the reforms and the real goals that may have been behind them. [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]

Spain is a remarkably complex country, due to the double decentralization. The first one is the decentralization from the central government to the autonomous communities. The second one is due to the division or institutional mitosis, that is, the deployment of numerous special purpose entities, with different functions, large staffing and increasing budgets. In this paper we analyze this latter phenomenon and the implications for public management and ex post auditing. Given its special interest, the paper focuses in the autonomous communities. It discusses the major theoretical and practical justifications and presents a detailed statistical panorama. The figures show a significant growth in instrumental public sector in Spain, as well as debt accumulation outside the scope of consolidation. In light of these results, some challenges to the audit institutions are suggested, with special attention to the monitoring of public debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current crisis, citizens are demanding greater public sector transparency and accountability. In this paper, we advance the understanding of sustainability practices in public administration. We propose to compare the dissemination of sustainability of various regional governments, analyzing the websites of these regional governments through a content analysis, using for this purpose a list of items obtained from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. Our results show that Spanish regional governments, spread two-thirds of the information in the GRI guidelines, being the social information which presents a higher level of response and corresponding general aspects which has a lower level of dissemination. In addition, those regional governments with greater environmental commitment are those who publish more information about sustainability. From our conclusions, we emphasize that the poor financial situation of the Spanish regional governments does not seem to promote them to disseminate information about sustainability. [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]

This paper focuses on the institutionalization of policy analysis in Spain from 1975 to 2010 from a historical-bibliometric perspective. This study is based on a database of 209 articles (out of 3 098) published in five of the main Spanish scientific journals of sociology and political science. This process of diffusion was not homogeneous in terms of geographic spreading, research topics, analytical methods and theories. Finally, this investigation stresses the duality of this scientific field: on one hand, a part of Spanish policy analysis remains a parochial phenomenon; on the other, a set of authors participate actively to the international debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has as its goal the measure of the accuracy of the pre-election surveys published in the Spanish media for the 2014 european Parliament, the regionals in the first half of 2015 and the locals in seven of the biggest Spanish cities. Starting with 120 analysed surveys, the aggregated distance model consists of the differences between predictions and actual results by every party and it develops an error coefficient that allows the measure and comparison of those predictions. Results are presented by election, communication group where predictions were published, research company producing them, political party and time distance to election day. Also it is analysed the existing relation between these and some other variables, such as sample size, and the error coefficient as dependent variable with the objective of knowing which are the most decisive factors affecting polls accuracy. [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]

Probit/logit techniques are applied to the data from Barometer No. 2,829 published by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas to examine three problems related with public sector decentralisation. The paper concludes, first, that citizens' perception of efficiency gains from decentralisation have a positive effect on their support for decentralised government. Second, that citizens are more likely to perceive the efficiency gains from decentralisation if they correctly ascribe responsibility for education and health services to regions. And third, that citizens who most accurately identify regional responsibility for the provision of those services tend to be better educated, older, engaged in paid work or public employment, concerned about regional politics and resident in one region with higher initial level of devolved powers. [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]

Social trust and political trust are, amongst others, key social capital factors. This paper examines the accuracy of their measurement and comparability across different time periods. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) is performed and different levels of measurement invariance (configural, metric and scalar) are tested. Data used are from European Social Survey for the years 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008, in relation to Spanish citizens. Factor means for social and political trust are compared across time in Spain. Political and social trust show stability across time, except in 2004 with a higher level of political trust and 2006 with a higher level of social trust in Spain. Comparison with traditional composite scores shows the inaccuracy of such measurement for data comparison across time. Finally, consequences of using inaccurate measurements, and methodological recommendations concerning model fit structural equation models are delineated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political responsibilities of women in local governments of 155 town councils across Spain. The main objective is to examine the situation of female politicians within municipal governments, focusing on the division of power roles (vertical segregation) and the different areas of government (horizontal segregation). We suggest that the gender roles/stereotypes approach may explain the situation of women in formal politics and the inequalities that we have found in these local governments. This approach is combined with the power theory. Thus, a key factor in explaining this situation may also be the dominant role of men in traditional power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish religious indicators have experienced one of the most drastic declines in Europe. The low levels of church attendance and religious denomination contributed to reject the perception of religiosity as a relevant explanatory factor of electoral behavior . However, leaders continued introducing debated related to secular education, divorce and abortion not only during the eighties, but also more recently from 2004 to 2011. The facts encourage us to reconsider the strength of the religious vote. Is the political elite able to mobilize religious voting through the inclusion of such issues in the electoral debate? In this paper I demonstrate that religiosity has been and still is a key element to understand Spanish electoral behavior, especially in those elections in which the political elite has focused the debate on issues related to moral issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the predictions of the election results for the Spanish Parliament published in the main Spanish newspapers. To gauge their degree of accuracy, the distance between the predictions and the actual results was defined and later assessed by comparing it with that of the so-called 'perfect poll'. This 'perfect poll' was generated by a simulation using the proportions of votes actually obtained by each party. Other issues related to the published polls are also analysed, such as the relationship between sample size and estimation quality, and between the error made (by excess or defect) for a party and the ideological affinity between that party and the newspaper publishing the survey. [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]

In this paper we analyse the influence of the 2008 and 2011 Spanish electoral campaigns on political efficacy. For this purpose, we employ statistical analysis with poll data. The results support the hypothesis that electoral campaigns can have a positive impact on political efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes over, from an empirical perspective, one of the classic concerns of normative theories of democracy: political community size and citizen participation. Although it focuses on voter turnout, this paper makes a simple question: why and how the political body size can influence the political behaviour of its residents. For this purpose, we examine, from an aggregate approach, the relationship between "size" and turnout in different types of elections in Andalusia, in the period 1999-2011. Our ecological analysis of participation, by using multi-regression techniques, shows that population size is the main "civic" characteristic of localities. However, other characteristics of local contexts, such as income and subsidized agrarian population, are positively related to participation. Our results suggest that individual theories of voting behaviour should also take into account the contextual factor when offering their conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Constitutional reform made in Spain last summer has been discussed very deeply due to its content and to the way it has been made. It seems like concepts as sovereignty, democracy, constitutional moment, that are important in order to justify our political system, are secondary compared to the demands of Germany and the markets. In this paper, the reform is criticized from a constitutional view of the State, the Law and the democracy. It is argued that the reform of the article 135 goes against the agreements and the foundations of the constitutional model and, in addition, goes against the content of the Constitution of 1978 canceling the Social State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper seeks to confirm the hypothesis according to which political consumerism can be considered a form of political participation that cosmopolitanism is helping to develop. After analysing the theoretical implications of this hypothesis, the study presents an operationalization of cosmopolitanism which shows its greater presence among those individuals who have bought or boycotted products for ethical, political or environmental reasons. This is followed by a further verification of the association between cosmopolitanism and political consumerism, controlling for the effect of the main socio-demographic variables on the latter. The study confirms the hypothesis that political consumption can be regarded as a form of political participation related to cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A second camera only seems to make sense as representing the Chamber of territorial entities. In this sense, the Constitution defines the Senate as the Chamber of territorial representation. However, the Senate is not a camera of territorial representation itself, nor in its composition or in its functions. Thus, for some time there have been attempts at constitutional reform (which are left in it) and doctrinal proposals. This paper summarizes the proposal and concludes with the authors personal considerations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a new electoral system for the Spanish Congress. This new system does not require any changes in the current Spanish Constitution. The main objectives are representativity, governability and equity. For this purpose, political party seats are allocated in several stages, and a biproportional allotment is applied to determine how many seats are allocated to each party in each constituency. The possibilities of forming stable governments, with the proposed electoral systems, are similar to those obtained with the present electoral system; however with the proposed system the results are more equal in the sense that two parties with a similar number of votes would obtain the same or nearly the same number of seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the transformation that water policy in Spain has undergone in recent decades. The erosion of a strongly united hydraulic policy community has given way to a widespread and plural network in which modern hydrological policy is under discussion. In this network, a new discourse about sustainability (the «New Water Culture») brings new State and non-governmental actors together in an innovative form of «issue politics». We document this phenomenon by using research strategies drawn from analyses of public issues on the Internet. More precisely, we trace the «New Water Culture» network on the Web, analyse its structure and consider the political meaning of its history. On the basis of the study carried out, we claim that a hydrological policy commonwealth has emerged on the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Public Administrations or basic public action units that work with the philosophy of market orientation, it is essential to equip them with an information and data analysis system that can simplify decision making targeted at public sector market needs. This paper explains the importance of creating a Market Information System (M.I.S.) as a support tool for decision making in the planning, management and operations of the Basque Country Social Economy Business Intercooperation Promotion Service. In this framework, it discusses the importance of market orientation for the Basque Country Public Administration, as a system for eliciting information from users, understanding their needs, spreading that information and answering these needs in the context of promoting cooperation between social economy businesses in the Basque Country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the constitutional problems raised by the phone and mail interventions from the vantage of the protection of privacy. The legal regulation required by the Constitution has turned out to be insufficient. Therefore the main task of protection of the right has fallen on the judiciary and subsequently on the Constitutional Court. Prof. Aragon's contribution focuses on the questions und circumstances that surround this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lauburu ("four heads'" in Basque) is a cross with four comma- shaped heads, similar to the swastika. Today it is one of the most important symbols of Basque identity. In this paper, I analyze its origins and history, which is full of contradictions, changes in name and shape, especially until the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The lauburu was created in the 17th century; and in the 19th century it symbolized the unity of four Basque Provinces. The lauburu was later identified with a swastika (symbol of the Basque nation, according Sabino Arana, the founder of the Basque Nationalist Party) almost identical to the Nazi symbol. The Basque nationalist movement used the lauburu until Hitler took power in Germany and permanently adopted the lauburu as it is used today. During the past few hundred years this symbol has been the object of endless interpretations by different political parties and social movements associated with Basque nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European rural world has experienced a deep transformation in the last decades, especially mountainous areas. In this paper we explore the main political and ideological processes that have favored the reevaluation of mountainous areas. First, we analyze the institutional recognition of the key role they play in development of human life and its natural and structural handicaps. Secondly, we study the recent evolution of policies directed towards Spanish mountains, namely the Pyrenees. Finally, we look on the social representations of mountain. In this sense, we emphasize the postmodern gaze that includes the signs of rural imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the dimensions of the support given by Spaniards to the European Union (EU). In order to do this, the main theoretical approaches that exist tor explaining European public opinion, which are based on affective, utilitarian and national political factors, have been taken into account. The three theoretical viewpoints are tested, independently and jointly, through various regression analyses in order to find out which are the elements that most influence the Europeanism of Spaniards. Our research shows that the perception of the economic and social benefits that community integration carries with it continues to be the main dimension for explaining the favourable attitudes shown by Spaniards towards the EU. However, affective aspects, such as confidence in European institutions and identification with Europe, are also highly relevant. The political factors are of secondary importance, but it can be seen that satisfaction with the performance of national democracy is related to the integration of citizens into the European political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors get into the build of the political discourse in two important moments of Spain's recent History. They get it through a complex and contrasted method, the qualitative content analysis, computer aided in this case. So, the interest of this research is double: in one hand the clear benefit of the comprehension of the political discourse and behaviour; on other side, the clear exposition of a method which could be easily use in new and so different researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power of persuasion of those texts which take the form of enumerative series finds its best expression in political discourse. This article is aimed to analyze the specific function of the above-mentioned enumerative series with special focus on the talks held between Rajoy and Zapatero at the Spanish Parliament after the terrorist organization ETA planted a bomb in Barajas airport, with two Ecuadorian living in Spain being killed. The different interpretations of the terrorist attack as well as of its consequences furnished by these two political leaders can be shown to shape two significantly different types of discourse, especially concerning the use of the amount as well as the type of enumerative series. This paper analyzes a number of aspects in the above-mentioned discourses, such as the characterizing features of the series employed, the reiteration of ideas, the repetition of elements with an increasing effect or the connection of these series with the argumentative fragments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the political discourse of a not well-known source, the magazine "Por ellos", the official organ of the Civil Legionaries of Franco, a group created in the city of Buenos Aires to collaborate with the national side. Although the objective of the publication was the creation of orphanages destined to the young war victims, it became a space to express the ideas of those who had raised against the government of the Second Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper studies the strategies and public relations messages carried out by the galician gobernment during the first two legislative periods of Manuel Fraga as president of the Xunta de Galicia. In this period between 1990 and 1998 the institution consolidates the communication fundamentals in terms of public relations. [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]