Citizens and Parliamentarians in times of crisis and democratic renewal. The comparative case of Spain in South Europe.

This team proposes a research project aiming at knowing the congruence between citizens and political representatives from a triple comparative perspective. Firstly, analyzing the descriptive and substantive dimensions of representation. For the substantive dimension we will compare citizens and MPs' political preferences, opinions and attitudes related to the crisis (causes, responsibilities, alternatives), ideology, perceptions about Europe, public policies preferences and, generally speaking, political representation. Secondly, studying the evolution of this congruence by comparing data produced by this research with data coming from CIS studies ES2827 and ES2930 and international data from the Comparative Candidate Survey (The IP, Xavier Coller) is the Spanish representative. Thirdly, putting data from Spain in an international comparative perspective since teams in Greece, Portugal and Italy (whose leaders are in the working team of this project) are using the same questions in their national surveys interviewing parliamentarians and citizens.

This study is based on the application to citizens and parliamentarians of the same battery of issues related to opinions and attitudes related to the crisis (its causes, responsibility and alternatives), ideology, perceptions about Europe and political representation.

To do this, a survey is conducted to a representative sample of parliamentarians and another to citizens. The sample of parliamentarians includes people with seats in each of the 19 chambers (17 autonomies, plus Congress and Senate). The survey is conducted using a combination of methods that include the following:

1. Interviews
2. Online survey (using limesurvey software).
3. Telephone or Skype interviews in selected cases.
4. Face to face interviews

First results of  CIUPARCRI project (first weeks):

https://www.upo.es/investiga/ptyp/es/ciuparcri/

Second results of CIUPARCRI project (from the fifth week):

https://www.upo.es/investiga/ptyp/es/ciuparcri2/

Final report:

https://www.upo.es/investiga/ptyp/es/informe-final-proyecto-ciuparcri/