The Specter of Coalitionability

Abstract

In Chapter 3, I used party manifestos to determine the congruency between political parties’ ideological positions and their professed attitudes toward the European project. There is, however, one methodological caveat associated with studying party manifestos as indicators of party behaviour — political parties may not behave in the ways they have declared. Manifestos make statements on important positions the political elite deems necessary to the political party’s identity vis-a-vis their constituents during electoral contestation. How a political party behaves after the elections is a different story. Opportunities for participation in power-sharing coalitions, or the emergence of new rivals, may require change of strategy. This phenomenon is not entirely new. Kriesi (2005) tried and failed to replicate findings based on party manifestos with regard to party strategies when compared to subsequent content analysis of media pronouncements by political leaders in question on the same topic. Statham and Koopmans (2009) also proved the same point in their empirical analysis of media pronouncements of party leaders with regard to the EU. The following chapter demonstrates precisely that discrepancy. By examining the actual behaviour of the party leadership of the self-professed eurosceptic political parties, I demonstrate how positions on Europe change based on factors other than the declared ones in party manifestos.