Party Policy Preferences Research Articles

Measuring Agreement: How to Arrive at Reliable Measures of Opinion Congruence Between Voters and Parties

ABSTRACT The extent to which voters and parties agree on policies is an important way through which political scientists have empirically studied political representation. This opinion congruence is most often measured by comparing preferences on a number of policy statements. While the selection of policy statements has not escaped scholarly attention, its impact on the reliability of congruence scores, i.e. the degree to which similar levels of opinion congruence are found when different samples of policy statements are used, has been less investigated. This article looks at which factors of statements samples and voters affect the reliability of congruence measures. It does so by simulating over 5 million opinion congruence scores on the basis of a dataset containing 134 voter and party policy preferences. It finds that both the number of statements and their topic diversity positively affect the reliability of congruence estimates. In addition, the congruence estimates of politically less sophisticated voters are more reliable but only when many left-right policy statements are included in the statement selection. Finally, explorative analyses suggest that increasing topic diversity also increases the validity of congruence measures.

March divided, fight united? Trade union cohesion and government appeal for concertation

Why does the government appeal for concertation? Starting from the principal‒agent framework and delegation theory, the article argues that the government is more willing to share decision-making power with trade unions when the policy preferences endorsed by the unions are closer to those of the cabinet. Furthermore, it maintains that government propensity to negotiate with trade unions increases as the heterogeneity of union policy preferences grows because the cabinet can exploit its agenda-setting power to divide the union front. The article tests these two hypotheses through a longitudinal analysis of the Italian case (1946–2014). In detail, it takes advantage of two original datasets built through content analysis that provide unique in-depth information on the policy preferences of parties and cabinets and measures the policy positions of the main Italian trade unions, thus allowing assessment of their reciprocal heterogeneity. The results confirm the expectations.

Intra-party policy entrepreneurship and party goals: the case of political parties’ climate policy preferences in Ireland

ABSTRACTThis study contributes to the growing literature on the domestic politics of climate change by examining the climate policy preferences of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party over 20 years. Bringing the concept of ‘policy entrepreneurship’ into the study of intra-party politics, it uses secondary data, party documents, publicly available information and a series of in-depth interviews to develop an understanding of intra-party policy entrepreneurship and political parties’ climate policy preferences. It finds that office-seeking incentives have tended to trump the activities of individuals who have engaged in policy entrepreneurship with the aim of strengthening their parties’ climate policy preferences. In instances where office-seeking incentives for climate policy have been strong, they have often contributed to changes in policy preferences, whether or not intra-party policy entrepreneurship has been present. Theoretically, the study argues that the concept of ‘policy entrepreneurship’ can be usefully borrowed from the public policy literature by researchers of party policy preferences and intra-party politics. Empirically, it adds to the small but growing body of research on climate politics in Ireland.

Exploring heterogeneous growth of wind energy across Germany

Expansion of renewable energies in Germany is strongly associated with decentralization of energy provision. In the case of wind energy there are especially strong regional-level spatial, technical, economic, and social ramifications of this energy source. In addition to differing natural conditions and the strong push from the federal feed-in tariffs, policies and initiatives at the state, county, and municipal level need to be considered when explaining the pattern of wind energy expansion across time and space and to improve the coordination of multi-level energy policies. This paper uses panel regressions at the level of German counties from 2001 to 2012 to explore the growth of wind power capacity. Based on the estimates obtained, we then analyze counterfactual scenarios in which factors influenced by the regional (county) level are varied individually. Our focus is on party policy preferences and coalitions on the one hand, and the unemployment rate on the other. While strict causality is difficult to establish, our results reveal heterogeneous incentives between states, within states, and between different county types.

Estimating Uncertainty in Party Policy Positions Using the Confrontational Approach

This research note extends the confrontational approach to estimating party policy positions by providing a way to estimate uncertainty associated with the measurements. The confrontational approach is a flexible method of determining party policy positions, which is ideally suited to measure parties’ positions on issues that are specific to a country or period in time. We introduce a method of estimating the uncertainty of confrontational estimates by restating the approach as a special case of an item response theory, opening up the possibility of using the confrontational approach not only as a descriptive tool but also as a means of testing hypotheses on party policy preferences. We illustrate our model using analysis of the 2010 Dutch parliamentary election and the 2009 European elections.

The Impact of Government Participation and Prospects on Party Policy Preferences in Belgium

This article analyses the impact of government prospects and government participation on party policy preferences. Comparing the content of manifestos of governing and opposition parties in Belgium during three decades, I observed that the relationship of a party to the act of governing influences the content of its manifesto. In that sense, party preferences are not only driven by ideology and vote-seeking arguments but are part of a larger party strategy: parties adapt their electoral platform when they are in government or are willing to enter into it. The conclusion of the article also discusses the literature on government formation. Such literature hypothesizes that parties that are ideologically similar would form a coalition. However, results for the Belgian case demonstrate that parties strategically adapt their electoral platform when wanting to enter the government. Coalitions are made up of parties with similar policy preferences, not because they ‘are’ alike but because parties strategically ‘make’ them alike.

The Europeanisation of regional policy in Poland: did political parties make a difference?

This paper examines the role of the European Union (EU) and the policy preferences of parties in government for the Europeanisation of regional policy in Poland. While the importance of the EU is undeniable, the role of political parties is unexplored in the literature. This paper presents a more nuanced approach to the study of policy preferences than the partisan theory proposes. It focuses on strategic origins of policy preferences which dominate in the case of win-win policies such as EU regional policy which is about economic gains for beneficiaries of EU structural and cohesion funds. In this policy case, preferences of domestic political parties have converged towards securing EU funding. The partisan effects on policy outputs are thus less visible in the post-accession stage.

Regional Government Formation in Varying Multilevel Contexts: A Comparison of Eight European Countries

Bäck H., Debus M., Müller J. and Bäck H. Regional government formation in varying multilevel contexts: a comparison of eight European countries, Regional Studies. Although governance in multilevel settings has become a prominent research field in political science, there are few comparative studies that focus on explaining sub-national coalition outcomes in such settings. This paper sets out to study regional government formation in eight European countries and it builds on a dataset that covers information on the policy preferences of parties drawn from regional election manifestos. The results show that parties at the regional level are likely to form congruent coalitions, that is, ‘copying’ the patterns of national government formation, and that they are more likely to do so in specific regional contexts. Bäck H., Debus M., Müller J. and Bäck H. 各种多重层级脉络下的区域政府形成：欧洲八国的比较研究，区域研究。仅管多重层级环境中的治理已成为政治学中重要的研究领域，却鲜少有比较研究聚焦解释在此般环境中次国家层级结盟的结果。本文着手研究八个欧洲国家的区域政府形成，并以一个包含在区域选举宣言中各政党政策倾向资料的数据集为基础。研究结果显示，区域层级的政党倾向 “复制” 国家层级政府形成的模式，进行相同的结盟，并更有可能在特定的区域脉络中进行。 政府形成 结盟理论 多重层级系统 政策文件的内容分析 区域治权 Bäck H., Debus M., Müller J. et Bäck H. La formation de la gouvernance régionale dans divers contextes multiniveaux: une comparaison de huit pays européens, Regional Studies. Bien que la gouvernance multiniveaux soit devenue une filière importante de la science politique, rares sont les études comparatives qui visent principalement à expliquer les résultats des coalitions établies à l'échelon infranational dans de tels contextes. L'article cherche à étudier la formation de la gouvernance régionale dans huit pays européens et se fonde sur un ensemble de données qui capte des informations sur les préférences politiques des partis puisées dans leurs manifestes aux élections régionales. Les résultats laissent voir que les partis sont susceptibles sur le plan régional de constituer des coalitions harmonisées, c'est-à-dire ‘copier’ des modèles de gouvernance au niveau national, et qu'ils sont plus susceptibles de le faire dans des contextes régionaux spécifiques. Formation de la gouvernance Théories sur la création des coalitions Systèmes multiniveaux Analyse du contenu des documents de politique générale Collectivité régionale Bäck H., Debus M., Müller J. und Bäck H. Regionale Regierungsbildung in institutionell variierenden Mehrebenensystemen: ein Vergleich acht europäischer Staaten, Regional Studies. Obwohl das Regieren in Mehrebenensystemen mittlerweile ein zentrales Forschungsgebiet der Politikwissenschaft ist, liegen bislang nur wenige vergleichende Studien zur Regierungsbildung in diesem Kontext vor. Im vorliegenden Beitrag analysieren wir die Regierungsbildung in den Regionen acht europäischer Staaten. Dabei greifen wir auf einen Datensatz zurück, der die Policy-Positionen regionaler Parteien sowie die Eigenschaften der potentiell möglichen Regierungen umfasst. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Parteien dazu neigen, über die Ebenen hinweg parteipolitisch kongruente Koalitionen zu bilden. Zudem haben die programmatischen Positionen der regionalen Parteien und die institutionell vorgegebenen Kompetenzen regionaler Regierungen einen Einfluss auf das Ergebnis des Regierungsbildungsprozesses. Regierungsbildung Koalitionstheorien Mehrebenensysteme Inhaltsanalyse programmatischer Dokumente Regionale Autorität Bäck H., Debus M., Müller J. y Bäck H. Formación de gobiernos regionales en diferentes contextos de varios niveles: una comparación entre ocho países europeos, Regional Studies. Aunque la gobernanza en entornos de varios niveles se ha convertido en un destacado campo de investigación en ciencias políticas, existen poco estudios comparativos sobre los resultados de una coalición subnacional en tales entornos. La finalidad de este artículo es estudiar la formación de gobiernos regionales en ocho países europeos a partir de un grupo de datos que abarquen la información sobre las preferencias políticas de los partidos extraídas de los programas electorales regionales. Los resultados indican que los partidos de ámbito regional tienden a formar coaliciones congruentes, es decir, ‘copiando’ los modelos de la formación del gobierno nacional, y suelen hacerlo en contextos regionales específicos. Formación de gobierno Teorías de coalición Sistemas de varios niveles Análisis de contenido de documentos políticos Autoridad regional