2. Objectives and methodology

The main objective of this work is to assess whether open political parties promote the principles of open government. To this end, the first aim was to draw up a guide to best practice regarding the initiatives that political parties must follow in order to be considered open. The second objective was to check whether the country’s main political parties, which are the PP or Partido Popular, PSOE or Partido Socialista (Socialist Party), Unidas Podemos, and Ciudadanos or Cs, comply with these principles6. Therefore, this work has two distinct sections, for which different methodologies were applied:

Development of the Best Practice Guide for Open Political Parties

Evaluation of political parties based on the initiatives in the Guide.

The absence of previous academic studies of this concept was taken into account in the preparation of the Best Practice Guide for Open Political Parties. The Delphi methodology was chosen precisely because one of its functions is to find answers to complex problems. The Delphi method consists of rounds of questionnaires carried out with people who are specialists in a certain field (Astigarraga, 2003).

The first step was to define the subject of study and select a panel of experts from different disciplines (Law, Political Science, and Communication) in the areas of transparency, citizen participation and collaboration, who were then asked to participate in the study. In the end, 20 people participated in the two rounds of questionnaires. The list of people who took part in the Delphi study is available in the annexes of this article.

The first questionnaire was aimed at defining the principles of open political parties. The second survey defined specific initiatives in addition to allowing the experts to evaluate their own responses.

When the results of the questionnaires were obtained, the criteria of Fomin et al. (2008) were followed in which the answers were combined with the international literature consulted and the criteria of the author of the study herein to produce the Best Practice Guide for Open Political Parties. A website was then created (www.partidospoliticosabiertos.com) to promote the transparency of the process, from which suggestions and comments could be obtained to further develop the guide.

The second part of this methodology consisted of assessing whether the political parties mentioned complied with the Guide on their websites, for which an analysis sheet was created. The items on the sheet were each of the principles recommended above. As the analysis sheet was based on the Guide –which is explained under later headings – it had three differentiated sections: Section I, Transparency; Section II, Deliberation; and Section III, Decision-making and Collaboration. Apart from exceptional cases, the items were rated with score of 2 in the case of compliance, 1 in the case of partial compliance, and 0 in the case of non-compliance.

The sections of the analysis are briefly explained below: