The Territorial Distribution of Intra-Party Power: Evidence from Spain

How do political parties form their executive leadership teams? Party leaders seek to assemble executives that maximize electoral performance, but they also face pressures from internal factions and organized intra-party groups. This paper focuses on the territorial dimension of party executive formation in multilevel political systems. We conceptualize this process as a trade-off in which party leaders must balance the appointment of technically competent and loyal personnel against the inclusion of representatives from subnational party organizations. Building on theories of party nationalization and portfolio allocation, we argue that the bargaining success of subnational party branches depends on the resources they contribute to the party and on the leader’s relative strength at the time of executive formation. We hypothesize that weaker party leaders are less able to resist demands from subnational party brokers and therefore more likely to accommodate territorial representation in party executives. Empirically, we examine the Spanish case using a comprehensive dataset that covers the composition of executive committees of all major statewide parties since democratization, including each member's territorial origin. Preliminary results indicate that subnational branches contributing more seats to the national parliamentary group, as well as those leading a regional government, are significantly more likely to secure greater representation in the national executive committee. These findings shed new light on intra-party power dynamics and the role of territorial politics in decentralized and federal systems.