Cultura política españolaun análisis de su evolución desde una perspectiva longitudinal 1980-2011

Abstract

ABSTRACT Throughout this thesis, an evolutionary analysis of the political culture in Spain is carried out. This analysis spans from the first elections of our current democracy until 2011. The aim is to achieve an overall objective of understanding the evolution of the political culture of the Spanish public, through a descriptive, comparative and longitudinal causal analysis of the different elements that make it up. The achievement of this overall objective is specified through five specific objectives, namely: Specific Objective 1: To analyze the influence of the group factors, such as age and period in the process of building the political culture of the Spaniards. Specific Objective 2: Establish the difference between the attitudinal and behavioral factors of the Spanish political culture in order to undertake an analysis of interactions of the variables between both subgroups. Specific Objective 3: Understand the evolution of the attitudinal and behavioral factors of the political culture of the Spanish citizens. Specific Objective 4: Determine the influence of the social demographic variables on those others related to behavioral aspects. Specific Objective 5: Observe the influence of the attitudinal factors of political culture (interests, knowledge, ideological orientation and fidelity of vote) on the same behavioral factors (forms of conventional and unconventional political participation). The conclusions that were sought and reached regarding the object of knowledge, revolves around the hypothesis proposed at the beginning of this thesis, namely: 1. Of the cohort effects, life cycle and the building period of the political culture of the Spaniards throughout the democratic process, the period effect is the one that most affects the development, being this period which will have a stronger weight as an independent variable in the construction of the political culture of the Spaniards during the current Spanish democratic period. 2. There is a reduction of the differences in the political culture of the Spanish population over the democratic process because of the socio-demographic variables of the Spanish population 3. The interest is constituted as a variable of the attitudinal political culture with a greater influence, as an independent variable, as opposed to behavioral related to the analyzed forms of political participation (voter participation, union membership, political party memberships, protest assistance and petition signing). With regard to the first hypothesis, according to the data from the longitudinal analysis of four generational cohorts, we confirm that the alternative hypothesis that sustains the greatest influence on the period effect with regards to the evolution period of the Spanish political culture. For its part, the descriptive data obtained from the analysis of contingency tables indicate a progressive reduction of the influences of many of the socio-demographic variables over the characteristics of the political culture of the Spanish population. Finally, the multivariate analysis represented in loglinear models obtained in each moment of this study (1980, 1989, 2000 and 2011), returns the prominence of the ideological orientation variable in the configuration of the Spanish political culture. Consequently, we can conclude that the Spanish political culture is a dynamic reality that varies throughout the Spanish democratic process. In this process of change we must mention the influence of the period effect and variables such as ideological orientation. For its part, the influence of socio-demographic variables in characterizing this political culture has been declining throughout the study.