Catch-all Parties Research Articles

How catchall parties compete ideologically: Beyond party typologies

AbstractThe catchall party remains a useful concept despite the lack of a widely agreed definition or list of parties. This article suggests defining catchall parties based on how they act strategically. Although catchall parties act strategically on both the organisational and ideological dimensions, this article concentrates on three key ideological features: catchall parties are ideologically centrist, dispersed and flexible over time. Relying on original surveys in the Republic of Ireland, which interviewed two‐thirds of parliamentarians, it is confirmed that Ireland's ‘catchall’ and ‘programmatic’ parties clearly differ in terms of how they compete ideologically. Ireland's catchall parties employ all three identified strategies. Smaller, more programmatic parties are consistent over time, non‐centrist and extremely ideologically coherent on core programmatic issues. The competition between catchall parties and ideological populist parties is a pressing issue, and the Irish case provides new theoretical insights and empirical evidence to understand these party types.

Electoral Institutions and Intraparty Cohesion

We study parties' optimal ideological cohesion across electoral rules, when the following trade-off is present: A more heterogenous set of candidates is electorally appealing (catch-all party), yet, it serves policy-related goals less efficiently. When the rule becomes more disproportional, thus inducing a more favorable seat allocation for the winner, the first effect is amplified, incentivizing parties to be less cohesive. We provide empirical support using a unique data-set that records candidates' ideological positions in Finnish municipal elections. Exploiting an exogenous change of electoral rule disproportionality at different population thresholds, we identify the causal effect of electoral rules on parties' cohesion.

Dominant Party Adaptation to the Catch-All Model: a Comparison of Former Dominant Parties in Japan and South Korea

In the process of democratisation, it is expected that a former dominant party, at least one which abides by the rules of electoral contestation, will transition into a “catch-all” party. A catch-all party aims to attract the votes of all social cleavages and classes of voters outside what would be considered their traditional voter base. As part of the wider debate about democratisation in East Asia, this paper examines how two of East Asia’s liberal democracies—Japan and South Korea, the LDP and GNP/Saenuri, respectively, have adapted to electoral defeat and in what ways they have transitioned into catch-all parties in the Kircheimer mould. This paper finds that while intra-party reforms which could fit a catch-all model have yet to be institutionalised, data from the Comparative Manifesto Database shows that there has been a significant change in which policies both parties promote and that these are designed to appeal to a broad base of voters.

The Italian Democratic Party, its nature and its Secretary

The Democratic Party (PD) is the only reasonably organized party in the Italian de-structured party system. It is itself undergoing a process of transformation. It defies all traditional party definitions. It is no longer a class-based mass party and not even a mass party. Nobody within the party believes that such a party can resurrect. It shows many features of a catch-all party, but some of them are by far more prominent than others. It is not simply an electoral-professional party since its aims go beyond just winning the elections and it relies more on internal resources than on outside professionals. At this point, the most appropriate definition is that of a personalist party cum factions. This article tries to explain : (1) how the PD has acquired a dominant position in Italian politics; (2) how its leader has been elected by members and sympathizers of the party; and (3) how much he is trying to transform the PD into a vehicle pursuing his personal ambitions. Much of what Matteo Renzi will achieve or fail to obtain depends on the new electoral law and on the opposition mounted by some actors, especially the Five Stars Movement. The easiest forecast is that in the short-run the Italian party system will remain de-structured providing opportunities, but also volatility risks for the PD and its leader.

A natural governing party: Fianna Fáil in comparative perspective

ABSTRACTIreland’s electoral politics have always revolved around Fianna Fáil. While Whyte [Whyte, J. (1974) Ireland: politics without social bases, in: R. Rose (Ed.) Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook, pp. 619–657 (New York, NY: The Free Press)] contended that ‘Irish party politics [are] sui generis: the context from which they spring is sui generis’, Garvin [Garvin, T. (1982) Theory, culture and Fianna Fáil: a review, in: M. Kelly, L. O'Dowd & J. Wickham (Eds.) Power, Conflict and Inequality, pp. 171–185 (Dublin: Turoe)] argued that ‘Fianna Fáil is a political formation which has … the power to defy the rather frail taxonomic systems of political scientists’. Political scientists may have been using the wrong comparators: rather than considering Fianna Fáil as a catch-all party it is better understood as a ‘natural governing party’. This article situates Fianna Fáil in terms of the theoretical models that account for the essential nature of political parties and the working of the competitive systems they create; and then uses those insights to compare Fianna Fáil with other dominant centre parties in Italy, Japan, India and Canada. It asks if Fianna Fáil is still the party it once was, and, if changed, with what consequences for our understanding of Irish politics.

Strategies of pro-European parties in the face of a Eurosceptic challenge

We ask how pro-European parties communicate in the face of a Eurosceptic challenge and how this affects the politicization of European Union integration within a country. We draw on a quantitative content analysis of parties’ press releases issued in the run-up to the 2014 European Parliament elections in seven countries. Our results show that pro-European parties as such put Europe on the agenda, debate issues similar to those voiced by Eurosceptics and defend their pro-European positions: yet, they do so to varying degrees and with major exceptions. It is pro-European catch-all parties with strong internal dissent that silence Europe and choose blurring or adoption strategies. Consequently, the politicization of European integration varies among countries, thereby high topic visibility is accompanied by low levels of party conflict.

Voter Targeting Online in Comparative Perspectives: Political Party Websites in the 2008/2009 and 2013 Austrian and German Election Campaigns

The web allows political parties to segment and microtarget specific groups of voters. This paper seeks to measure voter targeting online focusing on catch-all parties and client parties’ websites during the 2008 and 2013 Austrian general elections and the 2009 and 2013 German federal elections. Thereby, this comparative longitudinal analysis also aims to provide insights into the development process of political targeting strategies. From a theoretical perspective, catch-all parties try to appeal to a diverse spectrum of potential voters, whereas client parties are aiming at a more specific type of voter. The results of the content analysis show that (a) information and services on parties’ websites increasingly focus on addressing the general public and (b) differences between catch-all and client parties have been reduced between campaigns.

Memberless parties

It is widely assumed that political parties need to have members in order to fulfil their functions in a representative democracy (drawing up platforms, candidate nomination and electoral mobilization) and in terms of their legitimacy. However, the theoretical literature on party models – the evolution from the mass party to the catch-all party, the electoral-professional party and/or the cartel party – suggests an increasing marginalization of members within the party organization. In the business-firm party model, members no longer have any role whatsoever. The next phase in this development seems to be a party without members. This article analyses the contextual (societal, communicational and institutional) factors favouring the rise and endurance of the memberless party as well as the strategic conditions for doing without formal membership (such as maximizing the centralization of internal decision-making, promoting party unity and enhancing electoral effectiveness). The functioning of two no-member parties – the Freedom Party in the Netherlands and the Lega dei Ticinesi in Switzerland – will be discussed in the empirical part of this article.

The Failure of the Democratic Party of Japan: The Negative Effects of the Predominant Party System

After a predominant party goes into opposition, what restrictions and problems does a new governing party face? From this perspective, this article examines the budget compilation and the tax system revisions under the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government. Predominant party system gives the political process five characteristics: (a) a predominant party becomes flexible; (b) a predominant party becomes a catch-all party; (c) a predominant party delegitimizes opposition parties; (d) opposition parties lack realism and (e) bureaucrats are politicized. These five characteristics made the DPJ’s handling of the government very difficult after the change of government.

Small Parties and the 2013 Bundestag Election: End of the Upward Trend?

In the 2009 German federal election, the small parties together captured 43.2 percent of the vote; three small parties boasted a result in the double digits. Four years later, none of the small parties finished above 8.6 percent and only two reentered the Bundestag. Notably, the FDP, one of the original West German parties, dropped out of the federal parliament for the first time. Yet, any talk of catch-all party revival and party system concentration needs qualification. As a group, the small parties received nearly a third of all votes cast—the second highest share in six decades. Those that did not make it into the Bundestag won 15.7 percent, a higher share than in any other federal election. This article examines the positioning of the leading small parties in the 2013 Bundestag election campaign and their respective electoral results; highlights party systemic as well as internal party factors to explain small party performance; reassesses the commonplace classification of small parties by whether there is an established legislative presence or not; and considers the positioning and performance of small parties in the years to come.

Nationalist Action Party and the Politics of Dissent

All political parties tend to use different types of discourses to legitimize themselves and to mobilize their supporters. These discourses may not properly fit to their ideologies, but as they seek the support of the vast majority of society, they may refer to the policies and values of other ideological camps. In Turkey, the MHP is the most influential actor of extreme right politics. Its ideology depends on nationalism and Turkishness and the party mobilizes a considerable population by appealing to nationalist feelings. On the other hand, the MHP tries to transform itself into a vote-seeking catch-all party and aims to broaden its social base. For this reason, MHP’s political strategy combines nationalist and conservative values with rather moderate ones and even ‘leftist’ ones. Our study which focuses on the political discourse that the MHP has adopted in the last four general elections demonstrates that elements that can be considered as “leftist” are also a part of the MHP discourse. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n8p552

Beyond Essentialist and Functionalist Analyses of the "Politicisation of Religion": The Evolution of Religious Parties in Political Catholicism and Political Islam

The debate about “politics and religion” has already rejected essentialist claims of fundamental differences in the impact of religion on politics in different cultures. This article will argue that political Islam in Turkey and political Catholicism in Italy and Germany adopted remarkably similar patterns of cross-class coalitions and policies for a “reconciliation of capitalism and democracy”. First, religious parties developed as mass integration parties which already encompassed cross-class coalitions. Second, in the aftermath of political and economic crises these parties transformed into catch-all parties with a pronounced neo-liberal agenda which was given a religious justification. Third, at the same time these parties continued to sponsor policies and organizations which cushioned and supplemented an uneven economic development. Fourth, the parties kept traditional family policies which helped attracting a significant female electorate. “Organized religion” provided religious parties with a potential electorate, ancillary organizations and ideological concepts; however, their role in this political evolution changed. The conclusion will discuss whether these findings can be generalized.

Chancellor Hegemony: Party Politics and the Bundestag Party System after the 2013 Federal Election

The eighteenth Bundestag elections of 22 September 2013 brought important changes to the Bundestag party system, some of which are contingent but others of which are more systemic and profound. The narrow failure of the FDP to scale the electoral threshold has had an impact on coalition negotiations and the improvement in the overall vote share for the CDU/CSU and the SPD, for the first time since the 1960s represents a significant, if probably only temporary, concentration of the German party system in the Bundestag. More systemically, the election saw a continuation of the ongoing redistribution of voting power in the Bundestag in favor of the catch-all parties as formateurs. The article also discusses how the increased importance of the potential formateuer parties has gone hand-in-hand with a greater focus on the individual leading candidates, and concludes that this is particularly good news for the CDU/CSU, given the political qualities of Angela Merkel and the failure of the SPD to find and support a leading candidate that can match her political acumen.

The Genetic Origin of the CDU and its Developmental Path to a Catch-All Party

This article identifies the impact of the ‘genetic’ origin of the CDU on its transformation into a catch-all party and tests the hypothesis of a convergence of paths towards the catch-all party. Was there a path specific for the Christian Democratic Party strand in Western Europe, which has been so far neglected by party theory? By applying a periodisation, the initial status of the CDU after its foundation, the development of this initial path and its impact on the transformation to the catch-all party model are outlined in the article. The results challenge the convergence hypothesis showing that the historical path of one party family may bring about a specific pattern of party change. The evolutionary path of the CDU with its strong continuities from the Centre Party started out differently to the ideal-type path. The long-term impact of this path produced a specific variety of party that was less centralised, less professionalised and less democratically rooted than the model implies. Thus party theory needs more explicitly to separate the path of the Christian Democrats from the ideal-type evolutionary path or paths of any other party family.

Is the CSU Still a Volkspartei?

One of the peculiarities of the territorial dimension of Christian Democracy in Germany is the fact that it is represented by not one, but two parties: the CDU and the Bavarian CSU. This article focuses on the CSU and discusses the pressures for transformation that it has been subjected to, by focusing on the question of whether it can still be considered as a Volkspartei. The article disaggregates this term around the notions of a majority party (Smith), office-holding party (Fröhlich), membership party (Wiesendahl), cross-class party (Nipperdey) and Kirchheimer's catch-all party. The paper concludes that the CSU remains a Volkspartei, albeit with some qualifications.

(De)personalization of campaign communication: Individualization and hierarchization in party press releases and media coverage in the 2008 Austrian parliamentary election campaign

To restructure and systematize the concept of personalization, in this study we introduce a two-dimensional and relational typology of (de)personalization of political representation, comprising a horizontal (individualization) as well as a vertical dimension (hierarchization), and put it to an empirical test. We concertedly utilize content analyses of political newspaper and television coverage as well as of party press releases during the 2008 Austrian election campaign. With regard to the Austrian case, the findings outline that personalization of political representation is not a universal phenomenon; it rather appears as a context- and logic-sensitive communicational phenomenon. Political public relations shows significantly higher levels of horizontal as well as vertical diversification than the media by being more individualized and less monopolized by leaders and executive elites. Additionally, political representation in the tabloid press is more personalized than in quality papers, and the communication of catch-all parties is more individualized than of niche parties.

Is party type relevant to an explanation of policy congruence? Catchall versus ideological parties in the Portuguese case

Most research on policy congruence has failed to provide an explanation for it. Party characteristics are acknowledged to be relevant, but the literature has not achieved a consensus as to their effective importance. Nor has there thus far been an analysis of the implications for results of using different methods to assess congruence. The present article seeks to test the importance of party type (catchall versus ideological) for an explanation of levels of intra-party congruence, with a control using the main congruence-assessment methods. The article focuses on the Portuguese party system and makes use of a set of 19 policy issues across two dimensions: socioeconomic left–right and libertarian–authoritarian (plus left–right self-placement), which introduces additional controls of the assessment of party-type relevance. As far as we know, such an in-depth analysis of party-type congruence has not been done before. Findings support the notion that Portuguese catchall parties tend to display higher levels of MP–voter congruence than ideological parties, but the type of policy issue is also relevant: levels of congruence diverge across parties depending on the issue at stake. These results were supported by the different methods used.

Conceptualising the Clientelistic Party: The Case Study of the Czech Republic

It is clear from political science literature that political parties are not static entities. Similar to other political institutions, they tend to transform with time, in response to changes in their surrounding environment. If the economic, social, cultural and political parameters in society are to substantially change, it is possible to deduce a change in the role of a political party and its organisational structure. The transition from totalitarian to democratic societies in Central, and partially in Eastern Europe, presents a process so unique that one may legitimately question if this has not resulted in a serious modification of the catch-all party type. In the region of Central Europe, Czechoslovakia – and after 1993 the Czech Republic – presents a special case, where during political and economic transformation next to general features, specific factors were also enforced, which eventually influenced the set-up and formation of parties in their early stages. It is left to consideration and further scrutiny to decide whether the unrepeatable environment of the Czech-Moravian melting pot, has not cultivated the clientelistic form of political party.

PKS in Post-Reformasi Indonesia

This article focuses on the moderation strategy of the Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS) and its impact on the Indonesian party system. It makes the argument that PKS's moderation strategy is electorally challenging for both PKS and the Indonesian party system. PKS's moderation strategy has forced it into a difficult competition with established major parties for median voters. PKS's relative success is a product more of the poor performance of the existing Islamic parties than its moderation strategy. With PKS joining the catch-all party bandwagon, the Indonesian party system is now being shaped by dominant catch-all parties, and in the long run such a development will undermine the legitimacy of parties and will become detrimental to the process of democratic consolidation.

Japan's Foreign Policy beyond Short-term Politics

In August 2009, the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), which had been in power since 1955, lost the general elections to a recently-formed party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The LDP's foreign policy had placed emphasis on relations with the US, and on international cooperation and relations with Asia. The LDP's foreign and defense policy lacked a long term vision; it was incremental, pragmatic and could be described as reactive or passive. An examination of the DPJ's foreign policy, three years after its coming to power, reveals that it has accepted part of the LDP's inheritance. The Japan-US Alliance was reasserted as pivotal to Japan's security. Cooperation with Asia has not given birth to a new regional structure or to new institutional mechanisms, and dialogue with China has not improved; incrementalism is still preferred in the field of defense. Nonetheless, the fact that Japan's opposition is now a catch-all party at the center of the political scene changes the framework of foreign and defense policy-making considerably. Therefore, the likelihood of interpartite cooperation over foreign and security policy is theoretically conceivable. Nonetheless, political and institutional constraints to change in the field remain.