El parlamentarismo de los ausentes: materialización del derecho de participación y petición (arts. 23 y 29 CE) de los partidos políticos extraparlamentarios en España (1977-2023)

Between the first general elections held on June 15, 1977, and the general elections of July 23, 2023, voting citizens have been called to elect their representatives to both the Congress and the Senate on fifteen occasions. Of the total number of electoral candidacies presented in the various electoral processes (1,095 candidacies), only forty-four parties/party coalitions have managed to obtain representation in the Congress of Deputies throughout the current democratic period. Leaving aside the electoral period regulated by Organic Law 5/1985, of June 19, on the General Electoral System,3 in which the different candidacies compete on an equal footing in order to convert electoral support into representatives in the different Chambers, those political forces that do not achieve at least one seat in Congress find their capacity to carry out some of their statutory and constitutional functions severely limited. It should be noted that the lack of the participation instruments generated by obtaining institutional representation cannot in any way be attributed to an inadequacy of the representative-democratic system but rather to the lack of electoral support in terms that, in application of the electoral formula, would allow these political parties to obtain representation. Despite what has been stated, there is an underlying scenario in which a significant number of voters, partly due to the current electoral system, do not have a means of access to parliamentary action through those options with which they show a greater degree of identification (in the general elections of March 1993, 1,425,528 voters supported political forces that did not obtain representation in Congress, 6.09% of the total). Article 23 of the Spanish Constitution is characterized by being a direct exercise of the right, with no differences in the manner in which citizens exercise this right, although there are differences in the results that such participation produces (electing representatives at the different levels of political representation or participating in referendums under the terms established in Article 92 of the Spanish Constitution).4 STC 51/1984 has clarified that the right belongs exclusively to natural persons, excluding political parties themselves (STC 36/1990, of March 1), despite the constitutional status they receive (Article 6 of the Spanish Constitution) and the role they play in promoting participation.5 This communication addresses the identification and characterization of the set of extra-parliamentary political forces in order to understand the dynamics of electoral participation of those forces that have not obtained parliamentary representation in any legislature or that, having obtained a seat, have not managed to consolidate their position. The purpose of this study is to understand the parliamentary participation mechanisms available to extraparliamentary political forces based on the provisions of Articles 23 and 29 of the Spanish Constitution