POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

The dynamics of the parliamentary agenda have a marked gender bias. Women lead debates on social issues and on the rights of women and other minorities, male MPs lead debates on the economy, agriculture and intergovernmental relations.

There is a positive correlation between the issues prioritised by political parties and their ideology, especially since 1996. Moral issues, gender inequality and the environment are left- wing issues; the economy and health are the main concerns of the right.

Workers most at risk of being displaced from their jobs by new technologies are unwilling to take intensive courses to learn new digital skills, preferring instead policies that allow them to keep their jobs.

REPRESENTACIÓ POLÍTICA

One of Q-Dem's goals is to explain the dynamics of the political agenda, i.e. how and why the actors in the political system prioritise issues in comparative perspective. To this end, Q-Dem has created databases that allow us to analyse the agenda of the Prime Minister of Spain and his Government, the agenda of parliamentary groups, members of parliament, political parties and the agenda of the written press in Spain over the past few decades.

These databases provide detailed information on the problems that the Spanish Prime Ministers discuss in their inaugural speeches and their State of the Nation addresses, the Government's legislative proposals based on bills, the issues that are the object of attention in parliamentary sessions aimed at controlling the Government's action, the legislative proposals of the parliamentary groups, the news published on the front pages of El País and El Mundo and the issues that citizens identify as most important (see the section on databases for more information). On the basis of this data, we analyse issues related to agenda dynamics, parliamentary behaviour and political representation.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Q-dem analyzes political representation from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The research we carry out analyzes under what conditions political representatives respond to citizens’ preferences. Some elements that are looked into is whether there is a correspondence between the issues that citizens identify as the most important problems and the issues that citizens that are debated in the governmental and parliamentary arena. Another crucial element is the degree of correspondence between electoral promises and the government’s agenda and the parliamentary groups’ agenda. Some Q-dem researchers also examine under what conditions political elites represent disadvantaged people.

Explanatory variables include factors related to the political-economic context – to what extent does the economic crisis limit the capacity of governments to fulfil their electoral promises? – the social and economic background of political representatives – are there any differences in the issues prioritised by male and female MPs? – political preferences, as well as institutional factors such as the type of government – are our representatives more responsive to citizens' preferences/electoral promises when they are part of a minority government? – or the consolidation of multilevel governance.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

Q-Dem analyses the descriptive, symbolic and substantive representation of women from a comparative perspective. Our research shows that women MPs take a back seat in political debates on most issues, especially those considered "high politics" such as the economy or international relations.

Despite the increase in the number of women MPs and of women in leading positions in government and parliament, gender inequalities persist in the distribution of the issues that women and men MPs discuss. This reduces the ability of women MPs to act on behalf of women and advocate for women's understandings of issues in the political debate. One of the goals of Q-Dem is to analyse under what conditions the differences in the patterns of prioritisation of issues of female and male MPs also occur in social networks.