Transparency. This section took into account the elements published by the political parties as active publicity based on relevant academic studies (Dader et al., 2014; Vaccari, 2011; Larrondo-Urieta, 2016; Pérez et al., 2013), as well as well-known transparency indexes (Transparency International, the Foundation of Commitment and Transparency, and Dyntra). The evaluation of active publicity included the following categories:

a. Requirements of the Transparency Law (14 elements)

b. Institutional information (22).

c. Procedures and internal organisation (9).

d. Data related to organisational communication (18).

e. Accounts of the political parties, obligations related to the Law on Political Party Financing, and information on contracting (18).

f. In addition, other elements were also analysed, such as the availability of tools for requesting information, the use of plain language, the updating of information, utilising re-usable formats, and data accessibility.

Deliberation. The second section was devoted to encouraging debate among the electorate, and therefore, consideration was given as to whether this is present in the party statutes and whether there is a code of conduct regarding this aspect. The existence of deliberative initiatives was also assessed, which will be explained in the next section.

Decision-making and Collaboration. In the last section we analysed whether the concepts of decision-making and collaboration are present in the party statutes and whether codes of conduct exist, as in the previous case. Subsequently, lists of decisive and collaborative initiatives were drawn up and it was verified whether the political parties have these.

The analysis had a maximum score of 292 points, of which the Transparency Section accumulated 212 (72.6% of the total): the Deliberation Section had 38 (13.01%); and the Decision-making and Collaboration Section had 42 (14.38%). In this sense, a result above 50% was considered to be “acceptable”, above 65 was considered “good”, and above 85% was seen as “optimal”.

3. Results

3.1. Best Practice Guide for Open Political Parties

The Best Practice Guide for Open Political Parties shows the initiatives that such organisations should encourage in their internal and external openness. Precisely with the aim of promoting transparency, the recommendations are published on a digital platform, which can be found at the following link: www.partidospoliticosabiertos.com.

Open political parties are those that are transparent and publish up-to-date and accessible information, are accountable to citizens, encourage debate among the electorate, allow users to participate in their decision-making process, and carry out collaborative activities with citizens.