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 Po
lítica
Universitat de Barcelona apalau_at_ub.edu
Laura Chaqués Bonafont Profesora Titular de Cienc
ia Política Universidad de Barcelona Avgda. Diag
onal 690 08034 Barcelona laurachaques_at_ub.edu Te
l. 34 93 402 1924
Luz Muñoz Marquez Research assistant University
of Barcelona
luzmunozma_at_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