Facing the European challenge: Finnish parties adjust to the integration process

Membership in the European Union (EU) has introduced a new significant cleavage to the Finnish political system. The membership referendum held in 1994 showed that most parties were internally divided over integration. This article analyses the positions of Finnish parties on European integration. The empirical material consists primarily of party documents issued up to June 1998. Particular attention is paid to party positions on the future development of the EU. The analysis highlights the elite‐led nature of intra‐party opinion formation on integration, and argues that EU issues have the potential of destabilising the Finnish party system.     

High turnout in the Low Countries: Partisan effects of the abolition of compulsory voting in the Netherlands

We use a quasi-experimental framework to test the conventional wisdom that left-of-center parties benefit from higher turnout by analyzing the partisan effects of the abolition of compulsory voting in the Netherlands. Fixed effects, multilevel, and matching models of party family vote shares in the Netherlands before and after the reform–and in reference to a control group of Belgian party families–show consistent evidence the voting reform led to an increase in the vote share of Dutch social democratic parties and a decrease in the vote share won by minor and extreme parties. We find some evidence that Christian democratic and liberal parties also benefited from the voting reform, but argue this finding is not causally related to the reform itself.     

To the Advantage of the Big Parties but They Seem to Lose Interest—TV Advertising During the 2002 German National Election Campaign

Abstract

Since the introduction of commercial broadcasting in Germany during the 1980s, parties are allowed to purchase airtime in addition to the free airtime they receive on public channels. This has led to an increasing disadvantage for the smaller parties. In addition to the fact that a graded system of allocation of airtime is applied for ads on public TV and small parties receive fewer slots than their big competitors, they cannot afford to buy extra airtime. Comparisons of style and content of the party ads further show that the bigger parties produce highly professional ads while the broadcasts of smaller parties are often unprofessional and almost home-style. While the spots allow unknown parties to receive the attention of the audience, their unprofessional offerings might work to their disadvantage. While the ads of the 2002 electoral campaign have confirmed these developments, analyses of the ads of the big parties at the same time hint at a growing disenchantment with the ads as a campaign channel. Even the big parties tend to invest less money in their TV campaign than in former campaigns, which at least partly seems to be due to unfavorable conditions for electoral advertising on TV. This paper presents findings from analyses of the party ads in 2002 which are compared with findings from a long-term analysis which covers the elections since 1957, the first year in which party ads were shown on German TV.     

Do voters learn? Evidence that voters respond accurately to changes in political parties’ policy positions

A premise of the mass–elite linkage at the heart of representative democracy is that voters notice changes in political parties’ policy positions and update their party perceptions accordingly. However, recent studies question the ability of voters accurately to perceive changes in parties’ positions. The study advances this literature with a two-wave panel survey design that measured voters’ perception of party positions before and after a major policy shift by parties in the government coalition in Denmark 2011–2013. Two key findings extend previous work. First, voters do indeed pay attention to parties when they visibly change policy position. Second, voters update their perceptions of the party positions much more accurately than would have been expected if they merely relied on a ‘coalition heuristic’ as a rule-of-thumb. These findings imply that under some conditions voters are better able to make meaningful political choices than previous work suggests.     

Party subsidies and the freezing of party competition: Do cartel mechanisms work?

The number of countries offering public subsidies to political parties has vastly increased in recent decades, but there have been few attempts to assess how these subsidies affect political competition. Expectations about their likely impact vary widely. Some have described subsidies as key devices used by so-called ‘cartel parties’ to buttress their status and exclude new challengers. Others see subsidies as incentives that encourage new party formation and sustain fledgling parties that otherwise might disappear. The research reported here investigates the circumstances under which subsidies seem more likely to play one or the other of these roles by considering the development of party systems and party subsidies in European democracies. It finds little evidence that subsidies freeze out new parties, but there are signs that certain schemes may encourage party fragmentation.     

Indigenous voters and party system fragmentation in Latin America

This article shows that ethnic cleavages have contributed to electoral fragmentation in Latin America, but not in the way that the social cleavages literature would expect. It finds that party system fragmentation in the region is not correlated with ethnic diversity, but rather with the proportion of the population that is indigenous. The failure of the main parties to adequately represent indigenous people, it argues, has led indigenous voters to shift their support to a variety of smaller populist and leftist parties, which has produced high levels of party system fragmentation in indigenous areas. Where a significant indigenous party has emerged, however, indigenous voters have flocked to that party, which has reduced party system fragmentation. Analyses of sub-national electoral data from Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru provide support for these arguments.     

Reconsidering Nordic Party Space1

The erosion of the social and economic bases underlying traditional party systems has led analysts to search for new cleavage structures undergirding the present party systems. Meanwhile, analysts have identified a range of issue dimensions that also bear on voters’ party preferences. This article studies the degree to which grid-group theory's four political biases of hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism can make inroads into the left–right dimension's stronghold in accounting for voters’ party preference. The analysis draws on a 1999 survey in the five Nordic countries (N= 4,832). The method combines voters’ party preferences with their scores on issue dimensions, or political dimensions. Analyses show that conventional party families, with one exception, are not identified along any of the five political orientations. Only the five conservative parties are exclusively identified as a party family on the left–right dimension. Party preference is more closely associated with the left–right dimension than the political biases. Sweden has the purest and simplest party cleavage, whereas Denmark has the most composite one. Across the Nordic countries, the green party family is most dissimilar, whereas the progress siblings are most alike. The left–right dimension accounts well for differences between parties within polities, whereas political biases, and egalitarianism in particular, account well for differences between parties of similar origin across polities.     

Responding to the left: the effect of far-left parties on mainstream party Euroskepticism

Do far-left political parties influence the level of Euroskepticism among mainstream political parties within that same party system? This study seeks to address this question by building on previous work that has examined the effect of both far-left and far-right Euroskeptic parties on mainstream party positions regarding the EU. We theorize that when far-left parties place an emphasis on state control over the economy, mainstream parties in the same party system are less supportive of the EU. To test our theoretical expectations, we use data from the Comparative Manifestos Project in 25 EU member states from 1958 through 2015. The analysis indicates support for the hypothesis that when far-left parties place greater emphasis on a need for state control of the economy, mainstream parties in that party system are more Euroskeptic. Our findings have important implications for understanding the nature of political party dynamics both generally, and more specifically in the European Union.     

A dynamic Duverger’s law

Electoral systems promote strategic voting and affect party systems. Duverger (Les partis politiques, 1951) proposed that plurality rule leads to bi-partyism and proportional representation leads to multi-partyism. We show that in a dynamic setting, these static effects also lead to a higher option value for existing minor parties under plurality rule, so their incentive to exit the party system is mitigated by their future benefits from continued participation. The predictions of our model are consistent with multiple cross-sectional predictions on the comparative number of parties under plurality rule and proportional representation. In particular, there could be more parties under plurality rule than under proportional representation at any point in time. However, our model makes a unique time-series prediction: the number of parties under plurality rule should be less variable than under proportional representation. We provide extensive empirical evidence in support of these results.     

Coalition incentives and party bias in Chile

This article revisits the debate over Chile's binomial electoral rules and its consequences and examines how the new electoral system conceived by a democratic congress altered political competition. It utilizes a seat-vote model of multiparty competition to analyze party bias under the binomial rule. This approach differs substantively from prior studies of the Chilean case that focused primarily on the disproportionality of aggregate results. In contrast to earlier analyses, the findings reveal that the allocation of the seats under the binominal resulted in significant party bias benefiting the main parties of the right. This bias, however, was eliminated after the electoral reform. The new rule continues to provide majoritarian benefits to parties receiving larger shares of votes, but this effect is less pronounced than before. It is now easier for small parties to gain seats, which has increased party fragmentation. However, we show that coalition incentives, which were heralded as one of the main advantages of the binomial rule, are also significant under the new rule in use since 2017.     

How established parties reduce other parties’ electoral support: the strategy of parroting the pariah

In every democracy, established political parties are challenged by other parties. Established parties react in various ways to other parties’ presence. A key hypothesis in the relevant literature is that established parties can decrease another party’s electoral support by parroting it, i.e. adopting its core policy issue position. This article argues, and demonstrates empirically, that this hypothesised effect mainly occurs in the event that a critical prerequisite is in place. Parroting a party decreases its support only if that party is ostracised at the same time. The article classifies a party as ostracised if its largest established competitor systematically rules out all political cooperation with it. Analysing 296 election results of 28 West European parties (1944–2011), evidence is found for a parrot effect – however, concerning ostracised parties only. On several occasions established parties have substantially decreased another party’s support by simultaneously parroting that party and ostracising it.     

New party challenges and partisan change: The effects of party competition on party loyalty

It has long been established that changes in the electorate can have an impact on party systems, sometimes leading to the creation of new parties and the elimination of old ones. We contend, however, that changes in the party system may cause voters to reassess their party identification absent of any long-term change in the overall makeup or attitudes of the electorate. As a case in point, we demonstrate that changes in the Canadian party system in the late 1980s (specifically the advent of the right-wing Reform Party) led to a decline in party loyalty among supporters of the right-center Progressive Conservative Party. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of party systems and partisan change.     

A losing gamble. How mainstream parties facilitate anti-immigrant party success

The emergence of anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe has provoked very different responses from mainstream parties. Some have tried to counter the anti-immigrant parties while others have tried to recapture lost voters by taking a tougher stance on immigration. Country comparative studies have tried to determine the effectiveness of different strategies, but systematic testing has been impaired by small-n problems. This paper therefore exploits sub-national variation in 290 Swedish municipalities to investigate the effect of mainstream party strategy on anti-immigrant electoral success. The paper finds that a tougher stance on immigration on the part of mainstream parties is correlated with more anti-immigrant party support, even when controlling for a large number of socio-economic, historical and regional factors. This result indicates that mainstream parties legitimize anti-immigrant parties by taking a tougher position on immigration. However, the results presented in the paper show that it is not sufficient for one mainstream party to take a tougher position; it is only when the entire political mainstream is tougher on immigration that the anti-immigrant party benefits. What is more, the toughness of the parties on the left seems to be more legitimizing than the toughness of the parties on the right.     

Thinking locally,acting supranationally: Niche party behaviour in the European Parliament

Recent research on the European Parliament (EP) has neglected the idiosyncrasies of niche parties. Similarly, analyses of niche parties have not fully engaged the literature on the EP. This article builds on both literatures by analysing niche party behaviour in the EP as a distinct phenomenon. It is argued that niche parties will respond differently to institutional stimuli than parties more generally. To test this argument, Hix, Noury and Roland's work on EP party voting behaviour is replicated concentrating on niche parties only. It is found that participation in national government and institutional changes affect niche party legislators' voting behaviour, whereas they do not for legislators in the EP overall. These results have important implications for understanding both party behaviour in the EP and niche party behaviour more generally.     

Going green: Explaining issue competition on the environment

This study addresses the dynamics of the issue space in multiparty systems by examining to what extent, and under what conditions, parties respond to the issue ownership of other parties on the green issue. To understand why some issues become part and parcel of the political agenda in multiparty systems, it is crucial not only to examine the strategies of issue entrepreneurs, but also the responses of other parties. It is argued that the extent to which other parties respond to, rather than ignore, the issue mobilisation of green parties depends on two factors: how much of an electoral threat the green party poses to a specific party; and the extent to which the political and economic context makes the green issue a potential vote winner. To analyse the evolution of the green issue, a time‐series cross‐section analysis is conducted using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 19 West European countries from 1980–2010. The findings have important implications for understanding issue evolution in multiparty systems and how and why the dynamics of party competition on the green issue vary across time and space.     

Marginalisation or legitimation? Mainstream party positioning on immigration and support for radical right parties

Abstract

Does mainstream party positioning contribute to marginalising or legitimising niche party positions? This article argues that voter perceptions of the legitimacy and credibility of niche party positions play a role in individuals’ propensity to vote for niche parties. It finds that the adoption of more restrictive immigration positions by mainstream parties increases the likelihood that those people who do not recognise the issue competence of radical right parties on immigration will vote radical right. However, for individuals who already perceive the radical right to be competent on immigration, mainstream party adoption of more restrictive immigration positions has no effect on propensity to vote radical right. In addition, the increase in the propensity of individuals to vote radical right is predominantly a function of mainstream left parties adopting more restrictive immigration positions. These results imply that mainstream parties risk fuelling radical right party support by adopting more restrictive immigration positions.     

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

Survival of the fittest. Comparing entry and exit among niche and mainstream parties in advanced democracies, 1945–2011

The turnover of political parties is a key mechanism of renewal of electoral choices. We present an organizational ecological theory on party system change, predicting that party system saturation (i.e., the effective number of parties compared to the party system's carrying capacity) differently affects the entry and exit of niche and mainstream parties from lower house elections. Pooled times-series analyses on 352 elections, 509 parties, and 21 established democracies demonstrate that party system saturation indeed increases the likelihood of exit of mainstream parties but not of niche parties. Strikingly, we also find that party system saturation increases the entry of mainstream parties. Hence, an important paradox arises since oversaturation negatively affects their survival chances.     

Opinion Polls,Coalition Signals and Strategic Voting: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Recent studies find that defection from one's most preferred party to some other party is as common under proportional representation (PR) as it is in plurality systems. It is less elaborated how election‐specific contextual factors affect strategic vote choice under PR. This study looks at the impact of two potentially important contextual factors: parties’ coalition signals about cooperation with other parties (referred to as ‘pre‐electoral coalitions’) and polling information, which vary from one election to the next. The focus is strategic voting for smaller parties at risk of falling below an electoral threshold. The hypothesis is that parties that are included in well‐defined coalitions will benefit from strategic ‘insurance’ votes if the polls show that they have support slightly below the threshold. However, smaller parties that do not belong to a coalition would be less likely to benefit from insurance votes. Extensive survey experiments with randomized coalition signals and polls give support to the idea that a voter's tendency to cast an insurance vote depends on whether the polls show support below or above the threshold and whether the party is included in a coalition or not.     

Demassified Mass Parties or Overloaded Cadre Parties? The Impact of Parties on Electoral Outcome in Finland*

This article examines the frequently cited hypothesis of the changes in modern party organizations towards the catch-all model, and of the attempt of political parties to counter threats of electoral failure by intensifying membership support. The results indicate that in Finland former mass parties have been demassified and cadre parties have been overloaded. However, there are differences in party alignments and in the internal organizational structure of the parties that make a strict application of the catch-all concept problematic The findings also give evidence of a threat of declining electoral success that has implications for the membership support in the parties in very special situations. The threat from other parties seems to have only little or no effect on the membership figures. But when this threat is combined with a steady erosion in the traditional social bases of the parties, then the party response can be strong for the purpose of widening the electoral market by personal influence, as was the case with the rural Center party in Finland.