Can Innovation Travel between Parties? The Diffusion of Microcredits in Political Financing in Spain

Recent research has analysed the growing wave of innovation within political parties, covering areas such as leadership and candidate selection, the expansion of primaries, new forms of multilevel membership, the rise of data-driven campaign tools, and the implementation of online participatory platforms enabling various types of consultations and deliberative processes for members and sympathisers, among others. Across these developments, digitalisation has played a decisive role, facilitating the design and adoption of new instruments and procedures that underpin organisational innovation. On this basis, some scholars over the last decade have interpreted these developments as signalling the emergence of a new type of party—the digital, connective, networked, or cyber party—highlighting the transformative effects of digital technologies on party organisation and internal democracy. More recent research has increasingly shifted its focus to the consequences and impacts of these innovations, both at the organisational level and in parties’ linkage functions. This paper contributes to these debates by focusing on two interrelated aspects. First, it examines the diffusion of innovation within political parties, drawing on theoretical frameworks explaining innovation and change, including Rogers (2003), Barnea and Rahat (2007), and De Vries and Hobolt (2020), among others. Through this lens, the paper analyses how organisational and digital innovations travel across party systems. Second, the paper applies this framework to a specific empirical case: the diffusion of microcredits for financing electoral campaigns (and political parties) in Spain. This innovative form of political financing (Lupato, Jerez & Meloni, 2024) was pioneered by Podemos and later adopted and adapted by other left-wing parties, such as Izquierda Unida and Sumar, as well as by the mainstream centre-left PSOE and, subsequently, by right-wing parties such as Junts. Overall, the paper develops an operational framework for analysing the diffusion of innovations in political parties, contributing to the broader discussion on party change, adaptation, and digitalisation, while offering an empirical case study on the diffusion of digital innovations in party finance.