This article analyses the conditions under which political parties spend attention to labour issues. This article compares the dominant partisan perspective, which proposes that attention to issues... Show moreThis article analyses the conditions under which political parties spend attention to labour issues. This article compares the dominant partisan perspective, which proposes that attention to issues is shaped by party competition, to an interest group perspective, which proposes that strong interest groups, in particular when their power is institutionalized in corporatist systems, can force parties to spend attention to their issue. We use the Comparative Agenda Project data set of election manifestos to examine these patterns in seven West-European countries and corroborate our findings in the Comparative Manifesto Project data set for 25 countries. The evidence supports the interest group perspective over the partisan perspective. This shows that the study of party attention to issues should not isolate party competition from the influence of other political actors. Show less
Existing research on intra-party unity and conflict has mostly focused on (dis)unity within the legislative branch of the party at the national level, while neglecting conflict between the... Show moreExisting research on intra-party unity and conflict has mostly focused on (dis)unity within the legislative branch of the party at the national level, while neglecting conflict between the different faces or at different levels of the party. Intra-party unity and conflict have also been routinely defined and operationalized through ideological homogeneity or distance, although intra-party conflicts are multidimensional and dynamic phenomena. The articles included in this special issue seek to address these shortcomings in the literature. Their contributions are threefold: (1) they theorize intra-party conflict as a dynamic and multifaceted concept; (2) they explore conflicts across and between several party faces, and among different intra-party actors; (3) they investigate the determinants and management of conflict at several party levels. Show less
Carter, N.; Ladrech, R.; Little, C.; Tsagkroni, V. 2018
This study presents an innovative approach to hand-coding parties’ policy preferences in the relatively new, cross-sectoral field of climate change mitigation policy. It applies this approach to... Show moreThis study presents an innovative approach to hand-coding parties’ policy preferences in the relatively new, cross-sectoral field of climate change mitigation policy. It applies this approach to party manifestos in six countries, comparing the preferences of parties in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom over the past two decades. It probes the data for evidence of validity through content validation and convergent/discriminant validation and engages with the debate on position-taking in environmental policy by developing a positional measure that incorporates ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ climate policy preferences. The analysis provides evidence for the validity of the new measures, shows that they are distinct from comparable measures of environmental policy preferences and argues that they are more comprehensive than existing climate policy measures. The new measures strengthen the basis for answering questions that are central to climate politics and to party politics. The approach developed here has important implications for the study of new, complex or cross-cutting policy issues and issues that include both valence and positional aspects. Show less
Political parties are a crucial link between the public and policy outcomes. However, few studies have considered who political parties are responsive to when they take positions on specific policy... Show morePolitical parties are a crucial link between the public and policy outcomes. However, few studies have considered who political parties are responsive to when they take positions on specific policy proposals. This article explores the links between public opinion and the policy positions of political parties on 102 specific policy proposals in Germany using a novel application of multilevel regression with poststratification to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters. While there is a link between general public preferences and the positions of political parties, this connection weakens considerably once political parties are in government. In fact, the study shows that the link between party positions and general public opinion is severed once parties enter government, whereas it is only weakened in the case of party supporters. Finally, the article finds mixed evidence for differences between niche parties and mainstream parties. Show less
Much has been written about what makes political parties form, persist, change and die. One factor often brought into this discussion is the availability of resources in general and of state... Show moreMuch has been written about what makes political parties form, persist, change and die. One factor often brought into this discussion is the availability of resources in general and of state financing of political parties in particular. However, an empirical link at the aggregate level is difficult to establish because of various issues of conceptualization, operationalization and measurement. Working at the party level and taking into consideration that state funding provides important resources that make running in elections and achieving a party’s electoral target more likely, this article provides empirical support for the claim that parties who (anticipate to be or) are being funded by the state have a higher chance of forming and surviving in an independent format in the party system. Based on a comparison of 14 post-communist party systems, the main conclusion of the article is that the survival rate for such parties exceeds the survival rate for the non-publicly funded ones in almost all cases. A second, novel and more particular, finding is that parties who find themselves outside parliament, but above the payout threshold, display higher survival rates than parties who are below it. Show less
Louwerse, T.; Otjes, S.; Willumsen, D.; Öhberg, P. 2016
The divide between government and opposition is clearly visible in the way members of parliament vote, but the variation in government–opposition voting has been left relatively unexplored. This is... Show moreThe divide between government and opposition is clearly visible in the way members of parliament vote, but the variation in government–opposition voting has been left relatively unexplored. This is particularly the case for contextual variation in the extent to which parliamentary voting behaviour follows the government–opposition divide. This article attempts to explain levels of government–opposition voting by looking at three factors: first, the majority status of cabinets (differentiating between majority and minority cabinets), cabinet ideology (differentiating between more centrist and more extremist cabinets) and norms about cabinet formation (differentiating between wholesale and partial alternation in government). The study includes variation at the level of the country, the government and the vote. The article examines voting in the Netherlands (with a history of partial alternation) and Sweden (with a history of wholesale alternation). We find strong support for the effect of cabinet majority status, cabinet ideology and norms about cabinet formation on government–opposition voting. Show less
