Abstract
This chapter analyses the way in which Spanish MPs conceive their representative role following the breakdown of the party system and the emergence of two national parties with new social and political demands (Podemos and Ciudadanos). Street politics entered institutional (and parliamentary) politics, which implied substantial change for the traditional parties that were obliged to adapt by responding to frustrated voters. This chapter inquires whether this change has been reflected in the way MPs understand their representative role. Specifically it analyses the possible differences between the new and traditional parties with respect to social ties, opinions about democracy and preferred governmental model. In this context, it establishes whether or not MPs have been forced to be more receptive towards their electorate, social movements and society as a whole. The results show that the incorporation of new parties into the parliamentary system has not caused a substantial change in the links between citizens and MPs, although it has improved responsiveness to political protest.
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Notes
- 1.
The data analysed here comes from the Project ‘Citizens and MPs in Times of Crisis and Democratic Renewal: Comparing the Spanish Case in the Context of Southern Europe’ (CSO2016 78016 R)’. We thank the editors of this volume for granting us access to the original database.
- 2.
- 3.
Study CIS 2827 (2009) ‘Political Elites in Spain’. Recovered from: http://www.cis.es/cis/opencm/ES/1_encuestas/estudios/ver.jsp?estudio=10582
- 4.
Study CIS 2930 (2012) ‘Ideological Congruence Between electors and MPs’. Recovered from: http://www.cis.es/cis/opencm/ES/1_encuestas/estudios/ver.jsp?estudio=13624
- 5.
The analysis applied the extraction method of principal components and the ‘varimax with Kaiser method’ of factor rotation. The initial solution statistics and the correlation matrix are not presented due to text limitations but are available on request.
- 6.
Pluralism is codified as 1 if is it very important to represent specific groups of society or 0 if it is not important. Republicanism is codified as 1 if it is very important to represent all Spanish citizens or 0 if it is not important.
- 7.
Responsiveness is codified as 1 when voting according to constituency’s opinion and 0 when voting according to party’s opinion.
- 8.
Dependent judgement is codified as 1 and independent judgement as 0.
- 9.
Party variable contains four categories: PP, PSOE, UP and Cs.
- 10.
Codified as 1 if the MP declares themselves to be a member of any kind of association and 0 otherwise.
- 11.
Codified as 1 if the MP declares themselves to have relied on social group or organisational support for their political nomination and 0 otherwise.
- 12.
Codified on a scale from 1, highly or moderately satisfied, to 0, moderately or wholly dissatisfied.
- 13.
Codified as 1 if MPs are in favour of listening to and talking with protesters in order to take into account popular will and 0 if an MP believes that they must not let protesters distort the message of electors.
- 14.
These variables have been created through the regression method from the factorial statistical analysis of nine statements about democracy.
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Mota, F., Benítez, A. (2021). Obliged to Respond? MPs’ Modes of Political Representation. In: Coller, X., Sánchez-Ferrer, L. (eds) Politicians in Hard Times. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70242-7_7
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