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The PSOE’s deliberation and democratic innovations in turbulent times for the social democracy

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Abstract

In the midst of the great recession, the Spanish Socialists Worker’s Party (PSOE) lost the Government and experienced a process of instability while trying to reconnect with its electorate. The party’s strategic response was embracing highly inclusive deliberations on both key institutional and policy issues that eventually sparked tensions and division. These internal debates led to the introduction and implementation of other democratic innovations, such as direct votes and consultations that substantially transformed key features of the PSOE’s organizational model. The article discusses the main features and problems of such deliberations and democratic innovations, and their wider consequences.

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Notes

  1. Chacón suggested the introduction of open primaries to select the PSOE’s candidates (El País 2011). Some of Chacón’s supporters and other minority factions also claimed for party leadership primaries.

  2. Few days after his resignation in October 2016, Sánchez declared in a TV interview in prime time that he had been victim of a complot launched by internal party elites and other outer interests aiming to block a leftwing coalition government with Podemos (“Salvados”, La Sexta channel, 30 October 2016). Two years later in his book ‘Handbook of resistance’, Sánchez also referred to that incident arguing that the PSOE suffered from lack of democracy and leadership (Sánchez 2019, p. 38).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Valencia, Av. Tarongers s/n, Valencia, Spain

    Oscar Barberà & Juan Rodríguez-Teruel

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  1. Oscar Barberà
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  2. Juan Rodríguez-Teruel
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Correspondence to Oscar Barberà.

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Barberà, O., Rodríguez-Teruel, J. The PSOE’s deliberation and democratic innovations in turbulent times for the social democracy. Eur Polit Sci 19, 212–221 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-019-00236-y

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