Constraints on Party Policy Change
... Some studies argue that the internal structure of a party influences its ability to change its policy positions (Fagerholm, 2016, p. 4). This may be because they are more hierarchical and leadership-dominated or more horizontal and permeable to activists (e.g., Meyer, 2013;Meyer & Wagner, 2017;Schumacher et al., 2013), because of intra-party democracy (Lehrer, 2012;Lehrer et al., 2017;Marini, 2023), or simply because they have fewer resources (Wagner & Meyer, 2014). Others point to the importance of intra-party unity, arguing that divided parties are less responsive to the public on some issues (e.g., Spoon & Williams, 2017, on Euroscepticism). ...
... Scholars have used different methods and types of data to measure the ideological and programmatic positions of political parties and their attention to different policy issues (for a review, see Bakker & Hobolt, 2013;Krouwel & van Elfrinkhof, 2014;Laver, 2014;Meyer, 2013). advocates have emphasised the 'internal consistency among experts' (Bakker & Hobolt, 2013, p. 35) and the high face validity of this type of data (e.g., Benoit & Laver, 2007;Marks et al., 2007), as the assessments made by experts capture issues that are part of the parties' public discourse and actions, but may not be reflected in their policy documents (Gomez et al., 2016, p. 369). ...
... And indeed, not only did we find no evidence of this, but we also found some evidence to the contrary -i.e., that RLPs change their policy positions more when the leadership does not change (on welfare and the environment). This is in line with what previous studies have found (e.g., Bille, 1997;Harmel et al., 2008;Meyer, 2013) and confirms that the same is true for RLPs, which are highly ideological and policy-oriented parties. If anything, stability in the leadership of RLPs seems to allow them to change their positions more easily, for example by consolidating its internal power or providing a scenario of internal stability that is more favourable to the adoption of policy changes. ...
This dissertation provides an empirical, systematic and detailed analysis of programmatic change in European radical left parties (RLPs) since the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). In particular, it seeks to understand the programmatic development of the party family since this important critical juncture and the factors that have driven changes in their policy platforms since then. In short, it addresses the question of how and why RLPs have changed programmatically over the past three decades.
... Past research has produced a mixed picture in relation to the question of what causes voters to update their perception of party positions. Policy shifts, measured mostly on an ideological left-right dimension, as stated in electoral programs have been found to have no (Adams, Ezrow, and Somer-Topcu, 2011) or little impact ( Meyer, 2013;Fernandez-Vazquez, 2014) on voters' party images. Recent research suggests that voters make use of a wider information environment when updating their perceived positions of parties, consulting similar sources of information as political experts (Adams, Ezrow, and Somer Topcu, 2014). ...
... Different levels of media exposure and political interest may cause different voters to update their perceptions very differently. ( Meyer, 2013) has done some pioneering work here, but has also mainly ignored the role of media content. The analysis on the micro-level requires panel data, which does not yet exist for cross national comparisons. ...
Diese Arbeit geht der Frage nach, inwiefern die Medien während des Wahl-kampfs über die Wahlprogramme der Parteien berichten. Die Wahlprogramme der Parteien enthalten Informationen darüber, was Parteien nach der Wahl vorhaben. Allerdings lesen wenige Wählerinnen und Wähler Wahlprogramme. Die vergangene Forschung über und mit Wahlprogrammdaten hat bisher angenommen, dass der Inhalt von Wahlprogrammen von den Medien verbreitet wird. Diese Doktorarbeit untersucht diese Annahme empirisch und analysiert, ob und wie Massenmedien während des Wahlkampfs über die Inhalte der Wahlprogramme berichten. Wenn Massenmedien nicht die Inhalte der Wahlprogramme verbreiten würden, hätten Bürgerinnen und Bürger kaum Chancen sich über das programmatische Angebot der Parteien zu informieren. In dieser Arbeit wird das Konzept des Manifesto-Medien-Links entwickelt. Das Konzept bringt Theorien des Parteienwettbewerbs und Theorien der Medienselektion zusammen. Der Manifesto-Medien-Link formuliert drei Bedingungen, welche empirisch getestet werden können. Diese sind: Erstens, Medienberichterstattung und Wahlprogramme müssen zumindest zu einem gewissen Grad dieselben Themen diskutieren. Zweitens, Journalisten müssen Sachfragen mit jenen Parteien verknüpfen, welche diese Themen in ihren Wahlprogrammen stärker betonen als ihre Konkurrenten, um Wählerinnen und Wähler über die Prioritäten der Parteien zu informieren. Drittens, Medien müssen die ideologische Orientierung einer Partei sowie Veränderungen dieser korrekt wiedergeben. Methodisch werden in der Arbeit Wahlprogramm- und Mediendaten kombiniert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Manifesto-Medien-Link relativ stabil ist. Außerdem wird gezeigt, dass es nur geringe systematische Verzerrungen zugunsten bestimmter Parteien gibt. Jedoch zeigen sich Unterschiede zwischen Qualitäts- und Boulevardmedien. Die Ergebnisse haben Implikationen für unser Verständnis von politischer Repräsentation und den politischen Wettbewerb.
... The model predicts that voters compare the positions of each parties with their optimum position and vote for the party located closest in this space (Enelow and Hinich 1984). Within their broad ideological constraints (Carter 2006), parties can vary their policies depending on the context of political competition, public demand, economic conditions, intra-party factors and so forth (Meguid 2008;Meyer 2013;Spoon 2011;Walgrave and Nuytemans 2009). Furthermore, it has also been argued that within a dynamic setting of party competition, parties can choose different strategies for adapting policy platforms: they can aim to satisfy the preferences of their current support base, adapt policy positions to rival parties, hunt for votes, or stick to their original policy positions (Budge 1994;Laver 2005; Laver and Sergenti 2011). ...
... Each approach suffers from drawbacks that might jeopardize the validity of our empirical results. 5 We follow much of the existing literature on voters' percetion of parties' policy positions (e.g.,Adams et al. 2011;Fernandez-Vazquez 2014;Tavits 2007;Ezrow and Xezonakis 2009;Meyer 2013) and rely on the CMP/MARPOR data (Volkens et al. 2015). In fact, the theoretical premise and the methodological implications of the manifesto database is the saliency theory of party competition whereby 'policy differences between parties[...]consist of contrasting emphases placed on different policy areas' (Budge 2001: 82;Klingemann et al. 2006). ...
It is normatively desirable that parties’ policy positions match the views of their supporters, as citizens in Western democracies are primarily represented by and through parties. Existing research suggests that parties shift their policy positions, but as of today, there is only weak and inconsistent empirical evidence that voters actually perceive these shifts. Using individual-level panel data from Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands, this article tests the proposition that voters perceive parties’ policy shifts only on salient issues while remaining oblivious to parties’ changing positions on issues that they do not consider important. The results demonstrate that issue saliency plays a fundamental role in explaining voters’ perceptions of parties’ policy shifts: according to this logic, democratic discourse between the elites and the electorate appears to take place at the level of policy issues that voters care about.
... Since the median party activist's position is generally more extreme than the median voter's position, this dynamic limits parties' potential to move towards the center. Party leaders, who typically receive the highest pay-offs from parties' office-seeking strategies, are, thus, limited in their capacity to steer parties towards a vote-maximizing position (see also Lehrer, 2012;Meyer, 2013). Using Strøm's (1990) terminology: electoral competitiveness determines whether parties' strategies correspond to their vote-, office-, or policy-seeking incentives. ...
... First, since some party systems are tilted to the left or right, we calculate our measure of policy moderation based on parties' deviations from the mean left-right placement of all parties in a given country between 1970 and 2014, instead of using deviations from the absolute zero of the logrile score. Second, it is possible that variations in the rile or logrile measure simply result from measurement error and thus might represent noise rather than actual party policy shifts ( Benoit, Laver, and Mikhaylov, 2009;Meyer, 2013). Hence, we calculate 95 % confidence intervals around parties' policy positions following Benoit, Laver, and Mikhaylov not. ...
This article investigates how the degree of electoral competition affects parties’ policy positions. It follows a growing body of research on party positioning in multiparty competition that regards elections as signals for parties that have to choose their positions and issue strategies. In this article we argue that previous elections provide information about the competitiveness of the upcoming election. The expected degree of electoral competition affects parties’ future policy positions since with increasing competitiveness of an election, parties have higher incentives to move toward a vote-maximizing position. However, what constitutes a vote-maximizing strategy varies between parties. While large mainstream parties have an incentive to moderate their positions, small and niche parties choose more extreme positions to distinguish themselves from their mainstream competitors. Applying a novel measure of electoral competitiveness, we find that the degree of electoral competition indeed determines parties’ policy shifts, but that this effect is moderated by party size.
... Since the median party activist's position is generally more extreme than the median voter's position, this dynamic limits parties' potential to move toward the center. Party leaders, who typically receive the highest payoffs from parties' officeseeking strategies, are thus limited in their capacity to steer parties toward a vote-maximizing position (see also Lehrer 2012; Meyer 2013 ). Using Strøm's terminology, electoral competitiveness determines whether parties' strategies correspond to their vote-, office-, or policy-seeking incentives. ...
... First, since some party systems are tilted to the Left or Right, we calculate our measure of policy moderation based on parties' deviations from the mean Left- Right placement of all parties in a given country between 1970 and 2014, instead of using deviations from the absolute zero of the logrile score. Second, it is possible that variations in the rile or logrile measure simply result from measurement error and thus might represent noise rather than actual party policy shifts (Benoit, Laver, and Mikhaylov 2009; Meyer 2013). Hence, we calculate 95% confidence intervals around parties' policy positions following Benoit et al. (2009) and limit our analysis to significant shifts that go beyond these confidence bounds. ...
This paper investigates how the degree of electoral competition affects parties'policy positions. It follows a growing body of research on party positioning in multi-party competition that regards elections as signals for parties that have to choose their positions and issue strategies. In this article we argue that previous elections provide information about the competitiveness of the upcoming election. The expected degree of electoral competition affects parties' future policy positions since with increasing competitiveness of an election, parties have higher incentives to move towards a votemaximizing position. However, what constitutes a vote-maximizing strategy varies between parties. While large mainstream parties have an incentive to moderate their positions, small and niche parties choose more extreme positions to distinguish themselves from their mainstream competitors. Applying a novel measure of electoral competitiveness, we find that the degree of electoral competition, indeed, determines parties' policy shifts, but that this effect is moderated by party size.
... According to the followers of the salience theory, ideological flexibility is limited because parties stem from major cleavages, which brings along a certain programmatic reputation. In this sense, they are not free to change their manifestos whenever they wish in that this action can be very harmful for their reputation (Volkens and Klingemann, 2002, p. 145; Meyer, 2013, p. 10). Even Downs (1957), who stated that 'parties formulate policies in order to win elections rather than win elections in order to formulate policies' (p. ...
... Most people are guided by pragmatic and instrumental motivations when they cast their vote (Petrocik, 1996, p. 830) and choose the party that is best placed to cope with a certain problem. Voters attribute ideological expectations to parties (Meyer, 2013, p. 10) and as a result, noise in the communication on core issues could be electorally harmful, which means that parties do not have much space to make changes to these important topics. Too much flexibility about an issue would affect the perception that a party is the expert at solving that kind of problems (Volkens and Klingemann, 2002, p. 145). ...
Parties need to adapt their policy platforms in order to win elections, yet this is not without risk. Policy shifts can reduce credibility and foster intra-party conflicts. As a result, parties tend to proceed with caution when programmatic changes are made. In this article two risk reduction methods are formulated as hypotheses and investigated. First, we claim that parties will prefer making changes to the amount of attention issues get in a manifesto than to the positions they defend. Second, we argue that the amount of change is related to the ideological and electoral importance of the issue. In other words, we assume that parties are less likely to make positional changes on issues they own because this can possibly bring about loss in credibility and contradicts with the fact that politicians and party members are policy driven. These hypotheses are examined with new data gathered through the content analysis of the party manifestos of the Belgian Liberal party and the social-democratic party for elections held between 1961 and 2010. The article concludes that parties make smaller positional changes as opposed to changes in the issues they emphasize. Only weak evidence was found for the fact that the positional flexibility toward an issue correlates with the ideological and electoral importance of an issue.
... Gemenis, 2013;Krouwel & van Elfrinkhof, 2014;Mikhaylov et al., 2012). However, several authors argue that there is no 'gold standard' measure to gauge parties' policy positions and that existing alternatives (e.g., expert and voter surveys) are no better than those provided by MARPOR (for a methodological discussion, see Meyer, 2013). Given that our study aims to examine the 'programmatic' change of parties -and not their ideology or 'true position' -empirical manifesto data seems the most valid measure to assess it. ...
The 2008 economic crisis brought new scholarly attention to Southern European radical left parties (SERLPs). Yet, important aspects of these parties remain empirically unexplored, such as their programmatic development. Using empirical data from party manifestos, this article examines the programmatic evolution of SERLPs during the 2010s-a decade full of crises (economic, migration, climate). Despite their different trajectories on various policy dimensions , the results suggest that these parties were able to adapt their program-matic appeals to capitalize on poor economic conditions and growing discontent with the EU, while showing signs of being attentive to the emergence of new issues on the public agenda-such as anti-growth concerns. Moreover, they also provide support for a moderating effect of government participation (and proximity to power) on RLPs.
... Third, party preferences are proximately the product of intra-party factors and therefore we can expect preferences on a relatively new issue such as climate policy to be influenced by preferences on traditional issues (Meyer 2013). Broader preferenceson issues such as state intervention (e.g. ...
Political parties are important actors in domestic climate politics. What drives variation in parties’ climate policy preferences? To contribute to a growing literature on the party politics of climate change, we focus on the roles of public opinion, party competition, and parties’ traditional policy preferences in shaping parties’ climate policy preferences in Denmark and Ireland. In case studies that draw on in-depth interviews with policy practitioners, we show how parties respond to public opinion, accommodate issue-owners, and are powerfully constrained and enabled by their existing preferences. These mechanisms also help to explain different responses on climate policy across the left-right spectrum. Competition between mainstream parties is particularly powerful, but can constrain as much as it enables ‘greener’ climate policy preferences. While climate change may be a distinctive problem, the party politics of climate change features similar incentives and constraints as other domains.
... First, we control for the joint salience of the issue among coalition partners as issues that are important to all coalition partners should ceteris paribus receive more attention in the coalition agreement. Accordingly, previous research has shown that the salience of issues to cabinet parties importantly affects their legislative behavior while they are in government as cabinets for instance prioritize bills in issue areas that are salient to all coalition parties (e.g.Adams et al. 2006Adams et al. , 2009Meyer 2013). Third, we control for the effective number of parliamentary parties as more parties in parliament potentially provide more alternative coalition options for cabinet parties (Müller and Strøm 2008). ...
Coalition agreements are important policy platforms that crucially determine policy‐making and coalition governance during the legislative term. However, we know remarkably little about their content. Importantly, while coalition partners settle some policy issues in great detail thus prescribing a detailed policy agenda, other issues are hardly mentioned thus leaving ample room of maneuver for coalition parties. We seek to explain this important puzzle by shedding light on why the coverage of policy issues in coalition agreements varies so extensively. We argue that ideological conflict in coalition cabinets positively affects issue attention as parties have stronger incentives to negotiate a detailed policy agenda that constrains their coalition partners when inter‐party conflict is high. However, we expect that this effect is conditioned by preference tangentiality among the partners. The higher the tangentiality of a policy issue, the smaller the positive effect of cabinet conflict. Our theoretical expectations are tested drawing on a new comparative dataset on the coalition agreements, generated by a comprehensive quantitative content analysis of agreements. Using this novel dataset, we test our hypotheses studying 166 coalition agreements in 20 West and East European countries from 1945 until 2015. Our results, which support both of our hypotheses, have important implications for our understanding of coalition governance in parliamentary democracies.
... Snaha o změnu dimenzionální struktury a významnosti témat však přestala být postupně asociována výhradně s novými stranami, a to i přesto, že u již zavedených stran jsou možnosti snadno měnit důraz, který věnují tématům, i pozice, které v nich zastávají, omezenější, především vzhledem k tomu, že u nich existuje status quo, který akceptují jejich straníci, voliči a koaliční partneři [srov. Meyer 2013]. Meyer a Wagner [2013] v tomto duchu dokonce již nerozlišují mezi mainstreamovými stranami a stranami nik, ale mezi mainstreamovými strategiemi a strategiemi nik, přičemž strategii niky již nespojují jen se stranami, které jsou mladé, ale i s těmi, které jsou malé nebo v opozici. ...
This article seeks to examine changes in the Czech party system competition between 2006 and 2014. It draws on Sani and Sartori’s concept of party competition, incorporating later findings on the nature of party competition to facilitate its application to fluid party systems. It conceptualises party competition as multi-dimensional and in terms of the (A.) salience of individual dimensions for political parties and the (B.) positions that the parties occupy in these dimensions. Three types of relations in party competition are distinguished: non-competitive, defensive and acquisitive competition. The article examines Czech party competition using data from the Chapel Hill questionnaire survey focusing on three dimensions: socio-economic, European, and social-liberal/conservative. The analyses focus on changes in the positions of parties and the salience of the three dimensions at a given point in time; special attention is devoted to the competition strategies of individual parties while taking into account the duration of their existence (new vs traditional parties). The findings indicate that the nature of party competition has transformed. There have been changes in the intensity of the competition, the salience of the dimensions of the competition, the space of the competition and the share of individual types of competition. The article finds, in consent with previous studies, that most competitive relationships (primarily defensive in nature) occurred in the socio-economic dimension, but it also finds that there is very strong potential for the development of intense party competition in the other two dimensions if there is an increase in their level of salience.
... Correspondingly, empirical studies demonstrate that political parties respond to shifts in public opinion by adjusting their policy positions to voter preferences (e.g., Adams et al. 2004Adams & Somer-Topcu 2009;Ezrow et al. 2011;Meyer 2013). However, for democratic linkage and party competition to work, parties need to the able to convey their policy positions to voters and voters need to be able to identify these positions accurately. ...
Does governing in coalitions affect how coalition parties’ policy positions are perceived by voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between parties’ participation in coalition governments and their perception by voters. Policy positions are an important instrument through which parties compete for the support of voters. However, it is unclear to what extent voters can correctly perceive the positions of parties when they govern together with other coalition partners. We argue that because of the blurred lines of responsibility in multiparty cabinets, it is difficult for voters to correctly perceive the positions of coalition parties. What is more, we expect that the internal functioning of coalition cabinets affects the extent to which coalition parties struggle to get their message out to voters. We hypothesize that intra-cabinet conflict is negatively related to misperception. To test our theoretical expectations, we combine data on the left-right policy positions of political parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on how these positions are perceived by voters gathered from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems from 1996-2011. Our findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments and its implications for political representation.
... The choice of single issues for the country-specific indices is hence very pragmatically dependent on the empirically observable left-right 21 To my knowledge, there are no survey data that contains voters' placements of both the current and the previous left-right positions of parties. According to Meyer (2013), even political experts' party placement questions on election surveys are often not time-specific, either asking vaguely about 'political parties today' (Huber and Inglehart, 1995) or not mentioning any time dimension (Benoit and Laver, 2007;Castles and Mair, 1984). The estimations thus reflect the experts' expectations about a party's position in a general sense. ...
The article aims to explore whether the accuracy of voters’ perceptions of party ideology are affected by party position shifts and by the media’s turn to non-left-right issues, such as political leadership, during election campaigns. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and a country-specific left-right index based on data by the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP), multilevel analyses reveal that emphasizing leadership issues can lead voters to reflect left-right positions more accurately. A party’s left-right position shift between elections does not lead to a significant difference in voters’ perceptions, while a shift on the economic sub-dimension of left-right ideology can even lead voters to more position clarity. However, multiple parties’ shifting their positions seems to overburden respondents’ cognitive capacity.
... Downs, 1957;Rabinowitz and Macdonald, 1989). However, parties cannot freely change policy positions as they may be constrained by their members and their ideology ( Kollman et al., 1992, Meyer, 2013). In addition, voters might punish parties for ''flip flopping'' if they frequently change their policy positions (Burden, 2004;Tavits, 2007). ...
How does governing in coalitions affect coalition parties’ responsiveness to voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between political parties’ participation in multiparty governments and their responsiveness to voters. We argue that the extent to which coalition parties respond to policy priorities of voters is influenced by the divisiveness of policy issues within the cabinet and the ministerial responsibility for policies. To test our hypotheses, we combine data on the issue attention of 55 coalition parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on government composition and data on the policy priorities of voters from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various election studies in 45 elections across 16 European countries from 1972 to 2011. While we find that intra-cabinet divisiveness decreases coalition parties’ responsiveness, we find no effect for portfolio responsibility. Our findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments and its implications for political representation.
... These theories suggest that parties seek to maximize the number of votes by adjusting their policy positions in response to the preference configuration of voters on certain policy issues. Changing policy positions may, however, be difficult as parties are constrained by their ideology, their reputation and intra-party factors (Meyer, 2013). ...
Why do political parties prioritize some policy issues over others? While the issue ownership theory suggests that parties emphasize policy issues on which they have an advantage to increase the salience of these issues among voters, the riding the wave theory instead argues that parties respond to voters by highlighting policy issues that are salient in the minds of citizens. This study sheds new light on the selective issue emphasis of political parties by analyzing issue attention throughout the entire electoral cycle. On the basis of a quantitative text analysis of more than 40,000 press releases published by German parties from 2000 until 2010, this article provides empirical support for the riding the wave theory. We show that political parties take their cues from voters by responding to the issue priorities of their electorate. Our results have important implications for political representation and the role that parties play in democracies.
... Additionally, there is no single time-series of expert surveys that covers the range of countries , parties and years covered by manifesto data. Expert surveys give information on party positions basing their estimates on sources of evidence wider than manifesto analyses, so attempts to validate the result of one analysis with those from another must consider this limitation (Meyer 2013: 31). We do not aim to validate the estimates from both sources of data, but relying on both the CMP and the CHES allows using consistency in positions as a criterion for the classification of different RLPs. ...
Radical left parties (RLPs) are a diverse lot and several RLP subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. However, the degree to which these subtypes are associated with significantly different policy proposals has not been analysed. At the same time, little is known about whether these predicated subtypes are associated with differences in their voters’ characteristics. In this article, we analyse the policy positions of RLPs across a number of issues using manifesto and expert survey data, allowing us to assess the nature of the differentiation between types of RLPs. We find that RLPs differ in the extent to which they adopt New Politics issues, and we propose a classification of Traditional and New Left RLPs. Using cross-national survey data coming from the European Election Studies series and multilevel multinomial models, we also examine the ideological, policy and social differences in the electorates of the various types of RLPs. We find socio-demographic and attitudinal differences between the voters of Traditional and New Left RLPs that are consistent with the programmatic differences of the parties
... Yet, this way of measuring party positions makes the strong assumption that party positions depend entirely on the preferences of their voters. It is more plausible that party positions represent a mix of preferences of their core constituency and strategic considerations (Meyer, 2013) but government ideology remains significant even if we control for voter preferences (Pettersson-Lidbom, 2008). Depending on the questions at stake, voter preferences based on mass level surveys might be the only possibility to approximate party positions despite these notes of caution. ...
Measuring the power of the political left with the ‘share of social democratic cabinet seats’ is the gold standard in the literature on partisan effects. We argue that this measure of left power suffers from conceptual ambiguity and propose an alternative approach to measure the ideological orientation of governments based on their power in cabinets and data on party positions. We see several shortcomings of the traditional measure: the social democratic cabinet share neglects the fact that parties’ ideological profiles differ across countries and have significantly changed over recent decades. Also, specific policy measures of party preferences are often more appropriate to gauge the government’s position than relying on highly aggregated left/right measures. In addition, the social democratic cabinet share does not take into account the impact of coalition partners, cabinet decision making and the possibility of minority governments relying on parliamentary support outside the cabinet on the ability of parties to implement the social policies. After discussing the reasons for the conceptual ambiguity of existing indicators for the power of the left, we present alternative measures for the ideological orientation of the government based on the composition of cabinets and different information about party positions. We demonstrate how these measures can be combined to a single indicator that takes into account both the ideological position of governing parties in a particular policy domain and their power to affect cabinet decisions. We critically discuss the availability and merits of data on party positions and cabinet compositions and provide recommendations for constructing measures in welfare state research.
Political parties often adjust their policy agendas in response to changing electoral landscapes, balancing the need to appeal to new voters against the importance of retaining loyal supporters. While these patterns are generally well‐documented in the literature, the specific impact of voter availability on the electoral market remains underexamined. This article investigates how electoral opportunities – i.e., potential to mobilize new voters – and loyalty – i.e., likelihood of retaining current supporters – influence parties' decisions to expand or narrow their policy focus. To analyze this, the study integrates three decades of population data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and European Election Studies with data on parties' issue focus obtained from the Manifesto Project. The analysis shows that parties strategically balance their focus between core and peripheral issues based on the anticipated utility of each approach. This strategy, however, depends on the stability of voter loyalty: expansion into new issues occurs primarily when voter loyalty is robust, although strong opportunities alone can also encourage agenda broadening. These findings contribute to understanding the calculated risks parties take in adjusting their issue attention and highlight why policy adjustments often backfire; namely, when misaligned with voters' availability on the market. This study speaks to the literature on party competition and representation in Europe, illuminating how electoral dynamics shape parties' policy focus.
This article investigates how the sex of party heads impacts party positions and uncovers that parties led by a woman modify their stances on sociocultural but not economic debates. I argue that this pattern is a consequence of dissimilar gender gaps in policy preferences across the two ideological dimensions at the elite level. The empirical evidence, based on data for nineteen developed democracies around the world between 1995 and 2018, reveals that parties led by a woman tend to emphasize green, alternative, and libertarian issues. In particular, anti‐growth, environmental protection, and freedom and human rights become more prominent elements of party manifestos under women's leadership. Overall, these findings stress the importance of critical actors and the conditions under which the presence of women in political offices translates into responsiveness towards female citizens. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
It is often assumed that political parties have more fluid party platforms than in the past because internal veto players – like party activists – have lost the power to restrain the office-seeking party elite. Several case studies subscribe to this view. However, there is no systematic assessment of this relationship. Using new data this research note investigates this relationship and finds a clear positive effect of leadership domination on party platform change. With leadership domination increasing over time, our model predicts increasing fluidity in party platforms. This note provides a motivational and a numerical argument in favor of this hypothesis, considers alternative hypotheses and provides empirical evidence for the claim using two different datasets.
Objective
We address whether intraparty democracy conditions political parties’ responsiveness to rival parties’ policy shifts.
Method
We estimate parameters of a spatial econometric model of parties’ policy positions in 11 established democracies.
Results
Internally democratic parties respond to shifts in rival parties’ policies, and internally undemocratic parties do not respond to rival parties’ policy shifts.
Conclusion
We argue that this occurs because intraparty deliberation provides a channel through which rival parties influence their competitors’ policies. Because rank‐and‐file party members are influenced by deliberative processes more than party leaders—and the policy goals of internally democratic parties’ policies are heavily influenced by their party members—deliberative processes lead democratic parties to respond to shifts in rival parties’ policy positions. This work has important implications for our understanding of parties’ election strategies, intraparty politics, and how policies diffuse between parties competing in the same election.
The landmark study by Adams et al. (2006) finds that niche parties are unresponsive to the median voter and provides two theoretical reasons for this pattern: these parties are (1) more policy-seeking and (2) more influenced by their activists. Recent research adds that niche parties have narrow issue appeals beyond the traditional left-right dimension, implying that these parties pay less attention to the left-right median voter. We test these three mechanisms in a replication and extension of the original findings by Adams et al. (2006). We find that policy-seeking parties and parties with a narrow issue focus are less likely to track median voter changes, while activist influence has no moderating effect. This finding has important implications for our understanding of party responsiveness.
This article transfers the concept of competitive advantage from management theory to party competition. Competitive advantage as a party's ability to sustainably outrival any competitor in a given voter segment involves not only a superior appeal in that segment but also a resource or efficiency dimension. The effort involved in achieving distinctiveness and increasing one's attractiveness on an issue means that a party's competitive advantage is hard to challenge by its competitors. Investing in certain issues and attacking parties on “their” issues is therefore only promising under certain conditions. Whether a competitive advantage can be gained or sustained and whether a party can be challenged depends on the larger competitive situation, which is characterized by five kinds of influences: potential new competitors, existence of substitutes, voter influence, ideational suppliers, and intensity of rivalry. Together, these forces mark competitive pressures that are key to understanding parties’ issue portfolio and policy changes.
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. 2015 . https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/apr/02/political-brands-who-gets-your-vote
. 2015 . http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21615610-large-centrist-parties-become-more-alike-radical-fringe-gets-stronger-alternatives
The fall of the communist regimes in central and eastern Europe was a shattering event for the western European radical left, causing many parties to change their names and strategies. Despite prophesies pointing to the death of radical anti-capitalist politics, radical left parties (RLPs) still exist in all parts of Europe, and in many countries they have even been able to increase their influence. This paper seeks to provide a comparative mapping of the policies and policy positions of western European RLPs before and after the fall of communism. The results of the examination indicate that although leftward trends can be observed in many RLPs in the early 2010s, the general, long-time, trend shows that the radical left family – and especially democratic socialist parties – has become less radical with regards to the core left–right dimension. Moreover, the study also shows that many RLPs – and, again, especially democratic socialist parties – have become more interested in other, non-socioeconomic, issues. Despite the rise of new left issues, the radical left is, however, still distinguishable from other parties mainly through their comparatively strong emphasis on old, traditional, left issues.
This paper addresses the electoral consequences of the German government’s anti-nuclear power policy shift after the Fukushima accident. Building on a cost-benefit framework and insights from political psychology, the theoretical analysis anticipates that the policy shift could not earn governing parties additional votes but could avoid vote loss. Utilizing data from multiple surveys and employing simulation techniques, the evidence demonstrates that voters, in particular incumbents’ supporters, became more skeptical of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. At the same time, governing parties’ supporters were particularly eager to perceive a credible change in the government’s nuclear power stance. As a consequence, governing parties did not garner additional votes but inhibited their supporters from voting for other parties and thus avoided vote loss. Generally speaking, the novel approach proposed in this paper is suitable for shedding light on electoral effects of parties’ policy shifts that have thus far gone unnoticed.
This article summarises the rapidly increasing number of studies dealing with parties' positional changes. After a short introduction and a brief discussion of a number of elementary definitions and delimitations, the second section evaluates eight factors commonly associated with party policy change. Here, the proposition that parties tend to respond systematically to changes in public opinion seems to be the most studied and, similarly, the most supported explanation. The third and final section identifies a number of research gaps and recommends topics for future research.
Previous research has shown that citizens tend to be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy when their ideological positions are more proximate to representatives'. This article argues that congruence in policy priorities between citizens and political elites should have a similar effect: citizens whose concerns are shared by elites should perceive them to be more attentive and responsive to public concerns and societal needs. Yet, the relationship might vary with differences in expectations towards democracy and representation. Specifically, it should be stronger in more democratic countries and older democracies. The hypotheses are empirically tested in a multilevel regression framework, where voter survey data from the 2009 European Election Study is linked with candidate survey data. The results indicate that citizens are indeed more satisfied with democracy if elites share their concerns, and the effect increases with democratic experience.
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