Strategic Party Government: Party Influence in Congress, 1789–2000

Why does the influence of Congressional parties fluctuate over time? Building on prevailing answers, we develop a model, Strategic Party Government, which highlights the electoral motives of legislative parties and the strategic interaction between parties. We test this theory using the entire range of House and Senate party behavior from 1789 to 2000 and find that the strategic behavior of parties complements members' preferences as an explanation for variation in party influence. Specifically, the strongest predictors of one party's voting unity are the unity of the opposing party and the difference between the parties in the preceding year. Moreover, we find strong links between party behavior in Congress and electoral outcomes: an increase in partisan influence on legislative voting has adverse electoral costs, while winning contested votes has electoral benefits.     

Feelings about party leaders as a voter's heuristic – what happens when the leaders change? A note

Recent analyses of voting at British general elections deploy a valence theory according to which electors evaluate each party's performance and policies and vote accordingly. Many voters, however, avoid at least some of the effort involved in assembling and assessing information about parties' policies and instead use heuristics such as their feelings about the party leaders as major determinants of their decisions. When party leaders are changed, therefore, differences in voters' feelings about predecessor and successor could lead to changes in party choice. That argument is tested for the 2015 and 2017 British general elections in England, between which all three largest parties changed their leader, with results entirely consistent with the argument. In addition, there were significant changes in feelings about the new party leaders during the six weeks of the 2017 campaign, and these too were linked to final voting choices in the expected directions.     

Origins of party formation and new party success in advanced democracies

Which new parties entered national parliaments in advanced democracies over the last four decades and how did they perform after their national breakthrough? This article argues that distinguishing two types of party formation (that facilitate or complicate party institutionalisation) helps to explain why some entries flourish, while others vanish quickly from the national stage. New parties formed by individual entrepreneurs that cannot rely on ties to already organised groups are less likely to get reelected to parliament after breakthrough than rooted newcomers. This hypothesis is tested on a newly compiled dataset of new parties that entered parliaments in 17 advanced democracies from 1968 onwards. Applying multilevel analyses, the factors that shape newcomers' capacity to reenter parliament after breakthrough are assessed. Five factors have significant effects, yet affect party performance only in particular phases: both a party's electoral support at breakthrough and its operation in a system with a strong regional tier increase the likelihood of initial reelection. In contrast, a distinct programmatic profile, the permissiveness of the electoral system and easy access to free broadcasting increase a party's chance of repeated reelection. Only formation type significantly affects both phases and does so most strongly, substantiating the theoretical approach used in this article.     

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Does pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties’ performance to their previous electoral pledges. It is argued that government parties are more likely to be rewarded by voters when they have fulfilled more pledges during the legislative term. Good pledge performance of a party is associated with the ability to maximise policy benefits (accomplishment) and to be a responsible actor that will stick to its promises in the future as well (competence). Analysing data from 69 elections in 14 countries shows that a government party's electoral outcome is affected by its previous pledge performance. A government party that fulfils a higher share of election pledges is more likely to prevent electoral losses. This finding indicates that voters react at the polls to party pledge fulfilment, which highlights the crucial role of promissory representation in democratic regimes. Surprisingly and in contrast with economic voting, there is no evidence that retrospective pledge voting is moderated by clarity of responsibility.     

The effects of membership decline on party organisations in Europe

On election day, voters’ commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties’ organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat‐rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party‐year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the party's local presence. The findings indicate that today's parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom‐made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more.     

The Power of Partisanship in Brazil: Evidence from Survey Experiments

To what extent do party labels influence individuals’ policy positions? Much research has examined this question in the United States, where party identification can generate both in‐group and out‐group pressures to conform to a party's position. However, relatively little research has considered the question's comparative generalizability. We explore the impact of party labels on attitudes in Brazil, a relatively new democracy with a fragmented party system. In such an environment, do parties function as in‐groups, out‐groups, or neither? We answer this question through two survey experiments, one conducted on a nationally representative sample and another on a convenience sample recruited via Facebook. We find that both in‐ and out‐group cues shape the opinions of identifiers of Brazil's two main parties but that cues have no effect on nonpartisans. Results suggest that party identification can structure attitudes and behavior even in “party‐averse” electoral environments.     

Moderation and Competence: How a Party's Ideological Position Shapes Its Valence Reputation

We combine several strands of research from electoral behavior and party politics to suggest that ideological moderation will boost a party's perceived competence. Less radical parties are seen as readier to compromise, more realistic about what can be achieved, and less prone to simplistic solutions. The results of conjoint experiments with party profiles show that while an ideological leaning carries no cost, any appreciably left- or right-wing position eroded a party's perceived competence among a representative sample of around 2,000 British citizens. This effect holds when controlling for respondents’ ideological proximity to the party in question, and it looks to operate through all three of the proposed mechanisms suggested above—especially willingness to compromise. These findings have important implications both for party strategy and for voting research, highlighting a key channel through which ideological moderation yields electoral gains.     

What parties want from their leaders: How office achievement trumps electoral performance as a driver of party leader survival

Rational choice theories of political behaviour start from the premise that parties seek policy, office, and votes. In accordance with this premise, previous research has shown that electoral performance and office achievement independently affect party leader survival. However, we know little about how goal attainment interacts across these two domains. This paper proposes a novel hypothesis stating that intrinsic goals (office) dominate over purely instrumental ones (votes). As a result, the impact of electoral performance on party leader survival should be conditional on office achievement. Using data on over 500 party leaders in 14 parliamentary democracies between 1965 and 2012, we show that electoral performance and office achievement strongly affect leadership turnover. However, we also demonstrate that the electoral performance effect disappears when parties enter or exit office at the same time. These results constitute the best direct evidence to date that parties prioritise office achievement over electoral success.     

The Achilles Heel of Plurality Systems: Geography and Representation in Multiparty Democracies

Building on the unfinished research program of Gudgin and Taylor (1979), we analytically derive the linkage between a party's territorial distribution of support and the basic features of its vote‐seat curve. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the corresponding empirical model with an analysis of elections in postwar Great Britain, focusing in particular on the transformation of the Liberals from a territorially concentrated to a dispersed party in the 1970s. We show that majoritarian biases increase with the number of parties, and majoritarian systems harm small parties when their vote is more dispersed than average, and large parties when their vote is more concentrated than average. Moreover, the evolving experiences of Labour and Conservatives demonstrate how a party's territorial support, and hence its expected seat premium or penalty, changes with its electoral fortunes. This model has a wide variety of applications in multiparty majoritarian democracies around the world.     

Female leaders and citizens' perceptions of political parties

ABSTRACT

Do female leaders affect voters' perceptions of political parties' placement on the left-right spectrum? Using public opinion data on 269 parties in 35 countries between 1976 and 2016, I show that female-led parties are perceived as more moderate than male-led organizations, even when accounting for voters' prior beliefs about the party and the organization's stated policy positions. I then demonstrate that these results cannot be explained by the policy platforms authored by male- and female-led parties. The electoral manifestos produced by female-headed organizations are neither more left- leaning nor more moderate than those authored under male leaders. Together, these results provide important insights concerning citizens' (mis)perceptions of parties' ideological positions, party leaders' effects on voters behavior, the importance of gender stereotypes in politics, and the policy consequences of women's increased access to power.     

The end of a strategic opening? The BNP's window of opportunity in the 2000s and its closure in the 2010s

ABSTRACT

Notwithstanding the endemic failure of extreme-right parties in Britain, the British National Party (BNP) observed a period of electoral growth in the 2000s. After the election of several city councillors nationwide, the BNP experienced an electoral breakthrough in the national ballot of the 2009 European Parliament elections. Yet the BNP's electoral accomplishments dissipated in the early 2010s, fuelling predictions of the party's terminal decline. Within this context, Carvalho seeks to explain the fluctuations observed in the BNP's electoral base in the twentieth-first century by exploring the structure of political opportunities alongside the strategy of the BNP's leadership. Drawing on the convergence thesis and the decline of voting along class lines, he argues that the BNP benefitted from a favourable set of political opportunities in the 2000s, reflecting the decrease in political polarization among mainstream parties, the rise in levels of public distrust, and the intense politicization of the issue of immigration. Despite a general shift to cultural xenophobia, the BNP's leadership remained attached to the ideological traits of neo-fascist parties, including the search for a ‘palingenetic rebirth’ and a national corporatist economic programme. These ideological formulae had important implications for the scope of the BNP's electoral coalition, as Carvalho demonstrates in a review of the secondary literature on the roots of the BNP's electoral support. Consequently, the BNP's electoral growth in the 2000s was the outcome of an interplay between a favourable window of opportunity in British politics and the party's electoral appeal. Carvalho goes on to link the BNP's electoral collapse in the early 2010s with the closing of the aforementioned window after the onset of the financial crisis, a temporary lack of political interest in the issue of immigration, and the formation of the coalition government in 2010.     

Is there a friends-and-neighbors effect for party leaders?

The friends-and-neighbors effect, which refers to voters' tendency to support politicians near hometown areas, has not yet been tested systematically for party leaders. Linking a built-for-purpose dataset on 266 leaders to a sample of 380,208 voters from 50 country elections in 19 parliamentary democracies drawn from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, this article examines the effect of party leaders' local proximity on voters' leader evaluations and voting intentions. I hypothesize that leaders receive more positive evaluations and electoral support from voters in the district where they run for election. The results show that shared district increases voters' sympathy for leaders and their inclination to vote for the party of ‘near’ leaders. While the location of party leaders affects voters in all electoral systems, I find that the friends-and-neighbors effect on leader evaluations and party vote choice is stronger in systems with personalized, preferential and combined ballots.     

Portfolio Allocation as Leadership Strategy: Intraparty Bargaining in Japan

How do the dynamics of portfolio allocation work within parties? While much of the existing literature focuses on portfolio allocation among parties in coalition governments, bargaining over cabinet portfolios also takes place within parties because many parties have internal divisions or factions that influence these decisions. By analyzing data on portfolio allocation in the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan from 1960 through 2007, this study demonstrates that, contrary to the proportionality proposition (Gamson's Law), substantial variance exists in allocation outcomes over time because party leaders allocate cabinet portfolios among factions as a means of preventing defections and challenges from their party's members. The resulting portfolio allocation reflects the bargaining dynamics within the party: I find that party leaders surrender more portfolios as they become more vulnerable to challenges posed by internal rivals.     

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.     

Do Anti‐immigration Parties Matter? The Case of the Sweden Democrats and Local Refugee Policy

With the increased electoral success of anti‐immigration parties, questions regarding what impact the parties actually have naturally follow. Previous research has rarely explored this question. Furthermore, within this body of research, one is given different answers. While some argue that anti‐immigration parties have made an impact on public policy, others find no such evidence. This article shows that some of this inconsistency is a consequence of the methodological strategies that have been employed. Previous studies are either single case studies or comparisons of a small number of countries. Consequently, different parties in different institutional settings are compared, making it difficult to estimate the actual impact of the party of interest. In order to circumvent such methodological problems, this article explores the question of anti‐immigration party impact on a local level and asks if the Sweden Democrats (SD) have managed to influence decisions on refugee reception in Swedish municipalities. The analysis shows mixed results. First, while unable to find an independent effect of the size of the representation of the SD, it appears that the party's impact is conditioned by them holding the balance of power. Second, the SD's impact is not dependent upon whether there is right‐wing or left‐wing rule, although local migration policy is stricter when the main right‐wing party has strong support.     

The impact of cuing candidate quality on female candidates

How can parties improve the electoral prospects of traditionally under-represented women? We argue that if a party signals that a single female candidate is of high quality, other women appearing on the ballot with her will receive a boost in support. More specifically, if a female candidate heads a party's list in the district, other women from her party will be rewarded with more votes. We test our reasoning by examining the nomination and election of women in three Free-List Proportional Representation systems where voters can cast multiple preference votes for individual candidates. We find robust support for the finding that when voters receive a signal that women can be quality candidates, they tend to reward additional women with preference votes regardless of their rank on the ballot.     

Why Party Leaders are More Extreme than Their Members: Modeling Sequential Elimination Elections in the U.S. House of Representatives

Grofman et al. (forthcoming) find thatparty leaders in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives tend to be more extremethan the median member of their party, andthat they tend to come from the party'sideological ``heartland'' between the medianand the mode. This paper shows that if thedistribution of preferences is skewed (asis the case with both parties in theHouse), then we should expect sequentialelimination elections to choose on averageleaders between the median and modalpositions. We show that this is the casewhether or not the party is factionalized.     

Interpreting UKIP's ‘Earthquake’ in British Politics: UK Television News Coverage of the 2009 and 2014 EU Election Campaigns

UK broadcasters came under fire for the amount of airtime UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage received after the party won the most votes in the 2014 EU election. Our content analysis of television news during the 2009 and 2014 campaigns found little bias in terms of soundbites, but in the more recent election Farage visually appeared in coverage to a greater degree than other party leaders. Moreover, two core UKIP policies—being in or out of Europe and immigration—dominated coverage in 2014. We suggest the ‘UKIP factor’ and the media's fascination with Nigel Farage help explain why the 2014 campaign was more visible on television news than was the case in 2009 and was largely reported through a Westminster prism. Although television news bulletins attempt to impartially report elections, the 2014 campaign agenda was largely contested on UKIP's ideological terrain and the party's electoral fortunes.     

Appealing broadly while appearing unified: Resolving an electoral dilemma

Political parties have an electoral incentive to appear ideologically unified, but also to appeal broadly to different groups of voters with diverse preferences. This paper suggests that parties respond to both incentives through the distribution of candidate issue positions. Members of Parliament (MPs) are responsible for their party's national reputation and thus rarely take positions that diverge from those of their party. Non-incumbent candidates, on the other hand, are mostly visible within their electoral district and thus more likely to diverge from party positions that are unpopular among their constituents. These possibilities are tested with candidate position taking data from nine voting advice applications in Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Switzerland. The results are consistent with the theoretical expectations and have important implications for the way representation works in parliamentary democracies as well as for the broader literature on the topic.     

Small parties: From party pledges to government policy

When estimating a party's capacity for goal co-ordination, scholars need not only consider contextual constraints but also the party's properties, since these directly affect its strategic choices. For small parties which are crucial in virtually all multi-party systems the co-ordination of votes, office and policy is much more difficult than for numerically strong actors. Since the conceptual tools to assess the weight of small coalition partners – weight defined as the capacity to defend and realise core policy commitments – and to systematise intra-coalitional processes in general are absent, this article proposes a typology to account for small parties' weight. This typology is defined by the two criteria of ‘qualified pivotality’ and ‘centrality’, each of which is assumed to create a particular set of strategic advantages. Based on the latter, the approach allows small parties' impact to be compared, first, with reference to their positions within the respective parliamentary party system, and, second, with reference to the type of coalition that is likely to be formed. Based on the separate but parallel assessment of ‘formation weight’ and ‘coalition weight’, the typology reveals under which conditions the same properties of a small party may be advantageous during the coalition formation process, but disadvantageous during the subsequent period of coalition government.