Abstract
Democracy globally suffers an important erosion according to different accounts. Political representatives are usually held responsible although we know little who they are or what they think about crucial matters for the functioning of democracy. This chapter introduces a book that deals with Spanish MPs comparing them with citizens, MPs elected before the Great Recession and MPs from other South European countries (Italy, Portugal and Greece) on a substantive issue—ideological congruence.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Preston (2019: 18) captures this idea with the label ‘incompetence’, which he attributes to political elites of modern Spain (1874–2014) as a cause of the ‘treason’ perpetrated against ‘the people’.
- 3.
Additional factors include: the growing importance of technocrats, experts or unaccountable people and institutions in the governance of societies; the low value placed on people’s participation; poorer public debate in which key political issues are excluded from discussion and decided by elites; and a noticeable “decline in civil liberties, including media freedom and freedom of speech” (EIU 2019: 6).
- 4.
Additional factors include legislative and constitutional reforms, the rise of populist parties and politicians, a decline in liberties and public debate, and erosion of the rule of law. The IDEA index is based in large part on the Varieties of Democracy project (IDEA 2019: 2).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
The 2020 report about democracy in Spain issued by the Fundación Alternativas shows as well a growing positive perception about the quality of democracy in different realms (Escobar 2020). The EUI Democracy Index published in 2021 shows that Spain ranks 22 in the group of full democracies, several positions below the 2019 ranking, just between Japan and South Corea and above France and the USA (EUI 2021: 9)
- 8.
Among them, the Catalan coalition CiU (Convergència i Unió), the Basque PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco), and the Canary CC (Coalición Canaria).
- 9.
Before these two parties were created, there was Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD), which unsuccessfully competed with Cs and lost a large part of its voters and representatives in 2015. Since 2019, UPyD supports Cs electoral lists at regional, state and European levels. Furthermore, although created in 2013, Vox did not obtain any seat until the 2018 regional elections in Andalusia (they achieved a minor presence in 22 local councils in 2015). However, in the national elections of November 2019 the party obtained 52 seats.
- 10.
Namely, Catalonia, the Basque Country, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, and Navarre; and sometimes Valencia, Cantabria, and Galicia. All of them, at some point, or since the federalisation of Spain (with the creation of the Estado de las Autonomías), have had a more or less active multiparty system, not just a bipartisan one albeit imperfect. For instance, in the 2011–2015 term, although there were 14 parties present, the Effective Number of Parties in Congress was 2.77 (4.1 in 2017 and 4.6 in 2020, as Chap. 5 shows); while in Catalonia it was 4.6 (eight parties), in Navarre 4.3 (six parties), in the Basque Country 3.68 (five parties) and in Andalusia 3.27 (five parties).
- 11.
A list of publications plus an explanation of the whole project can be found at http://www.comparativecandidates.org/. Unfortunately, we could not incorporate the reflections contained in the collective book edited by De Winter et al. (2021).
- 12.
A full explanation of the calibration method can be obtained in the Stata manual at https://www.stata.com/manuals/svycalibration.pdf. See also Kott (2016).
- 13.
ESA Ethical guidelines can be found at https://www.europeansociology.org/about-esa/governance/ethical-guidelines, while the ASA code of ethics can be found at https://www.asanet.org/about/governance-and-leadership/code-ethics.
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Coller, X., Sánchez-Ferrer, L. (2021). Democracy, Politicians and Citizens. In: Coller, X., Sánchez-Ferrer, L. (eds) Politicians in Hard Times. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70242-7_1
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