Are Party Activists the Party Extremists? The Structure of Opinion in Political Parties

In re-examining May's law of curvilinear disparity, this article analyzes the structure of opinion of political parties. May suggests that voters, party leaders and party activists have different incentives to participate in politics, and therefore voters and leaders have more moderate positions on issues than party activists. This article is based on the extensions of May's law made by Kitschelt, who argues that curvilinear disparities, although not general phenomena, are bound to occur in specific circumstances. We have focused on the level of cleavage conflict in the system, the variable that Kitschelt himself found to be critical for explaining party radicalism among sub-leaders. Using the Norwegian multiparty system as a test case, we propose that radicalism among party activists is conditioned by the relative saliency of different policy dimensions. The empirical analysis, which is based on surveys of MPs, party members and voters in connection with the general election of 1993, gives very little support to our proposition.     

Losing Touch? The Political Representativeness of Swedish Parties, 1985–1994

Political parties are often said to be in decline. In Sweden, the major parties have lost significant amounts of members and activists in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the decline in participatory linkage via parties has been accompanied by a representative decline. Using data from the Swedish Election Studies and Parliamentary Studies, average self-placement on the left-right schema is compared between Members of Parliament, party activists, party members and voters. There is no evidence of a decline in the political representativeness of the parliamentarians. There is, however, some evidence that members and activists have become radicalized compared to the voters. This is particularly true of the Social Democrats, and also to some extent in the Moderate Party. Thus, while there is no general decline in the representative linkage provided by the Swedish parties, there is some justification to speak of a representational decline for the Swedish parties as membership organizations.     

Party Polarization and Party Structuring of Policy Attitudes: A Comparison of Three NES Panel Studies

The conventional wisdom in the partisan change literature predicts that increasing party conflict on one issue agenda leads to a decline in party conflict on another agenda—a process called conflict displacement. We have argued that recent party politics in the United States has experienced conflict extension, with the Democratic and Republican parties in the electorate growing more polarized on cultural, racial, and social welfare issues, rather than conflict displacement. Here, we suggest that the failure of the literature to account for conflict extension results from incomplete assumptions about individual-level partisan change. The partisan change literature typically considers only issue-based change in party identification, which necessarily leads to the aggregate prediction of conflict displacement. This ignores the possibility of party-based change in issue attitudes. If party-based issue conversion does occur, the aggregate result can be conflict extension rather than conflict displacement. Our analysis uses data from the three-wave panel studies conducted by the National Election Studies in 1956, 1958, and 1960; in 1972, 1974, and 1976; and in 1992, 1994, and 1996 to assess our alternative account of individual-level partisan change. We show that when Democratic and Republican elites are polarized on an issue, and party identifiers are aware of those differences, some individuals respond by adjusting their party ties to conform to their issue positions, but others respond by adjusting their issue positions to conform to their party identification.     

The need for a third party in u.s. politics

Abstract

This article is based on a presentation to the “Future Directions for American Politics and Public Policy” seminar at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, on May 6, 1993. The theme of the article is that a national third party is necessary in order to advance a social welfare agenda that would improve measurably the quality of urban life, and resolve the problem of race and racism in the United States. The author proposes that despite important changes in race relations, including the elimination of a multi‐generational system of legally‐sanctioned political apartheid, society still reflects continuing and intensifying race and class divisions and tensions. Neither the Democratic or Republican parties have the political will or base to offer policies that would effectively eliminate racial hierarchy in this country. It is argued that the development of a national and organzationally viable third party is essential in order to challenge the philosophical and political tendencies of the major parties regarding social welfare and race, economic development and growth, and foreign affairs. In addition to using a few historical examples to make this case, the author also critiques the exploitation of race as an electoral tool by both major parties.     

Modeling the interaction of parties, activists and voters: Why is the political center so empty?

Abstract.  The formal stochastic model of voting should be the theoretical benchmark against which empirical models can be gauged. A standard result in the formal model is the 'mean voter theorem' stating that parties converge to the electoral center. Empirical analysis based on the vote-maximizing premise, however, invalidates this convergence result. We consider both empirical and formal models that incorporate exogeneous valence terms for the parties. Valence can be regarded as an electorally perceived attribute of each party leader that is independent of the policy position of the party. We show that the mean voter theorem is valid for empirical multinomial logit and probit models of a number of elections in the Netherlands and Britain. To account for the non-centrist policy positions of parties, we consider a more general formal model where valence is also affected by the behavior of party activists. The results suggest that non-convergent policy choice by party leaders can be understood as rational, vote-maximizing calculation by leaders in response to electoral and activist motivations.     

Issue ownership attack: how a political party can counteract a rival’s issue ownership

Abstract

A central part of representative democracy is that voters evaluate political parties based on how competently they handle issues, so-called ‘issue ownership’. Since issue ownership is a central ingredient in the vote choice, rival parties often try to influence how voters evaluate a competing party. This is an issue ownership attack. However, despite intense scholarly interest in issue ownership, the understanding of how parties shape issue ownership is very limited. Therefore a new theoretical model is tested here to understand issue ownership attack. Using several survey experiments, the analysis shows that a mainstream party can counteract another mainstream party’s issue ownership by reframing the issue and by blaming the party for its performance, but not by changing its own position on the issue. Hence, the study not only advances the understanding of issue ownership stability and change but also brings important insights on how parties influence voters.     

The Role of Party Activists in the Evolution of the Abortion Issue

This article examines the role of party activists in the partisan evolution of the abortion issue. Previous research indicates that party elites—specifically members of Congress—and partisans in the mass public have become more differentiated in their abortion attitudes during the last several decades with Democrats becoming more pro-choice and Republicans becoming increasingly pro-life. The missing piece of the picture is the behavior of party activists. Accordingly, this research examines the changes in the abortion attitudes of two groups of party activists during the last three decades: campaign activists and national convention delegates. From 1972 to 1980 there were no significant differences in the abortion attitudes of Republican and Democratic campaign activists, and the mean positions of the two parties' national convention delegates did not differ greatly. However, since 1984 there has been a growing differentiation in the abortion positions of both groups of party activists. Now Democratic activists are consistently pro-choice while Republican activists are equally pro-life. This evidence indicates that the differentiation on the abortion issue that has only recently emerged among partisans in the mass public was predated by an earlier and much more dramatic polarization that had already developed among party activists and elites, thus supporting a model of issue evolution introduced by Carmines and Stimson in their study of racial issues. We also find that citizens' abortion attitudes have become increasingly correlated with party voting not just in presidential elections but also in House, Senate, and gubernatorial contests during this period as well as being more closely related to political ideology. All of this evidence points to the growing extent to which abortion has become a partisan issue in American politics and the key role that party activists have played in this process.     

Leaders, voters and activists in the elections in Great Britain 2005 and 2010

Discussion of the relationship between parties and the electorate is often based on the notion of partisan constituencies, that parties adopt policy positions that correspond to the average position of the party supporters. In contrast, the Downsian “spatial model” assumes that parties are purely opportunistic and maneuver to gain as many votes as possible. A third, more empirical model, based on the early work of Stokes, assumes that voter choice is based on the evaluation of each of the party leader’s competence or ability to deliver policy success. Such an evaluation can be provided by individual voter overall assessment in terms of the leaders’ character traits.This paper attempts to relate these three classes of models by examining the elections in Great Britain in 2005 and 2010. Using the British Election Study, we construct spatial models of these elections in Great Britain as well as in the three regions of England, Scotland and Wales. The models incorporate the electoral perceptions of character traits. We compare the equilibrium vote maximizing positions with the partisan positions, estimated by taking the mean of each of the parties voters’ preferred positions. We define an equilibrium to be a stable attractor if the vote share at the equilibrium exceeds the share at the partisan position by a significant proportion (determined by the implicit error of the stochastic model). We infer that none of the equilibria are stable attractors, and suggest that the partisan positions are also preferred by the party activists, the key supporters of each party.     

Selecting the party leader in Britain

Abstract. Unlike most European countries, party leadership roles in Britain are largely concentrated into the hands of one person. The pattern was established in the nineteenth century, when the posts of Prime Minister and party leader were intertwined, and has been maintained by the modern parties. Each of the main British parties has changed its method of selecting its leader in the last thirty years and between them the parties use, or have used relatively recently, the four basic methods of selection—by the party elite, by parliamentarians, by activists and by party members. The broad trend has been for the parties to make their procedures more open and participatory. While this pattern has reflected the 'spirit of the age' the major reasons for the change have been political considerations. The Conservatives changed from selection by party elites to selection by MPs in an attempt to modernise their image. Labour adopted an electoral college as a result of power struggles between left and right in the party. The Liberals eventually accepted that it was not sensible for their leader to be selected by just a dozen or less MPs (and the Social Democrats and Liberal Democrats duly followed this logic). Despite the adoption of more open procedures the selectorates are still relatively small (with only the Liberal Democrats involving all members), while control over the process of nomination remains firmly in the hands of the MPs. One consequence of this is that British party leaders have been characterised, above all, by the extent of their parliamentary experience. Within that characteristic, however, the detailed rules of the different selection procedures have been crucial in determining which particular parliamentarians would emerge.     

Disloyal Brokers and Weak Parties

This article shows that the disloyalty of political brokers causes party fragility. Lacking distinctive brands, organization, and activists to mobilize individuals, parties “hire” local notables to broker votes among a local, nonpartisan constituency. However, brokers may be unreliable agents, regularly changing political allegiances in search of better returns for their brokerage among the module of voters they control. This free agency from brokers hinders durable party–voter linkages and results in electorally vulnerable parties. Measuring how brokers influence parties is empirically complex, but taking advantage of the fact that in Brazil these agents are also local candidates, this article demonstrates the negative electoral consequences of brokers' free agency on party performance. Natural experiments and an unexpected, temporary institutional reform that discouraged disloyalty for brokers demonstrate this relationship.     

Do leadership-dominated parties change more?

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.     

Black Germans — the best hidden minority in Germany

Abstract

We argue that progressive activists and scholars should take seriously the question of a progressive third party. Since the mid‐1970s political and economic conditions in the U.S. have shifted in ways favorable to such activism. Using the reality of the grassroots upsurge which supported Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign as a reference point, we sketch out three major aspects of the emerging potential: the expansion of the left's constituency, the convergence of activist agendas, and the increasing consideration of electoral options within the activist community. For each of these three dimensions we show both how the conditions of the early post‐war years worked against an independent left political movement and how the changes of the past two decades have created new opportunities. We do not argue for the ultimate determinacy of political‐economic variables. Rather by showing several major ways in which the social terrain has changed, we seek to demonstrate why the issue of a viable progressive political movement merits serious discussion among scholars and activists.     

A model for disaggregating political change

We present a model for identifying the components of aggregate change in an electorate between two points in time. When the electorate is constant in size, change in the mean opinion disaggregates into two components: conversion among those who continue to participate in the electorate (Stayers), and replacement of those who drop out of the electorate at Time₁ (Dropouts) by Newcomers to the electorate at Time₂. We add to this simple formulation the possibility of variation in the size of the electorate. When an electorate expands, the model includes a mobilization term to accommodate the fact that there are more Newcomers at Time₂ than Dropouts at Time₁. When an electorate shrinks in size, the demobilization term reflects the fact that Newcomers as a group are smaller than Dropouts. The model includes appropriate weights for each component so that the change in opinion (or any other aggregate characteristic in the electorate) can be allocated across the three components. We apply the model to Iowa caucus attenders in both parties between 1984 and 1988, and we suggest that the model can be also productively applied to a variety of contexts besides nomination politics, where fluctuations in the size of electorates are significant.Ronald B. Rapoport. College of William and Mary.     

Third party voting and the rational voter model: Empirical evidence from recent presidential elections

This paper attempted to demonstrate that a rational voter model as derived by Barzel and Silberberg (1973) can be used (with modifications) to explain third party voting in presidential elections. The empirical findings strongly suggest that the rational voter model is applicable in explaining third party voting. This conclusion likewise suggests that people who vote for third parties do so under similar motivations as people who vote for the major parties. Thus, people do not appear to regard votes for third parties as wasted votes or engage in the voting process in an irrational fashion. Lastly, votes for third parties represent the transmission of individual preferences by people who believe that their vote is important and that in the aggregate their signal may be interpreted as a signal to alter the direction of current policies as run by the major parties. Therefore, it does not appear from the evidence presented here that we should distinguish between or treat differently voting participation for the major parties versus the minor or third parties in presidential elections.The author expresses appreciation to Charles Campbell, Gary Pecquet, Paul W. Grimes, and James E. McClure for comments and criticisms. The usual caveat applies.     

Party bureaucrats,independent professionals,or politicians? A study of party employees

The number of party employees is increasing, but to what extent and in what sense are party employees integrated into their parties? Based on the literature on party change, the article identifies three important dimensions ? ties, tasks, and career plans ? and constructs a typology of four ideal types of party employees – technical assistants, party bureaucrats, independent professionals, and unelected politicians. Data on Norwegian party employees suggest that they have strong party ties and are entrusted with a wide range of political tasks. However, career plans rarely include elected office. The results indicate that party employees have stronger party ties than envisaged in influential party models. Professionalisation does not render party grassroots irrelevant, but rather turns some grassroots activists into professionals – what can be called ‘unelected politicians’. In conclusion, the article discusses implications for contemporary understandings of political parties.     

Attitudes and behaviour of party activists

Abstract. During the last four years a research project has studied the 'Middle-Level Elites' of sixty European political parties. Like most previous studies in this area the main objective of the project was strictly party activists' attitudes; no attention was paid to their actual behaviour in the party organisation. Other studies of recent date indicate however that party activists, despite their often more radical or extreme stands on many issues, often submit to the authority and dominance of the party leadership in the intraparty policy-making process. Thus, attitudinal data seem to tell us very little about the actual behaviour of the party activists. The article first presents the results of some recent studies on the attitudes of party activists. Secondly, these findings are related to studies on the actual behaviour of the activists. When synthesising these different types of observations, we can develop a typology of intraparty conflicts, as well as one of party activist behaviour. Together, these two typologies represent different models of intraorganisational behaviour. Finally, by using empirical illustrations drawn from recent studies on party activist attitudes or behaviour, some hypotheses deduced from the theories of May, Hirschman and Michels are introduced to suggest paths for future research and to point to some of the most salient problems in this area.     

Party Platforms with Endogenous Party Membership

This paper proposes and analyzes a model of how the behaviorof voters and that of potential party activists togetherdetermine party membership and the ideological characteristicsof party platforms. Membership decisions are based onexpressive motivations, whereas platforms are chosenstrategically. Part of the ideological spectrum may remainoutside both parties because of alienation or indifference.     

Pauline Hanson and the Rise and Fall of the Radical Right in Australia

Abstract

In this paper Deutchman examines the rise and fall of the radical right in the late 1990s in Australia. In particular, she focuses on the rise and fall of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. In 1996 an obscure backbencher named Pauline Hanson was elected to the federal parliament. From the moment she made her first speech in September of that year she was rarely off the nation's front pages. By April 1997 she started her own political party, One Nation. By July 1998 her party was able to win an astonishing 23 per cent of the vote in the Queensland state election. And by October 1998 she lost her own seat in Parliament and saw her party's fortunes decline. Deutchman examines various theories which have attempted to explain the rise of radical-right parties in Europe and the United States in order to understand the Australian case. Notably, she argues that the convergence of the two major parties, the Coalition and the Australian Labor Party, provides the setting in which the emergence of a radical-right party becomes more likely. Such a party often emerges when the two major parties are centre-right ones, as is the case in Australia. In most countries research has shown that it is difficult for a radical-right party to do well nationally. Indeed, this has been true in Australia. Despite the fact that One Nation has lost much of its electoral support, Deutchman argues that it is premature to write off the radical right in Australia.     

The activists decide: the preferences of party activists in the 2016 presidential nominations

ABSTRACT

One view of presidential nominations in the United States [Steger, Wayne P. 2007. “Who Wins Presidential Nominations and Why: An Updated Forecast of the Presidential Primary Vote.” Presidential Research Quarterly 60: 91–97; Cohen, Marty, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller. 2008. The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Silver, Nate. 2016. “The Republican Party May Be Failing.” FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-party-may-be-failing/] claims that the support of political elites is causally related to success in the nomination. The mechanisms for this relationship include party activists, who follow the cues party leaders send and provide necessary support to candidates in primaries and caucuses. This mechanism has not been explicitly tested. This paper explores the preferences of party activists in light of the unified elite preferences among Democrats and the lack of such unity among Republicans. Some activists in each party resist the signals from elites, but the resistance is far less widespread in the Democratic Party, where party leaders exhibited consensus support for the eventual nominee.     

Making sense of party strategy innovation: challenge to ideology and conflict-mobilisation as dimensions of party competition

Abstract

This article develops a pooled comparative analysis aimed at addressing two of the three overarching research questions of the special issue. It first discuss an ‘end of ideology’ research question: that is, whether party constituencies and party strategy show clear challenges to classic twentieth century ideological alignments. Second, it investigates the type of issue strategy that parties employ in this new ideological environment, expecting mainstream parties to stress a problem-solving approach, while challenger parties should favour a conflict-mobilisation strategy. Finally, the article combines these two fundamental dimensions (ideological consistency; reliance on problem-solving vs. conflict-mobilisation strategies) in order to identify party strategy innovations in current West European elections.