Manifesto Project Research Articles

Active and passive: two ways party systems influence electoral outcomes

AbstractParties can not onlyactivelyadjust the electoral rules to reach more favourable outcomes, as is most often recognized in political science, but they alsopassivelycreate an environment that systematically influences electoral competition. This link is theorized and included in the wider framework capturing the mutual dependence of electoral systems and party systems. The impact of passive influence is successfully tested on one out of two factors closely related to party systems: choice set size (i.e., number of options provided to voters) and degree of ideological polarization. The research utilizes established datasets (i.e., Constituency-Level Elections Archive, Party System Polarization Index, Chapel Hill Expert Survey, and Manifesto Project Database) and via regression analysis with clustered robust standard errors concludes that the choice set size constitutes an attribute with passive influence over electoral systems. Thus, it must be reflected when outcomes of electoral systems are estimated or compared across various contexts.

Between Strategic Cooperation and Distrustful Neighbourhood. Polish-German relations in the agendas of Polish governments, 1990–2019

Since 1989 the building of new Polish-German relations has been carried out in the dimensions of both time (historical reconciliation) and space (reintegration eastern and western parts of Europe). This determines their fundamental importance for contemporary Europe. This article presents an analysis of Polish-German relations from the perspective of issue salience. The source base of this paper comprises Addresses by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (AMFAs), i.e. annual speeches given by foreign ministers presenting the major goals of Poland's foreign policy. It makes it possible to adopt a long-term perspective (1990-2018). The quantitative analysis was based on the rules of the Comparative Manifesto Project. Its results allowed the author to determine the position of Germany in Poland's foreign policy; to identify the major periods in mutual relations; to indicate the main concepts of the Polish governments concerning Polish-German relations; and to specify the major problematic issues in mutual relations. The performed analysis shows that relations with Germany play the dominant role in the structure of Polish foreign policy, and particularly European policy. This stands in stark contrast to the ambivalence of the Polish political elites, especially those on the right side of the political spectrum, towards the western neighbour.

Political polarization and environmental attitudes: a cross-national analysis

ABSTRACTThere is evidence that in the United States popular attitudes about environmental problems have been shaped by elite polarization on environmental issues. Yet there has been little systematic analysis of the impact of elite polarization on environmental attitudes in other parts of the world. Here I develop and test a general theory of the role of elite polarization in conditioning popular support for environmental protection. Evidence is drawn from multilevel analysis of World Values Survey data from 92 surveys carried out in 42 countries across the world, together with party polarization data derived from the Manifesto Project Database. The main finding is that elite polarization is associated with the amplification of mass-level left-right divides on environmental issues, consonant with the expectation that elite polarization should lead citizens to sort along ideological or partisan lines, but that this effect only holds in contexts where left-wing views are associated with support for environmental protection.

Who Represents the Poor? The Corrective Potential of Populism in Spain

ABSTRACTScholarly research assumes populism enhances democratic inclusion by giving voice to groups that are not represented by political elites and by obliging them to be more attentive to their preferences. Empirical studies have focused on this dynamic more indirectly looking at the emergence of new conflict dimensions, leaving the representation of marginalised groups underexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap by analysing party competition over poverty responsiveness at the regional level in Spain during the Great Recession. Combining Regional Manifestos Project data with issue sub-categorisation, the article shows that populist parties, which emerged during the economic crisis, represent the poor to a greater degree in their political agenda than establishment parties. At the same time, the latter have reacted to new competitors by being more attentive to the poor in their political discourse. As a result, supply-side adaption to include proposals tackling poverty and social exclusion increased the representation of the poor in regional spaces of political competition.

When do political parties prioritize labour? Issue attention between party competition and interest group power

This article analyses the conditions under which political parties pay attention to labour issues. It compares the dominant partisan perspective, which proposes that attention to issues is shaped by party competition, to an interest group perspective, which proposes that strong interest groups, in particular when their power is institutionalized in corporatist systems, can force parties to pay attention to their issue. We use the Comparative Agenda Project data set of election manifestos to examine these patterns in seven West European countries and corroborate our findings in the Comparative Manifesto Project data set for 25 countries. The evidence supports the interest group perspective over the partisan perspective. This shows that the study of party attention to issues should not isolate party competition from the influence of other political actors.

Topic Coverage of Coalition Agreements in Multi-Level Settings: The Case of Germany

Scholars mostly concentrate on those agreements that are written at the national level when analysing coalition agreements. However, there are also a considerable amount of coalition agreements that are written at sub-national levels. This paper analyses the commonalities and differences in coalition agreements in the German multi-level system at the national, regional and local level. From a legal jurisdiction perspective, one would expect that there are major differences across political levels in the topics covered in the agreements. From a multi-level governance perspective, however, one would additionally expect that government parties also devote their attention to policy domains that lie outside their realm of legislative decision-making. We take Germany as a prime example of a political system characterised by joint decision-making within cooperative federalism. Combining data from the Political Documents Archive (www.polidoc.net) with newly gathered data from the Local Manifesto Project (LMP; www.localpartymanifestos.de), we analyse nearly 200 coalition agreements at the national, regional and local level in Germany by applying quantitative text analysis techniques. The empirical results show that governing parties mostly discuss the policy areas they are legally responsible for. However, particularly local and regional governing parties also address issues that are primarily part of federal jurisdiction.

The impact of EU intervention on political parties’ politicisation of Europe following the financial crisis

This article examines the effect of the financial crisis and economic intervention by the European Union on political parties’ politicisation of the EU within national elections. Data from the Manifesto Project for elections between 2002 and 2017 in 12 Eurozone countries is used to assess how the crisis and intervention altered the saliency, position and clarity of parties’ EU policies. The analysis shows that the crisis only led to an increase in EU saliency in those states not subjected to intervention whilst intervention is actually associated with a decrease in the saliency of the EU. In terms of increasing Euroscepticism, intervention appears to exhibit a greater effect than the crisis although the results display marked asymmetry between different parties on the left and right. The same is observed to be the case for the level of blurring that parties are engaged in to mask their EU positions. The implications of the findings suggest that economic intervention within the EU has negatively impacted democracy in intervened-in member states by reducing the manoeuvrability of parties to provide voters with clear choices on the direction of European integration.

The effect of radical right fringe parties on main parties in Central and Eastern Europe: Empirical evidence from manifesto data

Do radical right fringe parties affect main parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Using data from the Manifesto Project, we analyze the relationship between radical right fringe parties’ and main parties’ policy programs regarding sociocultural issues in six post-communist countries of CEE. Even though radical right fringe parties have participated in government in several of these countries, and in Hungary a fringe party has become the country’s second largest party, our analysis shows that the sociocultural issues in radical right fringe party manifestos do not systematically relate to the changes in main party manifestos regarding those issues. Even if some of the main parties in our study might often agree with the radical right fringe parties, our analysis shows that the latter do not directly influence the policy priorities of the main parties.

Syrian refugee influx and the rise of far-right rhetoric: a quasi-experimental investigation

ABSTRACT The shockwaves of Syrian refugee influx are coupled with the phenomenal rise of the far-right parties in Europe. There are studies explaining the electoral upsurge of far-right parties responding to the immigration crisis, however, there has not been a study investigating how fierce the far-right rhetoric has become. This question situates European politics in a post-Syrian conflict scenario in which a conflict and subsequent immigration from far away has framed the polarization in Europe. Using the Comparative Manifesto Project's dataset, which measures percentages of sentences allocated to issues, we tested whether Syrian refugee influx has casually increased the far-right rhetoric (e.g. ‘negative mention of internationalism’ and ‘negative mention of multiculturalism’). Using propensity score matching of countries based on Consumer Price Index and Industrial Production Index, top refugee-receiving European countries are considered as the treatment group and other countries as the control group. The findings reveal that, the Syrian refugee influx has causally increased the far-right rhetoric in general, regardless of the electoral success. To test whether there is any scientific basis of the far-right rhetoric that refugees increase crime, it is found that there was no significant increase in crime rates among the treatment and the control countries..

Word Embeddings for the Analysis of Ideological Placement in Parliamentary Corpora

Word embeddings, the coefficients from neural network models predicting the use of words in context, have now become inescapable in applications involving natural language processing. Despite a few studies in political science, the potential of this methodology for the analysis of political texts has yet to be fully uncovered. This paper introduces models of word embeddings augmented with political metadata and trained on large-scale parliamentary corpora from Britain, Canada, and the United States. We fit these models with indicator variables of the party affiliation of members of parliament, which we refer to as party embeddings. We illustrate how these embeddings can be used to produce scaling estimates of ideological placement and other quantities of interest for political research. To validate the methodology, we assess our results against indicators from the Comparative Manifestos Project, surveys of experts, and measures based on roll-call votes. Our findings suggest that party embeddings are successful at capturing latent concepts such as ideology, and the approach provides researchers with an integrated framework for studying political language.

Dimensions of political conflict and party positions in multi-level democracies: evidence from the Local Manifesto Project

Partisan conflicts have been frequently analysed in comparative political science research. Yet little is known about the dimensions of political conflict at the local level in multi-level democracies. This article contributes to the literature on the estimation and analysis of party positions by first presenting a new dataset of more than 800 local party manifestos in Germany that allows for a systematic analysis of the dimensions of political conflict at the German local level. Secondly, it is demonstrated that (semi-)automatic content analysis of these texts offers a promising approach for gaining new insights into local party positions. Thirdly, the empirical analysis of German local party manifestos shows that partisan conflicts are not only structured along the left–right dimension but also along a dimension which distinguishes between parties addressing ‘local’ and ‘national’ issues to a varying degree in their manifestos, due to the different behaviour of established and populist parties.

Party convergence and vote switching: Explaining mainstream party decline across Europe

AbstractHow can one explain the significant vote losses of mainstream parties across Europe in recent years? In this article, it is argued that mainstream party convergence is an important determinant of the recent political and electoral volatility in European party systems. More specifically, it is hypothesised that as mainstream parties converge on the left‐right scale, voters will switch from supporting a mainstream party to a non‐mainstream party in the next election as they look for an alternative that better represents their ideological views. To test these theoretical expectations, data is combined from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Manifestos Project for nearly 15,000 vote choices of individual voters in 30 elections in 16 West and East European countries from 2001 until 2013. The findings have important implications for understanding the recent rise of non‐mainstream parties, the changing nature of party systems and the increasing complexity of cabinet formation across Europe.

Economic or cultural backlash? Rethinking outsiders’ voting behavior

Political economists show that outsiders (unemployed and temporary workers) support redistributive policies more than insiders (standard dependent workers) and infer outsiders' voting behavior from their desired degree of State intervention in the economy. However, it has been suggested that international interdependence is reshaping the political space along two dimensions: the traditional economic left-right scale, and an emerging cultural integration-demarcation dimension. How do outsiders behave in this two-dimensional political landscape? This research note answers this question by combining individual data from the latest five waves of the European Social Survey (2008–2016) with party positions provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project on 27 European countries. Integrating research based on party families with parties’ policy positions, results show that the economic State-market dimension is still more linked to outsiders’ voting behavior than the cultural integration-demarcation dimension.

We Were The Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe

We investigate the impact of robot adoption on electoral outcomes in 14 Western European countries, between 1993 and 2016. We employ both official election results at the district level and individual-level voting data, combined with party ideology scores from the Manifesto Project. We measure exposure to automation both at the regional level, based on the ex-ante industry specialization of each region, and at the individual level, based on individual characteristics and pre-sample employment patterns in the region of residence. We instrument robot adoption in each country using the pace of robot adoption in other countries. Higher exposure to robot adoption is found to increase support for nationalist and radical-right parties. Unveiling some potential transmission channels, higher robot exposure at the individual level leads to poorer perceived economic conditions and well-being, lower satisfaction with the government and democracy, and a reduction in perceived political self-efficacy.

We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe

We investigate the impact of robot adoption on electoral outcomes in 14 Western European countries, between 1993 and 2016. We employ both official election results at the district level and individual-level voting data, combined with party ideology scores from the Manifesto Project. We measure exposure to automation both at the regional level, based on the ex-ante industry specialization of each region, and at the individual level, based on individual characteristics and pre-sample employment patterns in the region of residence. We instrument robot adoption in each country using the pace of robot adoption in other countries. Higher exposure to robot adoption is found to increase support for nationalist and radical-right parties. Unveiling some potential transmission channels, higher robot exposure at the individual level leads to poorer perceived economic conditions and well-being, lower satisfaction with the government and democracy, and a reduction in perceived political self-efficacy.

Ideology and Immigration Patterns in European Union (1988–2015)

ABSTRACT Introduction: The theory points out to the existence of likely links between party ideology and migratory policies, stating that, in principle, values associated with the right, based on nationalism, tend to, restrict immigration dynamics more than those linked to the axiology of the left, anchored in universalism. Does party ideology affect immigration patterns in the European Union? This paper tests the hypothesis that the greater the values in ideology (right-wing governments), the smaller the number of migrants to that specific country. Materials and Methods: The research design replicates secondary data from both a parliament and government database (ParlGov) and the Comparative Manifesto Project. We also use data from the Global Bilateral Migration Database and Bilateral Migration Matrix. Besides the descriptive statistics, we examine the relationship between ideology and migration flows. We estimated two regression models to deal with the following dependent variables: net migration and refugee population by country or territory of asylum. Results: Using data from ParlGov, Manifesto, and QoG, descriptive statistics has stressed a very heterogeneous cartography of political features, ideology, and migration in European Union countries. The first regression analysis using aggregate data suggests that the greater the values of ideology per country (right-wing oriented), the lower the number of people entering that country. However, the findings from our disaggregated statistical analysis, particularly Model 1, indicate no effect of cabinet ideology on net migration. As for the refugee category for immigrants, our results suggest that right-oriented national governments are less receptive to refugees. Model 2 stated that a one-point increase in ideology is associated with a 13% average reduction in the number of refugees entering the country. Discussion: This study advances our current understanding about the relationship between party ideology and immigration patterns. Nonetheless, the results of the regression analysis show limited evidence in favor of our hypothesis that the more to the right of the ideological spectrum governments are, the lower the number of refugees they will accept. However, this analysis is only meant to show a relationship between ideology and migration. Causal claims should be interpreted with caution.

Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia, and Europe by Rieko Kage

Reviewed by: Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia, and Europe by Rieko Kage Hiroshi Fukurai (bio) Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia, and Europe. By Rieko Kage. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017. xiv, 264 pages. $99.99, cloth; $29.99, paper; $24.00, E-book. This book is an extremely valuable addition to global jury studies and makes a significant contribution to the sociopolitical analysis of varied democratic systems of citizen participation in criminal justice proceedings. The author focuses on the lay participation systems that have been adopted, or are in the process of being introduced, in four countries: Japan, Korea, and Taiwan in Asia, and Spain in Europe. The main analysis concerns the adoption of Japan's saiban-in seido (a quasi-jury trial or mixed tribunal). The author considers an array of political science theories and derives theoretically informed hypotheses, carefully testing them through a masterful use of mixed-method analysis. The testable propositions are drawn from, and guided by, political theories of democratization, conscription, taxation, and delegation. Other political science theories and perspectives are introduced to explain the significance of adopting varied forms of popular participation in criminal trials, such as the path-dependent theory devised by Paul Pierson and the principal-agent literature on delegation, as well as political insurance theory. Also included are excellent comparative case studies related to the theoretical propositions of "new left" politics and partisan dynamics and their influence on the introduction of the jury and lay judge systems in these four countries. There are ten independent chapters, each one carefully researched and containing thoughtful analysis. Chapter 1 offers an overview of the comparative theoretical framework of the studies undertaken by the author, arguing that the relative strength of "new left" political factors has shaped not only the character of debates on the possibility of popular participation in justice systems but also the design and structural matrix of the lay participation program in criminal trials. Chapter 2 sketches out the novel theoretical framework of "new left" partisan politics in relation to efforts to impose [End Page 448] stronger constraints upon bureaucratic professional judges in advanced democracies such as Japan and "postdevelopmental" states such as Spain, Korea, and Taiwan. Chapter 3 turns to an empirical analysis of the influence of "new left" partisan politics on efforts to introduce popular participation in criminal trials. Drawing on the multitudinous data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and other available sources, the author convincingly demonstrates that "new left" oriented parties are more likely to take up leftist concerns and policy issues, including the adoption of popular participation in criminal adjudication. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the history of lay participation debates in Japan, with chapter 4 providing a content analysis of the partisan debates between 1947 and 1996, noting that unique events such as four wrongful conviction cases scrutinized by the Japanese Supreme Court led to sudden spikes in media and public concern about the legitimacy of Japan's traditional bench trial system and of the decisions reached under that system. This public scrutiny also led to greater partisan debates on significant judicial reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Chapter 5 specifically examines partisan dynamics around the millennial period from 1997 to 2004, when a governmental consensus emerged from the Justice System Reform Council (JSRC, Shihō Seido Kaikaku Shingikai), whose final recommendation included the establishment of the mixed, professional, and lay judge panel to adjudicate serious criminal cases. More than 60 JSRC public panel discussions were held in many parts of Japan; these allowed maximum input from public interest groups to influence the content and spectrum of lay participation debates and discussions. Chapter 6 moves on to test the theoretically driven hypotheses based on records of debates in both houses of the Japanese Diet, demonstrating that "new left" partisan agendas influenced the deliberation in the Japanese Diet over the establishment of the JSRC in 1999. Chapter 7 focuses on Taiwan's proposal for lay participation, followed by chapter 8's coverage of studies of party politics in relation to the introduction of the jury system in Spain and South Korea. The empirical analysis of the varied impact of popular...

Marching to the Left? Programmatic Competition and the 2017 Party Manifestos

AbstractThis article analyses the content of the 2017 general election manifestos, and introduces the latest estimates from the Manifesto Project to explore recent ideological movements in the British party system. It reports the changing policy emphases in Conservative and Labour manifestos and the ideological positions of the major political parties in 2017. It finds that Theresa May's party produced its most left‐wing manifesto since 1964, and that Jeremy Corbyn's party produced its most left‐wing manifesto since 1992 and the election before the advent of New Labour. The article also finds that the ideological space between the Conservatives and Labour opened up in 2017, and that Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists published the most right‐wing manifesto.

Foreign threat and political party change: Russia and changes in party manifestos

How do political parties react to foreign security threats? There has been very little attention paid in the literature generally to how parties react to international events, particularly how parties react to foreign policy threats. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we examine how political parties in countries in Europe have reacted to Russian actions in terms of their emphasis on security issues. Based upon our analysis of the manifestoes from 331 parties in 36 countries we find that, generally, interstate threats have no significant effect on the military position adopted by political parties, although these effects vary by party type and by the type of threat. Russian based threats appear to be associated with the Far Left becoming more dovish (which is consistent with what would be expected by the literature) and the Far Right becoming significantly less hawkish.

Ethnic diversity and attitudes towards refugees

ABSTRACTThe recent surge in refugee arrivals to Europe has underscored the importance of identity concerns, with politicians and ordinary citizens alike expressing fear that admitting foreigners may result in unacceptable demographic and cultural change. However, scholars have not systematically examined the impact of ethnic diversity on attitudes towards refugees. Group threat theory and the contact hypothesis offer competing predictions: The former would expect diversity to be associated with opposition to refugees, while the latter would expect diversity to generate support for them. We explore individual-level attitudes in nineteen countries using the 2014 wave of the European Social Survey, combined with country-level data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, the Manifesto Project Dataset, and five different databases of ethnic diversity measures. Crucially, we employ multiple approaches to measuring diversity, including various measures of ethnic fractionalisation, linguistic heterogeneity, polarisation, and other relevant constructs. We find that greater ethnic diversity is associated with decreased support for refugees, but this relationship is not consistent across all measures of diversity. Since the relationship between ethnic diversity and support for refugees is highly dependent on the measure of diversity used, scholars should be wary of drawing strong conclusions about the effects of ethnic diversity without comparing different measures.