Programmatic Top-down Dominance? Spanish Framework Manifestos and their Varying Impact on Regional Parties

The Partido Popular (PP) as well as the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) published so-called framework programs for the 2003, 2007 and 2011 regional elections which contained general proposals for all simultaneous election campaigns of their regional counterparts. Izquierda Unida (IU) joined in and issued similar documents in 2007 and 2011. The character and relevance of these programas marcos is totally unclear and there has so far been only limited scholarly effort to investigate them. For sure is that the programs of some regional party branches closely mirror the framework program and others do not while none does explicitly refer to it as a source of inspiration. What content do the framework manifestos comprise? Why are they published? When and why do they matter more for some regional branches than others? The study tries to answer especially the latter question. It is hypothesized that a regional party branch might depart more from a framework manifesto if the region in which it competes (1) has more competences than other regions, (2) is characterized by strong regional nationalism, (3) has a large economic significance for the whole country, or if the regional party (4) belongs to the PSOE or the IU rather than to the PP. This latter effect should be smaller when the PSOE is governing. The programmatic positions of the manifestos are derived using automated content analysis and the hypotheses tested with the help of multivariate statistical techniques. Subsequently, causal mechanisms are elaborated via a small-scale case investigation. As the study conceives the national parties as principals and their respective regional pendants as agents in a delegation framework, its findings have important implications for our understanding of intra-party relationships and the use of control mechanisms in delegation frameworks more generally.