Political Brand Equity Model: The Integration of Political Brands in Voter Choice

The voters’ choices about political parties have many similarities with how they make their choices about commercial brands. Therefore, political parties are now constantly applying the concept and strategies of brand management to make the political product attractive, appealable, trustable, differentiable, a source of long-term relationships, and a decision-making driver. Furthermore, the political parties have to play an active role in the community's political socialization processes, which rely heavily on branding strategies. Because, the party equity is largely based on the community's social gregariousness that has profound effect on the electorates' propensity to participate in the politics. This study has deeply explored and broadened the concept of party equity analogous to commercial brand equity typology by developing a politics-specific brand equity model. This model demonstrates the integration of political brands in voter choice. Empirically, this model has been validated by collecting 550 valid responses from the constituency of District Gujrat, Pakistan. A careful analysis of these responses through structural equation modeling methodology has revealed that political parties vary according to the outcomes of their role in the political socialization process of the communities, loyalty, and voters’ attitude. Parties that have favorable role in the socialization process have strong party knowledge and thus have high party equity as compared to competing political parties, which have a weak position of party knowledge. Similarly, this study provides the roadmap and guidelines for the political parties to manage their party equity. Similarly, the model would be able to facilitate political parties in comparing different constituencies on the basis of their diversified social dynamics and political knowledge and in the development of a constituency-based manifesto, also termed “localized manifesto,” to further enhance their vote bank.     

Comment on Charles C. Bohl's “New urbanism and the city: potential applications and implications for distressed inner‐city neighborhoods"—the politics of design: The new urbanists vs. the grass roots

Abstract

This article briefly reviews the origins of New Urbanism and its manifesto as emerging from the social change movements of the 1960s, which evolved out of ideas of a previous generation of American and European designers living through the rise of modern industrialization. Arising from the same turmoil of the 1960s, and parallel to the New Urbanists, evolved a more loosely affiliated network of progressive academic and practicing planners and architects who have aligned themselves with disenfranchised underclasses not benefiting from the wealth of the postwar era and who take direction not from a manifesto but from a body of thinking linked to a broader intellectual and political agenda. This group works primarily with grassroots organizations in lower‐income communities and intentionally stays out of the limelight to better serve its constituents. The article concludes with ideas for possible collaboration between these professional groups serving different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.     

Strategic Incentives,Issue Proximity and Party Support in Europe

The Issue Yield model predicts that parties will choose specific issues to emphasise, based on the joint assessment of electoral risks (how divisive is an issue within the party support base) and electoral opportunities (how widely supported is the same issue outside the party). According to this model, issues with high yield are those that combine a high affinity with the existing party base, together with a high potential to reach new voters. In previous work, the model showed a remarkable ability to explain aggregate issue importance as reported by party supporters, as well as issue emphasis in party manifestos. This paper tests the implications at the individual level by comparing a conventional model where issue salience is determined from manifesto data with a revised model where issue salience is determined by issue yield. The empirical findings show that issue yield is a more effective criterion than manifesto emphasis for identifying the issues most closely associated with party support in the minds of voters.     

How policy instruments are chosen: patterns of decision makers’ choices

Policy instruments are a fundamental component of public policies. Policy instruments are often a result of mediation within the policy design process, whenever decision makers reshape existing instruments without introducing any real innovation. This results in imitation, layering and ambiguity in tool choice selection, and raises the theoretical problem of the logic according to which decision makers choose certain specific policy instruments rather than others. Decision makers may have different reasons for choosing certain specific instruments, although these reasons should be connected to the two main purposes of decision-making, that is, the search for effectiveness and the construction of a shared sense, a common acceptance. Thus, the choice of instruments is a question of potentially conflicting drivers that decision makers have to cope with within a specific decisional situation, when asked to solve those problems that have arisen. This paper examines this question and offers an analytical framework based on the two main factors in terms of which the selection of instruments is channelled and assessed: legitimacy and instrumentality. The boundaries created by how decision makers perceive these two dimensions mean that only four selection patterns can be chosen by decision makers: hybridization, stratification, contamination or routinization.     

Marching to the Left? Programmatic Competition and the 2017 Party Manifestos

This article analyses the content of the 2017 general election manifestos, and introduces the latest estimates from the Manifesto Project to explore recent ideological movements in the British party system. It reports the changing policy emphases in Conservative and Labour manifestos and the ideological positions of the major political parties in 2017. It finds that Theresa May's party produced its most left‐wing manifesto since 1964, and that Jeremy Corbyn's party produced its most left‐wing manifesto since 1992 and the election before the advent of New Labour. The article also finds that the ideological space between the Conservatives and Labour opened up in 2017, and that Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists published the most right‐wing manifesto.     

The ‘third way’ and the politics of law and order: Explaining differences in law and order policies between Blair's New Labour and Schröder's SPD

Advocating more repressive law and order policies along the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ in their election manifesto, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Gerhard Schröder in Germany were elected in the late 1990s. Once in power, however, only New Labour substantially toughened law and order policies, whereas the German Social Democrats did not change the legal status quo, to a similar extent, during their mandate. This article tackles this puzzle, arguing that the preferences of the ministers and the formal and informal rules shaping the balance of power in government are crucial to understanding why two governments that initially advocated similar policies adopted a rather different policy stance. The results are based on meticulous process tracing and a series of elite interviews concerning two major topics in the realm of law and order during the 1990s: policies directed at sexual offenders, and policies responding to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.     

A Review of: “Social Decision Making: Social Dilemmas,Social Values,and Ethical Judgments Edited by Roderick M. Kramer,Ann E. Tenbrunsel,and Max H. Bazerman”

ABSTRACT

Our ability to interpret, generalize, and build theory across public service motivation (PSM) studies is limited by lack of knowledge regarding the equivalence of different PSM measures that researchers frequently use. While past research has given considerable attention to validating multidimensional measures of PSM, this study investigates the psychometric properties of the global measures that have been used to provide much of the empirical evidence on PSM. Building on the lessons of other research using global and multidimensional measures, we first discuss the strengths and weaknesses of existing global measures of PSM relative to those of the multidimensional measures. After highlighting the potential merit of global scales, we then provide empirical justification for global scales. Using five different data sets to compare commonly used global measures of PSM, our findings suggest that these different measures are not only highly correlated with each other but also display a similar pattern and strength of relationships with important correlates of PSM. These findings suggest that these measures do tap into the same conceptual space and help validate our continued reliance on empirical studies that have used different measures to build our understanding of PSM.     

WHAT WORKS BEST AND WHEN: ACCOUNTING FOR MULTIPLE SOURCES OF PURESELECTION BIAS IN PROGRAM EVALUATIONS

Most evaluations are still quasi‐experimental and most recent quasi‐experimental methodological research has focused on various types of propensity score matching to minimize conventional selection bias on observables. Although these methods create better‐matched treatment and comparison groups on observables, the issue of selection on unobservables still looms large. Thus, in the absence of being able to run randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or natural experiments, it is important to understand how well different regression‐based estimators perform in terms of minimizing pure selection bias, that is, selection on unobservables. We examine the relative magnitudes of three sources of pure selection bias: heterogeneous response bias, time‐invariant individual heterogeneity (fixed effects [FEs]), and intertemporal dependence (autoregressive process of order one [AR(1)]). Because the relative magnitude of each source of pure selection bias may vary in different policy contexts, it is important to understand how well different regression‐based estimators handle each source of selection bias. Expanding simulations that have their origins in the work of Heckman, LaLonde, and Smith ( 1999 ), we find that difference‐in‐differences (DID) using equidistant pre‐ and postperiods and FEs estimators are less biased and have smaller standard errors in estimating the Treatment on the Treated (TT) than other regression‐based estimators. Our data analysis using the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) program replicates our simulation findings in estimating the TT.     

Values and partisanship in left-right orientations: measuring ideology

Abstract. This paper analyzes whether left-right scales provide an interval measure of citizen issue attitudes that is comparable across eight Western European countries. Two commonly held views of left-right self-placement are juxtaposed: (1) the theory that issue attitudes are the primary component of left-right self-placement, and (2) the theory that partisanship is the primary component of left-right self-placement, which entails that left-right scales will take on different substantive meanings in countries with different types of party systems. Distance measures and least squares regression show that left-right scales are generally an appropriate instrument for cross-national tests of theories that have as an explanatory variable the ideological orientations of voters.     

Proxy documents as a source of measurement error in the Comparative Manifestos Project

This paper considers the issue of document type diversity in the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP). For many years the CMP has been collecting and coding a variety of documents, such as speeches, pamphlets, newspaper articles and leaflets, as manifesto proxies. By using previously unexplored archival material to perform controlled comparisons between different types of documents, this paper argues that the coding of such documents introduced considerable measurement error to party position estimates. Statistical analyses indicate that this measurement error is systematic rather than random as it is often manifested as centrist bias in parties' left–right position estimates. Consequently, the paper argues that random error correction methods cannot always correct for error attributed to the coding of proxy documents. The paper concludes with some recommendations for third-party users of the CMP data and documents and a plea to the CMP research team.     

New Labour in Britain: New Democratic Centralism?

This article uses a case study - the introduction in 1997 of new policy machinery - to analyse competing claims about the nature of the Labour Party's organisational transformation. It aims to demonstrate that whilst the new policy process was presented as a move towards greater democracy, both its general design and its modes of operation rendered inevitable the production of a general election manifesto in 2001 (the culmination of the process) whose contents coincided very closely to the leadership's tastes. The article then seeks to account for the form Labour's transformation took, drawing on the work of Michels and Lipset and his colleagues.     

Issue clarity in electoral competition. Insights from Austria

This paper analyses parties' policy supply in electoral campaigns. In so doing, it proposes to look at issue clarity which is defined as the share of objectively testable pledges within an election manifesto. The main argument states that parties not only decide their positions and issue saliencies, but also the level of specificity with which they present their policies. The data come from Austria (1990–2008) and, thus, provide a good example for a Western European multi-party system with proportional representation. The analyses show that extreme parties present manifestos with higher issue clarity compared to moderate parties. Furthermore, this result is strengthened by a party's role in government. Issue ownership, however, seems to have no effect on issue clarity.     

Election promises and government performance in Greece: PASOK's fulfilment of its 1981 election pledges

Abstract. The 'mandate theory' of democracy rests on the idea that electors choose political parties on the basis of the alternative government programmes they offer during an election campaign. Thus, the question of whether or not programmes are fulfilled in government is central in assessing the effectiveness of democratic processes. In its election manifesto for the 1981 general election the then opposition socialist party, PASOK, proposed a radical reform of Greek society. The degree to which its proposals were actually implemented in its first period of office (1981–85) points up the constraints facing any reformist party trying to fulfil its promises. Following recently published research on pledge fulfilment in Britain and Canada, this study identifies the definite pledges made by PASOK in its 1981 electoral manifesto and checks how far they actually found their way into government outputs up to 1985.
The main findings are that PASOK clearly promised important reforms in 1981 and to a considerable extent implemented them.     

An Administrative Manifesto for Survival in the Twenty-First Century

Professor Ali Farazmand has written a manifesto for administrative action in an effort to improve public governance and administration capacity not only for today but also for tomorrow, which is highly volatile and uncertain. Farazmand's earlier works, especially his essay "Globalization and Public Administration" (PAR, November/December 1999), are familiar to many students and scholars in public administration around the world.     

A Scaling Model for Estimating Time-Series Party Positions from Texts

Recent advances in computational content analysis have provided scholars promising new ways for estimating party positions. However, existing text-based methods face challenges in producing valid and reliable time-series data. This article proposes a scaling algorithm called WORDFISH to estimate policy positions based on word frequencies in texts. The technique allows researchers to locate parties in one or multiple elections. We demonstrate the algorithm by estimating the positions of German political parties from 1990 to 2005 using word frequencies in party manifestos. The extracted positions reflect changes in the party system more accurately than existing time-series estimates. In addition, the method allows researchers to examine which words are important for placing parties on the left and on the right. We find that words with strong political connotations are the best discriminators between parties. Finally, a series of robustness checks demonstrate that the estimated positions are insensitive to distributional assumptions and document selection.     

Party leadership selection in France

Abstract. The methods of selection used by French political parties can be grouped into two categories: election by a party conference with some thousands of delegates for the right wing parties or election by a party committee after the party conference with some hundreds of representatives for the left wing parties. Nevertheless, the existence of a presidential election has completely changed the meaning of these methods of selecting party leaders. Political parties have been transformed into presidential machines carrying out two types of successive duties; as a springboard for a candidate at the presidential elections, then as a relay of the President of the Republic (the 'president's party'). In these two types of situation the selection of leaders is not completely the same. First, in order to gain access to the presidential election, certain politicians have quickly understood that it was necessary to create new political parties or to transform weak political groups in altering the normal rules of selection of the leaders or in overthrowing the existing leadership. Then the leader of the President's party is directly chosen by the President of the Republic himself. The formal methods of selection only serve to ratify the President's choice.     

The Life Cycle of Party Manifestos: The Austrian Case

Election manifestos are one of the most prominent sources of data for the study of party politics and government. Yet the processes of manifesto production, enactment, and public reception are not very well understood. This article attempts to narrow this knowledge gap by conducting a first investigation into the ‘life cycle’ of election manifestos from the drafting stage to their use in the campaign and post-election periods. Specifically, it investigates the Austrian case between 1945 and 2008 (with special emphasis on the 1990s and 2000s), employing a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data. While the research is thus mostly exploratory, it develops systematic expectations about variation between parties according to their ideology, organisation, government status, and characteristics of their electorates across the stages of the manifesto life cycle. Of those factors, organisational characteristics and status as government or opposition parties were found to be relevant.     

Quadratic voting in the wild: real people,real votes

Since their introduction in 1932, Likert and other continuous, independent rating scales have become the de facto toolset for survey research. Scholars have raised significant reliability and validity problems with these types of scales, and alternative methods for capturing perceptions and preferences have gained traction within specific domains. In this paper, we evaluate a new, broadly applicable approach to opinion measurement based on quadratic voting (QV), a method in which respondents express preferences by ‘buying’ votes for options using a fixed budget from which they pay quadratic prices for votes. Comparable QV-based and Likert-based survey instruments designed by Collective Decision Engines LLC were evaluated experimentally by assigning potential respondents randomly to one or the other method. Using a host of metrics, including respondent engagement and process-based metrics, we provide some initial evidence that the QV-based instrument provides a clearer measure of the preferences of the most intensely motivated respondents than the Likert-based instrument does. We consider the implications for survey satisficing, a key threat to the continued value of survey research, and discuss the mechanisms by which QV differentiates itself from Likert-based scales, thus establishing QV as a promising alternative survey tool for political and commercial research. We also explore key design issues within QV-based surveys to extend these promising results.     

Varieties of Radicalism: Examining the Diversity of Radical Left Parties and Voters in Western Europe

Radical left parties (RLPs) are diverse and several RLP subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. However, the degree to which these subtypes are linked to significantly different policy proposals has not been analysed, and little is known about whether subtypes are associated with differences in their respective voters’ characteristics. This article analyses the policy positions of RLPs across a number of issues, using manifesto and expert survey data, allowing insights into the differentiation between types of RLPs. RLPs differ in the extent to which they adopt New Politics issues, and the article proposes a classification of Traditional and New Left RLPs. Using cross-national survey data from the European Election Studies series and multilevel multinomial models, the article examines the ideological, policy and social differences in the electorates of the various types of RLPs. It finds socio-demographic and attitudinal differences between the voters of Traditional and New Left RLPs that are consistent with the programmatic differences of the parties.