Abstract: |
The findings reported in this monograph (in two parts, published as WP 351 and WP 352) are based upon a broad-based, multi-method analysis of Spanish politics and society, including five national surveys conducted over nearly three decades, and many in-depth qualitative interviews with a "panel" of respondents who had been interviewed six years earlier. With these rich data resources, we are able to address a number of important hypotheses. We find that lifelong patterns of active engagement with democratic politics are primarily the product of childhood and youngadult political socialization (including formal education and informal socialization within the family) in both the Franco regime and the new democratic political system. In contrast, support for democracy in Spain was acquired primarily through adult political learning, with prominent political elites and their respective parties playing the key roles. Using both cross-sectional survey data and qualitative interview data, we explore the various and complex ways that individuals receive information about politics through relevant political intermediaries. These same data resources enable us to explore between 1979 and 2004 both the processes through which voters acquire potentially stabilizing long-term attitudinal links to partisan politics (especially party identification and left-right loyalties), as well as those forces (especially socio-economic and cultural change, and strategic decisions made by political elites) that can lead to substantial transformations of parties and party systems. For technical reasons, this monograph appears in two parts. The first part (WP 351) deals with the origins of support for democracy, disaffection and political engagement, and political intermediation. The second part (WP 352) focuses on voting, partisanship and ideology, and on the factors explaining the vote. |