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The role of political parties in shaping citizens’ political preferences for the territorial organization of the state: the Spanish case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2013

Mariano Torcal  and
Fabiola Mota
Mariano Torcal*
Affiliation:
Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Department of Political and Social Sciences, Barcelona, Spain
Fabiola Mota
Affiliation:
UNiversidad Autónoma de Madrid – Department of Political Science and International Relations, Madrid, Spain
*
*E-mail: mariano.torcal@upf.edu
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Abstract

This article discusses how nationalist regional and state-wide parties, responding to different sub-national party systems dynamics, contribute similarly to interregional and individual public opinion disagreements about the model of the state in new, successfully decentralized democracies. Using individual survey data and other regional-level aggregate measures to perform a multilevel analysis in the 17 Spanish regions, we will show that both types of parties (non- and state-wide parties), following certain sub-national party system dynamics, are a very important influential and conditional factor in explaining the individual preferences adopted by citizens regarding the model of the state, despite the generally positive evaluation of the performance of new decentralized institutions by a large majority of Spaniards. These different positions are producing a persistent inter-individual conflict among Spaniards that have also a strong interregional component.

Keywords

decentralizationterritorial model of the statesub-national party systemspolitical preferencesSpain
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , August 2014 , pp. 477 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2013 

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