PARTIDOS NACIONALES EN ELECCIONES REGIONALES: ¿COHERENCIA TERRITORIAL O PROGRAMAS A LA CARTA

In decentralized countries, national parties have both regional and national interests. We should therefore expect variation in national parties’ policy positions on centre-periphery issues at the regional level. In order to test this hypothesis empirically,we content-analyze the regional-level manifestos of the two main national parties in Spain.We use a novel methodology that estimates national parties’ policy positions along the centre-periphery dimension of competition. This methodology is an adaptation of the Comparative Manifestos Project national codification scheme to the regional electoral level. We show that the policy positions of national parties in Spaindiverge between regions and that one of the main factors that accounts for this divergence is whether national parties have to compete for votes with regional parties.