Comparative Manifesto Project Research Articles

Political Mobilisation, Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion: The Conditional Effect of Political Parties

Recent research on the consequences of ethnic diversity for social cohesion indicates that the effects of diversity are not necessarily universal. In this article we hypothesise that the rhetoric of political parties conditions whether diversity negatively affects generalised trust. Political campaigns might highlight the salience of cultural diversity issues in their discourse or, moreover, use a divisive rhetoric of ‘nationalistic’ positions. Thus political mobilisation might heighten the perceived conflict between those who are native born and immigrants, especially in diverse societies. In order to test this argument, we investigate the influence of political rhetoric framed on cultural diversity issues, that is, nationalism and multiculturalism — obtained from the Comparative Manifestos Project– on generalised trust in 21 European democracies. We find that the negative impact of ethnic diversity on trust is particularly strong when these issues are mobilised by political parties. It does not, however, matter whether these issues are presented in a positive or negative light.

Going green: Explaining issue competition on the environment

AbstractThis 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 theComparativeManifestosProject for 19WestEuropean 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.

Towards a real comparison of left-right indices

In a recent article in Party Politics, Detlef Jahn proposed an alternative way of generating left–right scores using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP). Despite presenting innovative ideas, the article requires comment and correction. First, Jahn’s claim of a deductive approach is not convincing. He proceeds at least partly inductively. Furthermore, he ignores the theoretical ground of the competing approaches. Second, and more importantly, the central criterion by which to evaluate different approaches should be construct validity; however, Jahn does not conduct a full test of the construct validity. In this comment, I first explain the theoretical base of different approaches in generating left–right position scores using CMP. Second, I conduct a test of construct validity using not only expert data but also survey data. The results clearly suggest that approaches using a context-specific scheme for determining left–right issues are superior to the existing alternatives. This comment should be of interest to all scholars concerned with the question of how to create valid party position indicators.

An empirical test of presidentialism's effect on party competition

This article argues that party competition in legislative elections is partly a function of presidential elections. Previous research on spatial competition has assumed that parties are competing in parliamentary regimes, where the only election of concern for parties and voters is the legislative election. However, in presidential regimes, presidential elections lead to relatively centrist positioning of candidates, and coattail effects from the presidential elections help shape the legislative elections. Using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, I show that the major parties of the left and right in legislative elections are ideologically closer to each other in presidential regimes than major parties in parliamentary regimes.

The Legislative Dynamics of Political Decentralization in Parliamentary Democracies

We investigate how particular configurations of national parliaments affect the dynamics of political decentralization in parliamentary democracies. Recent research has emphasized the impact of structural determinants on levels of decentralization across countries. However, we argue that decentralization processes are endogenous to legislative bargaining by political parties. Our main hypothesis is that, ceteris paribus, the greater the legislative bargaining power of parties with decentralization demands, the more likely decentralization reforms are to occur. For that purpose, we calculate an index of the parliamentary salience of decentralization that reflects the distribution of parties’ preferences for decentralization weighted by their bargaining power. We test our hypotheses with dynamic models for 19 parliamentary democracies using Comparative Manifesto Project data and the Regional Authority Index. We demonstrate that the dynamics of decentralization are crucially shaped by the configuration of national legislatures, although this only seems to affect the self-rule dimension of decentralization rather than shared rule.

Analyzing party competition through the comparative manifesto data: some theoretical and methodological considerations

This paper deals with some of the theoretical and methodological concerns arising from an in-depth analysis of one of the most successful research groups in comparative politics: the Comparative Manifesto Project. The first part of the paper discusses its theoretical background: the dimensionality of the political space, the operationalisation of the saliency theory and whether through election manifestos it is possible to determine the actual party positions. The second part attempts to contribute to the methodological debate by focusing on generally neglected weaknesses of the CMP’s method with regard to both the classification scheme and the coding procedure. In particular, it shows that it is probably impossible to correct the major problems here identified without destroying their comparability across time and space, since they are so deeply rooted in the CMP’s approach.

Who Owns Education? Cleavage Structures in the Partisan Competition over Educational Expansion

The literature on the partisan foundations of education policies leads to ambiguous expectations with regard to the predominant cleavage structures in party competition on this topic. There is disagreement as to whether leftist or rightist parties are responsible for increasing spending on education, while others claim that educational expansion has become a consensual topic. This paper analyses the cleavage structure of party competition over the topic of educational expansion, relying on data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. It identifies political parties as ‘issue-owners’ and ‘issue-ignorers’, respectively, and finds considerable variation with regard to cleavage structures of party competition between countries and across time. One tentative conclusion from the analysis is that policy legacies play an important role in shaping cleavage structures.

What to Do (and Not to Do) with the Comparative Manifestos Project Data

The Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) data are the most popular source for parties' positions on the left–right and other ideological and policy dimensions. Over the past few years, several researchers have identified various methodological problems in the CMP data, but third-party users rarely acknowledge them. This article classifies the problems associated with the CMP into four areas: (1) theoretical underpinnings of the coding scheme; (2) document selection; (3) coding reliability; and (4) scaling. The article reviews each area systematically and concludes with a set of recommendations regarding the use of the CMP data.

How parties compete for votes: A test of saliency theory

AbstractSaliency theory is among the most influential accounts of party competition, not least in providing the theoretical framework for theComparativeManifestoProject – one of the most widely used data collections in comparative politics. Despite its prominence, not all empirical implications of the saliency theory of party competition have yet been systematically tested. This article addresses five predictions of saliency theory, the central claim of which is that parties compete by selective issue emphasis rather than by direct confrontation. Since a fair test of the theory's assumptions needs to rely on data that measures party issue saliency and party positions independently, this article draws on new manifesto data from theAustrianNationalElectionStudy (AUTNES). Analysing all manifestos issued for the 2002, 2006 and 2008 general elections, it shows that saliency theory correctly identifies some features of party competition. For instance, parties disproportionally emphasise issues they ‘own’. Yet, the core assumption of saliency theory that parties compete via selective issue emphasis rather than direct confrontation over the same issues fails to materialise in the majority of cases.

Understanding Parties’ Policy Shifts in Western Europe: The Role of Valence, 1976–2003

Do parties’ valence characteristics affect their policy strategies? The verdict of the spatial modeling literature on the positioning effects of valence is mixed on this point. Some spatial studies argue that valence-advantaged parties/candidates should moderate their policies, while others argue that they should radicalize their policies. Empirical cross-national work on this issue has been lacking. Using an original measure of valence and party positioning data compiled by the Comparative Manifesto Project, the period 1976–2003 is analyzed in this article for nine West European countries. The findings suggest that as parties’ character-based valence attributes worsen they tend tomoderatetheir Left–Right positions, and there is a notable time lag in parties’ responses to changes in their character-based valence attributes.

Measuring parties’ ethnic appeals in democracies

Unlike existing approaches to the study of ethnic politics, this article argues that the political competition for ethnic votes in modern democracies is programmatic (i.e. distinguishable by its focus on issues and policies), much like the competition for voting blocs defined as based on class or gender. Analysing ethnic appeals in this manner makes them suitable for the type of quantification and comparative analyses now standard in the estimations of policy positions on a range of other issues. Once the policy concerns of ethnic communities are known, scaling and scoring them becomes possible, paving the way for quantification and rigorous comparative work. Drawing on content analysis of speeches and manifestos delivered in democracies over the past decades, the article identifies a list of political positions reflective of appeals made to ethnic communities. Further, it derives and validates two indices of ethnic campaigning using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. The measures are shown to be more robust and sensitive to nuance than existing classifications and can be readily applied to testing various hypotheses regarding the political competition for ethnic votes in democracies.

The niche party concept and its measurement.

The concept of the niche party has become increasingly popular in analyses of party competition. Yet, existing approaches vary in their definitions and their measurement approaches. We propose using a minimal definition that allows us to compare political parties in terms of their ‘nicheness’. We argue that the conceptual core of the niche party concept is based on issue emphasis and that a niche party emphasizes policy areas neglected by its rivals. Based on this definition, we propose a continuous measure that allows for more fine-grained measurement of a party’s ‘nicheness’ than the dominant, dichotomous approaches and thereby limits the risk of measurement error. Drawing on data collected by the Comparative Manifesto Project, we show that (1) our measure has high face validity and (2) exposes differences among parties that are not captured by alternative, static or dichotomous measures.

LA EVOLUCIÓN PROGRAMÁTICA DE LOS PARTIDOS CHILENOS 1970-2009: DE LA POLARIZACIÓN AL CONSENSO

Este trabajo estima la posicion de los candidatos en el eje izquierda-derecha para las seis elecciones presidenciales realizadas entre 1970 y 2009, usando para el efecto la metodologia del Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP). Esto con el objeto de testear distintas hipotesis producidas en la literatura sobre la evolucion ideologica de los partidos chilenos, y medir la distancia ideologica entre los distintos partidos y coaliciones. Los resultados confirman, en general, que hacia 1970 la distancia ideologica entre la izquierda y el centro, por un lado, y la derecha por el otro, era muy pronunciada. Asimismo, confirma que desde 1989 la distancia ideologica entre las coaliciones principales (la Concertacion y la Alianza) es comparativamente mas moderada, ademas de estable, aun cuando se observa un mayor acercamiento en la decada de 2000. Por su parte, la Izquierda Extraparlamentaria tiene hoy posiciones programaticas mas moderadas que las de Allende en 1970.

A Dynamic State-Space Model of Coded Political Texts

This article presents a new method of reconstructing actors' political positions from coded political texts. It is based on a model that combines a dynamic perspective on actors' political positions with a probabilistic account of how these positions are translated into emphases of policy topics in political texts. In the article it is shown how model parameters can be estimated based on a maximum marginal likelihood principle and how political actors' positions can be reconstructed using empirical Bayes techniques. For this purpose, a Monte Carlo Expectation Maximization algorithm is used that employs independent sample techniques with automatic Monte Carlo sample size adjustment. An example application is given by estimating a model of an economic policy space and a noneconomic policy space based on the data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Parties' positions in policy spaces reconstructed using these models are made publicly available for download.

The Dynamics of Pre-electoral Issues and Policy Space Transformation in Slovakia: Can Two Years Change Anything?

This paper maps and compares the main topics articulated by political parties in their manifestos published for the Slovak parliamentary elections in 2010 and 2012. First, the paper discusses the conceptual grounds of policy space dynamics. Next, it outlines the method used for the research, based upon quantitative content analysis of the parties’ manifestos of the Comparative Manifestos Project Group. Relevance of individual issues is measured by their representation in manifestos. The paper also examines the change in parties’ priorities for the 2012 election compared to the election of 2010. With the help of an additional methodology tool, the parties under review are then put along a left-right spectrum. Using this technique, the policy space during the period of both elections is examined. Simultaneously, party shifts along the left-right spectrum that emerged from the obtained data are presented. The final section of the article exposes the descriptive results to the theoretical assumptions about policy space dynamics presented in the beginning.

Measuring party positions in Europe

This article reports on the 2010 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES) and introduces the CHES trend file, which contains measures of national party positioning on European integration, ideology and several European Union (EU) and non-EU policies for 1999−2010. We examine the reliability of expert judgments and cross-validate the 2010 CHES data with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and the 2009 European Elections Studies survey, and explore basic trends on party positioning since 1999. The dataset is available at the CHES website.

Class voting and Left–Right party positions: A comparative study of 15 Western democracies, 1960–2005

Studies that explain the class voting have often focused on “bottom-up” social factors, but paid little attention to ‘top-down’ political factors. We argue that party positions on left–right ideology have an effect on the strength of class voting. This argument is tested by estimating the impact of the Left–Right party positions on the class-vote association through a Two-Step Hierarchical analysis of integrated data from 15 countries in Western-Europe, the United States and Australia (1960–2005) supplemented with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Although there is a general trend for class voting to decline over time, partially accounted for by the impact of education, we find that most variation in class voting does not take the form of a linear decline. The ideological positions of left-wing parties alone do not have any effect, but the polarization of parties along the left–right dimension is associated with substantially higher levels of class voting.

Change and Continuity in the Ideology of Australian Prime Ministers: The Governor-General's Speeches, 1946–2010

In Australian politics, narratives have developed around the ideological lineage of prime ministers from the same party so that, for example, Howard is often compared to Menzies and Hawke to Whitlam. In this article we examine the extent to which the ideology (left–right) of prime ministers from the same party has changed over time. We analyse the contents of speeches the Governor-General delivered at the opening of parliament between 1946 and 2010. We validate a number of narratives around the ideological lineage of prime ministers in relation to their party predecessors, and invalidate others, by analysing the speeches using the Comparative Manifestos Project coding scheme. This article also argues that parties do matter and shows how the addition of coding for ideology can complement the Policy Agendas Project method.

Explaining the Breakdown of the Religion–Vote Relationship in The Netherlands, 1971–2006

This article examines the extent to which changes in the effect of religion on voting in The Netherlands since the 1970s can be explained by ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches. The first includes religious integration and education. The latter category encompasses the restructuring of the party system and changes in party positions. Hypotheses are tested employing logistic and conditional logistic regression analyses of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies (1971–2006) supplemented by data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Weakening religious integration largely explains the decline of political boundaries between non-religious voters and Catholics and Calvinists. In line with earlier research, the article finds that the creation of a single Christian Democratic Party (CDA) has reduced the religion–vote relationship. However, this merger effect largely disappears after taking into account party positions. Moreover, party positions influence the religion–vote association: the effect of religion on voting increases as religious parties emphasise traditional moral issues in their manifestos.

Measuring “Correct Voting” Using Comparative Manifestos Project Data

The extent to which citizens vote in accordance with their own principles and priorities has been proposed as an important measure of a democracy's health. This article introduces a new method of evaluating the ability of individuals to vote for the political party with policy positions closest to their own – to vote “correctly”. Following Lau and Redlawsk (1997), a “correct vote” is defined as the vote choice individuals would make under conditions of perfect information. In other words, a vote is “correct” if it is cast for the party that a voter should vote for, based upon a fully informed comparison of his or her policy positions with those of the parties contesting an election. Voters' policy preferences are estimated here using election study data, and the positions of parties are derived through data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. For illustrative purposes, this new method is applied to the 2004 Canadian federal election. Correct voting rates are calculated by comparing voter and party positions in seven dimensions of political competition, accounting for the relative importance of each dimension. While this study's data are exclusively Canadian, the approach introduced is applicable to other settings.