Search

Populism and technocracy constitute the main challenges to party government. While significant research has been devoted to support for populism, less is known about voters' demand for experts. In this study, a conjoint experiment in Spain to examine whether citizens prefer experts in executive positions is presented. It focuses on the most common form of expert participation in office: individuals who combine technical expertise and a party affiliation, the technopols. The conjoint experiment is complemented with a priming manipulation to examine to what extent the demand for experts depends on whether the crisis of representation is presented as a crisis of responsiveness or a crisis of responsibility. The results show that voters value expertise above any other candidate trait, including partisanship. Exposure to neither framing of the crisis substantially alters the strong demand for technopols. These findings contribute to the literature on voter attitudes towards the crisis of party government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Politico is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study of political representation is usually centred in the analysis of descriptive and substantive dimensions, leaving behind what is known as symbolic representation, mainly due to the difficulty in its theoretical and analytical treatment. The aim of this article is to approach a theoretical and methodological proposal to measure the symbolic dimension and show its practical application to the Spanish case by means of the discourse analysis of MPs during the 2000-2004 legislative period. Hence, it is used the in-depth interview technique to know the perceptions that about the political representation have MPs of both sexes, covering the whole ideological spectrum and with representation in both Chambers. Moreover, the article offers a new theoretical framework for the qualitative study of political representation that takes into account not only the actors' attributes but also the context in which they are placed. In this sense, the main hypothesis verified is that the speeches that MPs have about symbolic representation would vary according to the actors attributes -"critical mass" and/or "critical actors"- and to the institutional and legislative context --"critical contexts" -- in which they are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politica y Sociedad is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)