http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0860-7416
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ABSTRACT
Do parties’ position shifts matter for public opinion? In this paper, we would like to compare the discourses of the Basque elites with the Basque public opinion regarding the reinforcement of the Autonomy. So, combining content analysis methodology and survey data we aim to test if a mainstream political party (specifically, the Basque Nationalist Party [Partido Nacionalista Vasco]) cause the public view to shift on one of the most important policy issues in the Basque Country, that is, the territorial dimension. This study validates the top-down model and concludes that elite political discourses actually affect popular opinion.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the helpful comments from Professor Richard Gillespie and the rest of participants in the Workshop ‘The Dynamics of Nationalist Evolution in Contemporary Spain’, held in Barcelona, 25–26 September 2014. Our thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, which have clearly improved the text.
Notes on contributors
Francisco José Llera He is Professor (1992) and has been Director of the Department of Political and Administration Sciences in the University of the Basque Country, where he founded and currently directs the EUSKOBAROMETRO public opinion research team (www.ehu.es/euskobarometro). Chairperson of the Spanish Association of Political and Administration Sciences (2004) and member of the European Academy (2002). Member of the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association (2009).
Rafael Leonisio Postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Spain. He graduated in Politics at the UPV-EHU, where he got also his PhD. His main areas of research are political parties, electoral behavior and comparative politics. He has recently published in Regional & Federal Studies, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Revista de Estudios Políticos and Revista Española de Ciencia Política.
Sergio Pérez Castaños PhD in Political Sciences by Universidad del País Vasco (Leioa – Spain). Actually, he is an Assistant Professor at Burgos University. His research interests focus on political representation, political parties, federalism and electoral forecast.
ORCID
Francisco José Llera http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0860-7416
Rafael Leonisio http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7167-4166
Sergio Pérez Castaños http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7775-8632
Notes
1. The Basque Country, or Euskadi, is a Spanish autonomous community formed by the provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Álava. One of the claims of the Basque nationalists is for the incorporation of Navarre, a province which they consider to be culturally Basque. In this paper when we speak of the Basque Country we are, in general, referring to the autonomous community, without this supposing the adoption of any ideological position.
2. Regarding this, Muro and Quiroga (Citation2004), explain which it is the Spanish Nation building process and how the peripheral nationalisms oppose to the different tries into the attempts of including them. Regarding to identity issues in Spain see Llera (Citation2009). Into the Basque Country special case, the classic work of Linz, Gómez-Reino, Orizo, and Vila (Citation1986) is very interesting, continued by Llera (Citation1993, Citation1999).
3. We have opted to use the general term Basque Patriotic Left (Izquierda Abertzale) since over time there has not been a sole political acronym associated with this form of understanding the Basque political field. For an exhaustive analysis about the composition and political evolution of the Basque Patriotic Left see Leonisio (Citation2015).
4. The merge of both content analysis and survey data in the same research is having an increasing growth in political science. See for example Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow (Citation2004, Citation2009), Wagner and Meyer (Citation2014) or Jacobs and Shapiro (Citation2000).
5. Euskobarometro Research Team is linked to the University of the Basque Country. It develops biannual public opinion polls since 1995. www.ehu.eus/euskobarometro.
6. Although it is true that shortly afterwards its position changed to one of support. For example, as early as 1980 it defined the Statute as ‘a valid instrument for the definitive insertion of the different Spanish regions in the national ensemble’ (Speech by Florencio Aróstegui, representative of AP in the Basque Parliament during the investiture of Basque President Garaikoetxea, 22 April 1980).
7. Speech by Emilio Guevara, representative of PNV during the debate on the general political situation in the Basque Parliament, 22 September 1981.
8. Speech by Juan María Ollora, representative of PNV during the debate on the general political situation in the Basque Parliament, 29 September 1989.
9. ‘To the degree that PNV might consider it necessary, following a long and verified experience of nonfulfillment of the Statute by the government of the state, we could – gathering the sufficient consensus – opt, or try to opt, for another type of formula of relation’, Speech by Juan María Ollora, representative of PNV during the debate on the general political situation in the Basque Parliament, 25 September 1992.
10. See note 9.
11. Speech by Juan Porres, representative of EA during the debate on the general political situation in the Basque Parliament, 29 September 1989.
12. Speech by Carlos Garaikoetxea, representative of EA in the Basque Parliament during the investiture of Basque President Ardanza, 29 December 1994.
13. Speech by Carlos Garaikoetxea, representative of EA during the debate on the general political situation in the Basque Parliament, 27 September 1995.
14. For a complete review of PNV’s position shift regarding sovereignty from 1998 onwards see Mees (Citation2015).
15. At the time of writing these lines, PNV has promoted a commission in the Basque Parliament to discuss a possible reform of Basque self-government, and it is still not clear what position this party will adopt on this issue.
16. We decided to only analyze the first speech in the plenary session because we consider that it best represents the position of the party, since responses and counter-responses are more ‘contaminated’ by the context of the debate itself. We therefore consider that the first speech is always closest to the ‘official’ discourse of the party. The parliamentary speeches were obtained on the website of the Basque Parliament (http://www.parlamento.euskadi.net).
17. Although, due to the availability of survey data, we are not using discourses from the 80’s and early 90’s in our statistical analysis, we have decided to code some of them in order to better see their evolution.
18. To clarify doubts about a lack of reliability in our hand-coding see the appendix.
19. The appendix provides the raw data, that is, the percentage of text dedicated to defend going beyond the self-government in each discourse.
20. With the exception of the Basque Patriotic Left for the first three terms of the graph. In the first two it only took part in the investiture ceremony (1987 and 1991), while for the third there are two data (1994 investiture and 1997 general policy session). From 1998 onwards the Basque Patriotic Left normalized its presence in the Basque Parliament, which meant that it took part in the same debates as the rest of the parties.
21. This percentage might be influenced by the fact that the parliamentarians were not from Batasuna but from EHAK, a communist party that the Basque Patriotic Left had called its supporters to vote for as its own candidates had been banned.
22. Which also took shape in a legislative agreement between the minority government of PNV-EA with EH (Euskal Herritarrok, We the Basques), a coalition which followed HB.
23. The Lizarra Pact was signed by the PNV, EA, HB, IU and different organizations and trade unions of the nationalist sphere. In the agreement they basically proposed, in order to overcome the violence in the Basque Country, a dialogue without conditions between all of the political forces prior to ceasing all expressions of violence that should approach what the signees called ‘the causes of the conflict’. The Lizarra Pact substituted the Ajuria-Enea Agreement regarding the diagnosis that the moderate nationalist parties and IU made of terrorism.
24. We thank the RMP team for providing us the data.
25. We don’t use just the previous discourse to avoid very specific context. We have check our results using the mean of two and four previous discourses. As it can be seen in the Robustness Tests section, the data hardly change.
26. PP (People’s Party), a conservative political party which governed in Spain from 1996 to 2004 and from 2011 onwards. UPyD (Union, Progress and Democracy), is very small centrist party built around the image of a former socialist leader and UA (Alevese Unity) was small party that used to be active on an exclusively provincial level, on which it defended the separation the Basque province of Álava from the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.
27. The position of the PNV is measured by the mean of the three previous discourses. We get the same results using two previous discourses (R = −.579, sig. .001, N = 31) or four (R = −.520, sig. .003, N = 31).
28. In the case of the PSE it is far away from it (p = .917).