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This paper analyses the behaviour of the populist parties in the Spanish Parliament. This involved examining the type of initiatives submitted and the voting patterns in the chamber, as well as the themes in the agendas of two parties, Unidas Podemos and Vox, in the 12th and 14th parliamentary terms. The literature suggests that populist parties engage in defiant and uncooperative behaviour in institutions and proposed differentiated and concentrated parliamentary agendas. However, I argue that this behaviour can be nuanced by contextual, ideological and strategic factors. The analysis suggests that the Spanish populist parties reproduce and amplify pre-existing ideological and territorial divisions in the legislative institution, instead of introducing new logics of conflict (e.g., populism/anti-populism). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to contrast with quantitative statistical analyses whether the determinants of Spaniards' preferences over favoring wealth taxation behave similarly across different policy alternatives. To do so, and based on the literature review, we exploit the special questionnaire included in the 2019 wave of the Spanish Institute for Fiscal Studies Fiscal Barometer and carry out three empirical exercises, each devoted to one of the three corresponding policy alternatives under scrutiny. We also perform a robustness check contrasting whether those determinants are the same for a single policy that would comprise these three policies at once. According to the results achieved, corroborated by those obtained from the robustness check, the determinants of Spaniards' toward favoring wealth taxation rely on self-interest arguments and values and behave almost entirely in a similar fashion across different policy alternatives. Several policy recommendations arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines associative participation in Spanish society from a gender perspective, focusing on participation levels, associative integration and forms of associationism. The following research questions were formulated: “Do levels of associative participation differ between men and women?” and “Do men and women participate in the same type of associations?”. To respond to these questions, data from the 2019 Survey on Social Capital in Spain was analyzed. This data is representative at a national level, and descriptive, correlational and ordered logistic regression analyses were performed. It was concluded that evidence supports a burden of gender roles in terms of associationism, especially for political associationism, creating a ceiling effect for participation and even social trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eventual disconnection between voters´ preferences and specific policies is of special concern in decentralized countries, where any policy initiative might be simultaneously seen either as an erosion or a reinforcement of selfrule. The aim of this paper is to apply this framework to the harmonization of the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax (IGT). We econometrically contrast whether citizens´ living in Autonomous Communities (ACs) that led a tax race to the bottom regarding this tax or in those that exert a greater taste for political autonomy are more likely to oppose a more nationally uniform tax than the rest of Spaniards. Empirically, we exploit data from the 2019 wave of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Fiscal Barometer. According to our main results, citizens living in low taxation ACs and citizens living in some more pro-self-rule regions are even more likely to favor harmonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain has one of the highest in-work poverty rates in Europe and a high degree of job instability. Reducing in-work poverty requires an understanding of the entry and exit mechanisms specific to this situation, as well as the protective and risk factors involved. Based on data from the Spanish Living Conditions Survey (2017- 2020), this paper shows that households with children are more likely to experience in-work poverty, and that in-work poverty is more persistent in these cases. That said, entry into and exit from poverty is mostly associated with employment-related events, and to a lesser extent, with changes in household composition. The concentration of in-work poverty in households with children results from a process of erosion and accumulated risks, whereby wage losses have a greater effect on the risk of poverty, and the social protection system appears to be insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyses the explanatory order of variables such as political identification, political efficacy and electoral participation in the political system from a multi-directional perspective. It also investigates how these variables are in turn influenced by segmentation variables, including age, gender, income, educational level, social class and religiosity. The paper examines the structural relationships between socio-demographic profiles and voter turnout, considering the potential influence of political efficacy and party identity. Structural models were applied using data from the CIS 3226 Survey. The findings indicate the significant role of political identification in explaining perceived political efficacy and electoral behaviour, the effect of political efficacy on voter turnout, and the changing influence of classical segmentation variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Spanish citizens' views of public service expenditure, related to their socio-demographic characteristics, values and political economic conjunctures. The study's contributions are: 1) Bringing the analysis up to the present time, including the COVID and post COVID periods; 2) Analysing the determinants by using a multivariate regression analysis; and 3) Studying the relationship between assessments of public service expenditure and actual spending, identifying significant patterns, especially in education and healthcare. The results obtained are robust, especially for welfare policy assessments. Important sociological changes in the assessment of public policies are identified and additional evidence is provided about the highly important role played by cultural values ("symbolic predispositions") with respect to "self-interest" in explaining the assessment of public spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The access of rural societies to welfare opportunities and resources is at the core of policy and research agendas. The persistent ruralurban gap increases the risks of exclusion and is a challenge that rural dwellers tackle by bolstering their mobility to access labour markets, resources and services. The car has become a vector in the connections and transformations that sustain rural life; however, this mobility is also a source of new fractures in social and territorial cohesion. This paper explores how the rural mobility system has been shaped and analyses its impact on these societies. The results suggest integrating the issue of mobility into rural policies from a more complex sociological perspective, addressing demographic challenges, regional development and territorial cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on aggregate-level or cross-sectional survey data, extant research suggests that economic inequality erodes social trust. In this article we distinguish between cross-sectional and longitudinal components of inequality, using a sample of approximately 140,000 individuals in 19 countries over a thirty year period (1990- 2020). Accounting for individual-level predictors as well as the direct and conditional effect of income, findings suggest a strong negative association between inequality and trust among countries. Individuals from countries with higher levels of inequality systematically report lower levels of trust, but evidence is less clear to substantiate that individuals are less trusting of one another during times of higher inequality. In the second part of the paper, we reassess these findings using subnational data for Spain between 2008 and 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]