Party System Competition Research Articles

District Variation in Party System Competition and Women’s Candidacy in Proportional Representation Systems

Abstract This article examines the influence of district-level party system dynamics on the list placement of women candidates. As local district competitive realities change, the strategic considerations for party leaders regarding the selection of non-mainstream political candidate profiles vary in important ways. We measure these dynamics with a set of novel variables that better capture variation in competition from district to district: individual party magnitude, district dominance and district contagion. Turkey’s lower level of party system nationalisation between 2002 and 2018 offers a useful case for such an investigation, and results reveal both the significance and pattern of influence on women candidates for all three strategic variables.

Party System Competition and Private Sector Development in Africa

Democratic transitions by many African countries have generated much analysis of the organisational features of political parties or their role in voter mobilisation during elections. Yet, scholars have largely overlooked how parties negotiate economic policymaking or interact with the private sector in countries that are incipient democracies and emerging markets. This article argues that the stability or fragmentation of the party system affects patterns of private sector development and shapes linkages between the state, business and labour. It compares Mozambique and Zambia to demonstrate how variations in party system characteristics influence the relationship between economic and political interests.

Are radical right-wing parties the black holes in party space? Implications and limitations in impact assessment of radical right-wing parties

Radical right-wing parties have been a constant force in party systems of Western Europe since the late 1980s, despite cycles of development and support. Still, measurement of their impact has proven difficult. Scholars assessing the impact of radical right-wing parties in recent years have produced mixed findings in terms of whether effects tend to be direct or indirect and more or less salient. The recent book by Carvalho engages existing literature on impact assessment examining the cases of the UK, France and Italy. His findings caution against overstatement of impacts on immigration policy, suggesting that effects are contingent on party system competition and mainstream party agency. This article considers the mixed results pointing to a lack of existing tools for measuring indirect party impacts. It contends that existing theory on party impact struggles to conceptualize empty spaces in political ideology, attributing agency to moving parties and not to others that may be pushing them.

Explaining party ideological stances

We apply the iterative algorithm by Merrill and Adams (Political Analysis 9:347–361, 2001) to compute the optimal positions of vote-maximizing parties along a one-dimensional space for a large number of elections. This allows us to systematically evaluate factors that push parties toward more centrifugal locations in equilibrium. Our findings largely corroborate expectations suggested by the theoretical literature, albeit with one notable exception: the relative size of a partisan constituency reduces, rather than enhances, the likelihood of a party having an extreme optimal position. We then compare derived equilibrium positions with actual party positions, with the aim of understanding the nature of electoral incentives and offering insights about party-system competition. In particular, we show that the age of a party, the party family to which it belongs, post-election expectations, and internal rules for candidate and leader selection, are all factors that increase the probability of a party approaching the position predicted by pure vote-maximizing considerations.

The Politics of Fission: An Analysis of Faction Breakaways among Italian Parties (1946–2011)

This article investigates intra-party politics and explores the determinants of factional breakaways, going beyond the unitary actor assumption. It presents a game-theoretic model that focuses on intra-party competition and bargaining dynamics to analyse the interplay between party leaders and minority factions. It tests several hypotheses based on the formal model using a new dataset that contains information about the strength and policy positions of factions inside Italian parties, from 1946 to 2011, measured through quantitative content analysis of motions presented during party congresses. The results show that office, policy and electoral motives influence factions’ decisions to break away. Other elements – such as intra-party democracy, the electoral system and party system competitiveness – also affect leaders’ attitudes toward compromising and alter the likelihood of a split.

Gamson rule not for all: Patterns of portfolio allocation among Italian party factions

AbstractThis article investigates the dynamics of portfolio allocation within political parties to shed light on the patterns of conflict and cooperation between rival party factions. It provides a game‐theoretic model that helps in explaining differences in portfolio allocation due to alternative modes of party organisation or party system competitiveness. Focusing on party congresses to estimate the number, strength and policy positions of party factions, the Italian case is analysed by testing some hypotheses generated by the theoretical model. The results shown that, overall, spoils are shared in proportion to the strength of each faction, in line with the prediction of Gamson's Law. However, there are also some important deviations from this path. Rules that foster party leaders' autonomy in fact provide them with a higher degree of discretion that will be used to reward their followers and to ward off any credible and harmful threat to party unity. Indeed, strategic portfolio allocation might balance out a lower amount of policy payoffs and becomes a strategy to restrain minorities from breaking away, thus contributing to the preservation of party unity in highly competitive political systems.

Party system competitiveness and corruption

This article examines why democratic competition sometimes fails to curb governmental corruption. We argue that in democracies party system competitiveness, which shapes the ability of voters to effectively select and control their politicians through elections, plays a critical role in conditioning the scope for corruption. For voters, governmental corruption is a classical principal–agent problem and its magnitude is mediated by the extent to which the competitiveness of a party system helps to make information and effective choices available to the electorate. Informed voters who can coordinate on credible alternatives to under-performing and corrupt incumbents, we argue, can select politicians who are likely to curb corruption and hold accountable those who do not. We test this argument through a controlled comparative analysis of corruption in 70 democracies around the world and find broad support for our hypotheses.

Legislators’ Positions and Party System Competition in Central America

This article is a first attempt to explore the characteristics of political competition in Central America, a subject that has been the focus of little research to date. The article provides a detailed spatial analysis of Central American legislators and parties, as well as an analysis of the number and nature of the political dimensions dividing legislators and major parties for the period 1998–2002. This multi-level analysis illustrates the significant role of agency in the translation of cleavages to the arena of political competition. The article explores the relationship between party system polarization and the number and substance of politically relevant dimensions. It uses data from the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America Survey Project, and the statistical analysis involves factor and discriminant analysis of Central American legislatures.

Party Systems and Democratic Consolidation in Africa’s Electoral Regimes

That political parties are necessary ingredients of democratic governance is accepted as an incontrovertible fact by most political observers. Similarly, party system institutionalization is viewed as a requisite for the consolidation of democracy. In contrast, the effects of different party system characteristics on democracy are sharply contested. We contribute to this debate through a systematic analysis of the relationship between three party system characteristics (legislative volatility, the average age of parties, and the effective number of parliamentary parties) and the level of democracy in 33 African countries. Our results show that party system stability, measured by the average age of parties, and party system competitiveness, measured by the effective number of parties, have positive associations with democracy in African countries. Our results highlight the tension and potential trade-offs between stability and competition in the largely inchoate party systems of Africa.

Changing Patterns of Party Competition in Austria: From Multipolar to Bipolar System

The Austrian party system has entered a new phase since the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition came into office in February 2000. The party system literature offers two contradicting expectations about party system mechanics in multi-party systems without relevant extremist parties: competition structured by party alliances and strictly competitive relations between government and opposition parties (as suggested by <citeref rid="b30">Sartori 1976</citeref>) versus competition structured by individual parties and some mix of competition and co-operation and perhaps even power-sharing in extra-governmental arenas between government and opposition parties (as suggested by <citeref rid="b3">Dahl 1966</citeref>). Our empirical analysis of party system competitiveness in the electoral, parliamentary and other arenas (in particular, the corporatist arena) between 2000 and 2003 shows that the relations between the government and opposition parties were strictly competitive (i.e. of a zero-sum character) in the electoral arena. Likewise, there was no trading between government and opposition in the parliamentary arena. Finally, the government substantially increased its impact on the official sites (i.e. arenas controlled by the government) and used fire and hire methods more than any of its predecessors to build up its positions in public sector institutions. The opposition parties, in turn, perceived the government parties as a bloc and were united in their goal of undermining the government parties' majority. Yet, while relations between the government and opposition parties remained highly competitive throughout the entire period, relations between the parties on each side of the government-opposition divide became more fluid, partly for tactical considerations and partly for reasons of genuine preferences. In sum, the post-2000 Austrian party system is a weak version of a two-bloc system.