Comparative Extension Projects: Spain

1. Comparative Extension Projects: Spain • Project Summary • The Spanish political agendas project is aimed to contribute to the analysis of issue prioritization and policy dynamics –how and why the Spanish political agenda changes over time— from transition to democracy to present. The main goal is to identify the variations of the list of problems that are the objects of considerable public attention within the Spanish political system; and to give an explanation of why these variations occur, to what extend issue prioritization follow public preferences, and how policy actors –especially mass-media— contribute to explain the variations of the prioritization of issues across time. This can be summarized as follows: • Policy dynamics in Spain: issue prioritization, flows of information and policy actors • One of the goals is to contribute to the analysis of issue prioritization, focusing on the following research questions: • to what extend transformations at the macro level (transition to democracy, European integration) are related to variations in the prioritization of issues across policy subsystems, and • how these variations occurs. The project is aimed to contribute to the analysis of policy dynamics and to test the punctuated equilibrium model for the Spanish case. • how policy actors contribute to the transformation of the Spanish political agenda. More specifically, we focus on the role of the media as a new scenario or policy venue in which political actors content or ally in order to impose their ideas, proposals and understandings of policy issues. • (2)Public preferences and political decisions • The analysis of issue prioritization is an excellent point of departure for the analysis of quality of political representation. The project is aimed to explain to what extend variations in issue prioritization follow public preferences, and whether policymakers are attentive to the prioritization of issues by the public. This line of research is aimed to increase our understanding of how political representation in Spain diverge form other countries and varies among issue areas; and how institutional factors –level of federalism, the relative power of the executive and the Parliament, European integration— explain these differences in political representation and issue prioritization. • The Spanish policy agendas project builds on the work done by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (1993, 2005) about policy dynamics. It is enclosed in the Policy Agendas Project, an international network of scholars from USA and several European countries aimed to the analysis of issue prioritization and policy dynamics in a comparative perspective. Anna Palau Roque Professora Ajudant de Ciencia Política Universitat de Barcelona apalau@ub.edu Laura Chaqués Bonafont Profesora Titular de Ciencia Política Universidad de Barcelona Avgda. Diagonal 690 08034 Barcelona laurachaques@ub.edu Tel. 34 93 402 1924 Luz Muñoz Marquez Research assistant University of Barcelona luzmunozma@ub.edu • Types of data • We are developing a comprehensive dataset including information from the late seventies to present, a period long enough to obtain reliable data and results about the functioning of the Spanish democracy. • The dataset includes indicators to measure policy decisions (passed laws); the degree of europeization (parliamentary activities); the direction of polity and legislative priorities of the executive and parliamentary groups (bills, annual speeches); symbolic discussions about policy issues (oral questions, bills); and the correspondence between bills and prioritization of issues by the general population (most important question). • The indicators can be summarized as follows (more information is included in the tables 1 and 2 attached to this document): • Bills (introduced by the government and parliamentary groups) • Laws • Oral Questions • Annual speeches (by the prime minister) • Public opinion • Media • Detailed information about these indicators is included in the tables 1 and 2. Most of the information we plan to code in the first stage of the project (this is for the period 1996 to 2006) is already available in electronic format. There is a database about parliamentary activities of the Spanish Parliament but it follows a completely different coding system which means that we have to recode all the entries. • Most public opinion data and media data is also available in electronic format from 1996 to present. Electronic databases make data collection and coding a little bit easier, and reduce the collection of data manually, going through paper versions of parliamentary activities. Text Resources Most of the information we plan to code in the first stage of the project (this is for the period 1996 to 2006) is already available in electronic format. There is a database about parliamentary activities of the Spanish Parliament but it follows a completely different coding system which means that we have to recode all the entries. Most public opinion data and media data is also available in electronic format from 1996 to present. Electronic databases make data collection and coding a little bit easier, and reduce the collection of data manually, going through paper versions of parliamentary activities. Parliamentary activities 1977-2006 • Coding Progress • The Spanish Policy Agendas team has already coded by hand all the annual speeches of the prime minister from 1982 to 2006 (25 documents). • Features of the coding process: • April-may 2007: Adaptation of the USA and Danish codebook to the Spanish case. • May-June 2007: Coding the annual speeches • Database developed in EXCEL (although we plan to develop the rest of the databases using a special editor compatible with Excel and SPSS) • List of variables used are detailed in table 3 attached to this document. • All annual speeches are available in electronic format, from 1982 to 1993 in PDF and from 1993 to 2006 in PDF and HTML. Legislative activities, 1977-2000