The Spanish Party System and the Issue of Assigning Responsibility



Abstract

The article addresses the dependency between the level of institutionalization present in the Spanish party system, electoral accountability and assigning responsibility. The primary research objective of this article is to determine the extent to which electoral volatility is present in Spain, both at the aggregate and individual level, which is a measure of the degree of institutionalization reached by a party system. Next, the dependency between electoral volatility and fluidity of elites at the electoral and parliamentary level is analysed. This allows for an answer to the question of whether there is a problem in Spain with assigning responsibility, having regard to the fact that the presence of extensive electoral volatility among both voters and political elites makes it difficult to speak of effective accountability.

 

Key words:
party  system,  Spanish  party  system,  assigning  responsibility,  electoral accountability


Artiga González A. (1998), Fluidez y volatilidad en institucionalización de los sistemas de partidos, „América Latina Hoy”, No. 19.

Clarke H.D., Stewart M. C., Whiteley P. F. (2002), Emotions, expectations and the dynamics of party support in Britain, [in:] H. Dorussen, M. Taylor (eds.) Economic Voting, London: Routledge.

El País 2005/07/04, Ciudadanos se sitúa como socio preferido de socialistas y populares, politica.elpais.com/politica/2015/07/04/actualidad/1436031623_313419.html, (4.07.2015).

LOREG 5/1985, Ley Orgánica de Régimen Electoral General (LOREG) 5/1985, 19 June 1985, B.O.E. no. 147.

Maravall J.M., Przeworski A. (2001), Political Reactions to the Economy: The Spanish Experience, [in:] S.C. Stokes (ed.) Public Support for Market Reforms in New Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Markowski R. (2007), System partyjny, [in:] L. Kolarska-Bobińska, J. Kucharczyk, J. Zbieranek (eds.), Demokracja w Polsce 2005−2007, Warsaw: Instytut Spraw Publicznych.

Montero J.R., Lago I. (2010), Introducción: 2008, las décimas elecciones desde la restaruación de la democracia, [in:] J.R. Montero, I. Lago (eds.), Elecciones Generales 2008, Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.

Montero J.R., Llera F.J., Torcal M. (1992), Sistemas electorales en España: una recapitulación, „Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas”, No. 58.

Montero J. R., Riera P. (2008), Informe sobre la reforma del sistema electoral, Presentado a la Comisión de Estudios del Consejo de Estado en Diciembre 2008.

Moreno C., Oñate P. (2004), Tamaño del distrito y voto estratégico en España, „Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas”, No. 107.

O’Donnell G. (1997), Rendición de cuentas horizontal y neuvas poliarquías, „Nueva Sociedad”, No. 152.

Powell G.B. (2006), Wybory jako narządzie demokracji. Koncepcje większościowe i proporcjonalne, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe.

Powell E. N., Tucker J. (2013), Rethinking Electoral Volatility in Post-Communist Countries: New Data, New Results and New Approaches, „British Journal of Political Science”, vol. 44 (1).

RDLNE 20/1977, Real Decreto-Ley sobre las Normas Electorales (RDLNE) 20/1977, 18 March 1977, B.O.E. no. 70.

Sroka A. (2008), Hiszpańska droga do federalizmu, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego.

Toole J. (2000), Government formation and party system stabilization in East Central Europe, „Party Politics”, vol. 6 (4).

Verdicts of the Constitutional Tribunal: 5/1983, 10/1983, 20/1983, 30/1983, 28/1984, hj.tribunalconstitucional.es

Download

Published : 2015-06-01


SrokaA. (2015). The Spanish Party System and the Issue of Assigning Responsibility. Political Preferences, (11). Retrieved from https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/PP/article/view/4295

Anna Sroka  asroka@uw.edu.pl



The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.