Attitude or image? The organization and perception of political parties’ transparency

Abstract

In the last decade, political parties have introduced spaces in their websites dedicated to transparency and have worked in these portals especially since the approval of the Transparency Law, which obliges them to comply with the commitments of active publicity. This article aims to find out how political parties organize their transparency portals, what their communication strategy is, as well as to investigate their perception of the current situation of access to information and active transparency in this country. For this purpose, several in-depth interviews were carried out to the people in charge of transparency in Partido Popular, Partido Socialista, Podemos and Ciudadanos. The President of the Transparency Council, Javier Amorós, was also interviewed. The results show that almost all political parties see themselves as superior in transparency, while the president of the Council sees the transparency of the organizations as "apparent".