Abstract
This paper contributes to the research strand within empirical democratic theory dedicated to operationalizing representation and measuring levels of responsiveness. It discusses the merits and limits of the criterion of responsiveness for assessing the functioning of representative institutions. It builds on comparative findings about the susceptibility of party hierarchies to capture by relatively privileged segments of society, and on comparative findings about the consequences of policy packaging. It posits these as two crucial mechanisms that help account for the propensity of the democratic arena to become a relatively autonomous, privileged site for the construction of ideological hegemony. Furthermore, it presents original data from an elite survey of members of regional parliaments in Spain to illuminate the role of representative institutions and parties in recent efforts to forge and consolidate a particular type of ideological hegemony—micro-nationalist hegemony—in Catalonia and the Basque Country. It contrasts and explains the political dynamics operative in the two regions, emphasizing the divergent trajectories of left-wing party construction. In so doing, it contributes to the literature on nationalism as well, by honing in on the neglected arena of democratic politics as a critical site where the struggle for the success of nationalist hegemonic projects takes place.
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Notes
The elite survey was prepared and carried out by a team of over 20 other social scientists, including this author, under the rubric of a research project titled Elites Políticas Autonómicas en España. It includes interviews with representative samples of all 17 regional parliaments, as well as the national Congress and Senate, as well as a matching survey of the general public. In total, 592 interviews with Spanish elite representatives were conducted between Spring of 2009 and Fall of 2010, including 46 interviews out of the universe of 135 Catalan parliamentarians and 39 interviews out of the universe of 75 Basque Parliamentarians. All interviews with Spanish elite representatives were subsequently coded by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) as Study 2827. The matching survey of the general public was conducted by the CIS between Jan 20 and Feb. 2, 2012, and was coded as Study 2930. The project was financed by Spain’s Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. Its principal investigator was Francesc Xavier Coller Porta. For further information about the surveys and about the research project, see www.upo.es/democraciayautonomias/.
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Miley, T.J. Democratic Representation and the National Dimension in Catalan and Basque Politics. Int J Polit Cult Soc 27, 291–322 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-013-9159-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-013-9159-2