Spatial Models Of Party Competition Research Articles

Proximity or Directional Model of Voting for the Turkish Voter?

Voting behavior is a very complex type of political behavior. Therefore, understanding why voters vote for a particular political party or a candidate requires developing complex models. In 1957, Anthony Downs, who built his model on Hottelings’ and Smithies’ models, argued that political parties’ and candidates’ ideological and issue positions can be expressed on a one-dimensional space. On one hand, it was highly reductionist to argue that political ideas on a particular issue can be expressed this way, on the other, it was highly practical from analytical point of view. Locating parties, candidates and voters on a one-dimensional space according to their ideological or issue positions was then a revolutionaly idea and helped comparing party, candidate and voter ideological and issue positions within and across countries. These models, which were called spatial models of party competition were further developed over time and helped understanding voting behavior. Currently, spatial models of party competition have two major competing models linking voter ideological positions with party ideological positions. Simply, while the proximity model proposes that voters vote for the parties or candidates that hold ideological positions in the political space that are closest to their own, the directional model suggests that the voters vote for the parties or candidates that are on their side of the two-dimensional political spectrum and more extreme than their own while being within the acceptability region. This research aims to test the applicability of these two voting models for the Turkish voter. Türkiye constitutes an interesting case study with its long-term PR electoral system as it was suggested in the extant literature that proximity model is a more appropriate tool to explain voting behavior in Proportional (PR) systems. Thus, we hypothesize that in Türkiye, where a PR electoral system is in effect for parliamentary elections, voter electoral preferences are better explained by the proximity model than the directional model. Our research analyzes Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) data for voters of the four major political parties in Türkiye, the Justice and Development Party (JDP), the Republican People’s Party (RPP), the National Action Party (NAP), and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). A series of Multiple Linear Regression Analyses were conducted to reveal associations between the dependent and the independent variables. Voter embracement, as expressed as like-dislike of each political party for each voter, is seperately used as the dependent variable for each analysis. Issue distance and issue scalar product were used as key independent variables representing the formulas for the proximity and the directional models, respectively. Additionally, education, age, gender and income were recruited as classical control variables. Comparing explanatory powers of the statistical models showed that, contrary to the findings of MacDonald and his colleagues, the proximity model of voting is a more appropriate tool than the directional model to explain voting behavior in Türkiye. From a macro-political perspective, this finding supports Westholm’s (1997) argument that the PR provides a more appropriate tool to explain voting behavior in PR systems. Yet, it should be noted that further multi-country comperative analyses required for certain results.

Election pledges in India: comparisons with Western democracies

ABSTRACT Election pledges feature prominently in the theory and practice of representation and have been examined extensively in a growing field of comparative research. However, research in this field has largely ignored non-Western democracies and the world’s largest electoral democracy, India. The present analysis begins to fill this lacuna by examining election pledges made by Indian parties at the national level over a period of two decades (1999-2019) and comparing this with selected Western parties. The extension of research on election pledges to India prompts us to assess the relevance of pledges to the distinctive characteristics of Indian party competition. This differs markedly from the spatial model of party competition that is often applied in pledge research in Western systems. Party competition in India is instead characterised largely by valence politics on socioeconomic issues and by identity politics on religious issues. The quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate the distinct features of pledges in policy areas characterised by valence and identity politics. We discuss the implications of the findings for understanding party competition in India and for the broader research programme on election pledges.

Party competition and the structuring of party preferences by the left-right dimension

There is a wide selection of theoretical approaches to explain preferences citizens have for political parties, among them the spatial model of party competition in which voters choose based on proximity in a policy space, such as the left-right dimension. However, it has not ultimately prevailed against its competitors. Thus, a literature has emerged that allows for heterogeneity, asking whose preferences follow this logic and whose do not. However, research on how context affects spatial structuring is still sparse. Therefore, I combine CSES survey data with manifesto data in a sample of established democracies to examine the effects of party competition structure, measured by the “effective” number of parties and the polarization and dimensionality of party positions, on left-right structuration of party preferences in a single model. While I do not find significant context effects with a conventional measure of proximity voting, I propose a different operationalization which shows that while there are systematic effects of the party system, party preferences are mostly quite strongly structured by the left–right dimension.

Climate change: Will the parties unite or divide?

Climate change: Will the parties unite or divide?

Estimating the Conflict Dimensionality in the German Länder from Vote Advice Applications, 2014–2017

AbstractBuilding on the spatial model of party competition, we investigate the structure of political conflict in German subnational politics. Little research has examined the conflict dimensionality at theLänderlevel. Moreover, the few studies which have done so predominantly rely on a deductive approach that pre-structures the conflict space using presumed conflict dimensions. In this paper, we put these dimensionality assumptions to the test with an inductive approach that capitalizes on parties’ preference expressions in vote advice applications. We circumvent the common concern that data from vote advice applications is too sparse for assessing political conflict structures by estimating a space that bridges multiple elections. Unlike previous research, we find that political conflict is defined by a comprehensive left-right dimension and a secondary dimension separating mainstream parties from fringe competitors. This anti-establishment dimension is characterized by diverging preferences over democratic institutions and policies considered consensual among the political mainstream.

It Sounds Like They are Moving: Understanding and Modeling Emphasis-Based Policy Change

Position change is an essential feature of political competition. Implicitly, policy change on an issue dimension is often equated with opinion change on specific issues within that dimension. However, in addition to opinion-based policy change, we highlight that parties and candidates can change their overall position by increasing their emphasis on certain opinions within that issue dimension (emphasis-based policy change). Using party manifesto data, we find that parties differ in their use of each type of policy change based on aspects of party organization, particularly the relative power of leaders and activists. Leader-dominated parties are more likely to engage in opinion-based policy change, also in reaction to systemic policy shifts. In contrast, activist-dominated parties tend to change their overall position in reaction to systemic shifts by emphasizing certain positions more. Our approach links salience-based to spatial models of party competition and has broader implications for how we study party competition.

What explains electoral responses to the ‘Great Recession’ in Europe?

The ‘Great Recession’ in Europe started in early 2008 and was the greatest economic crisis facing the continent since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It produced a largescale loss of support for many incumbent parties. The purpose of this paper is to explain responses to the crisis among European electorates with the assistance of three rival models of electoral choice. The first is the cleavages model associated with Rokkan and Lipset which highlights the importance of social groups as the sources of electoral support. The second is the spatial model of party competition which focuses on the ideological distance between voters and parties in relation to divisive issues in society. The third is the valence model which argues that voters will support parties that deliver policies over which there is widespread agreement about what should be done. The paper models electoral support for incumbent parties using data from the European Social Surveys of 2006, conducted prior to the recession, and again in 2012 some four years into the crisis. The results show that all three models are relevant for understanding mass political responses to the crisis. It is also apparent that an ideological shift to the right occurred in electoral support between the two periods and this happened among both the voters and also the incumbent parties in Europe.

Party and voter incentives at the crowded centre of British politics

This article offers a spatial theory to explain how a centrist third party gains votes via the ideological depolarization of its two main competitors towards the centre ground. Using the cases of British elections in 2001, 2005 and 2010, during which the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, were ideologically similar, the article reveals how perceived similarities between these parties led voters to turn to alternative issues and criteria – which benefited the third party, the Liberal Democrats – to decide their vote. Major parties therefore trade a proximity benefit of chasing the median voter against a separation benefit whereby votes can be lost due to voter indifference. The expectations are supported by analyses of vote choices using two measures of indifference, although the incentives do not apply equally in all three elections. The article reveals that indifference is not just relevant to voter abstention, as applied in existing spatial theories, but is also relevant to the basis of the vote choice and to votes for third parties. The implications are important for spatial models of party competition.

Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives under Different Electoral Systems

Inaseminalarticle,Cox(1990)suggestedthatelectoralsystemswithlargerdistrictmagnitudesprovideincentivesforparties to advocate more extreme policy positions. In this article, we put this proposition to the test. Informed by recent advances in spatial models of party competition, we introduce a design that embeds the effect of electoral rules in the utility function of voters. We then estimate the equilibrium location of parties as the weight voters attach to the expected distribution of seats and votes changes. Our model predicts that electoral rules affect large and small parties in different ways. We find centripetal effects only for parties that are favorably biased by electoral rules. By contrast, smaller parties see their vote share decline and are pushed toward more extreme equilibrium positions. Evidence from 13 parliamentary democracies supports model predictions. Along with testing the incentives provided by electoral rules, results carry implications for the strategies of vote-maximizing parties and for the role of small parties in multiparty competition.

A Tournament of Party Decision Rules

In the spirit of Axelrod's famous prisoners' dilemma tournaments published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, we conducted a tournament of party decision in a dynamic agent-based spatial model of party competition. Entrants submitted rules for selecting party positions in a two-dimensional policy space with unknown voter locations. Each submitted rule was pitted against all others in a suite of very long-running simulations. The most successful rule 1) satisficed rather than maximized in the short run; 2) was parasitic on choices made by other successful rules; and 3) used a secret handshake to avoid attacking other agents using the same rule. In additional simulations, we show that the same rule wins when we alter the population of strategies and the method by which new parties are assigned strategies. The most successful strategies stayed away from the center of the voter distribution and they tended to make only small changes to their positions between elections.

Mapping the Irish Policy Space: Voter and Party Spaces in Preferential

In this note we map the Irish policy space, locating both voters and parties on the most salient policy dimensions in Ireland. Estimates of the voter locations are based on the Irish National Election Survey (INES), conducted in 2002. Estimates of the party positions are based on an expert survey of party positions conducted by the authors in late 2002. We show that respondent self-placements on a priori policy scales are highly biased and difficult to interpret, and we rely instead on building scale positions for respondents from their answers to relevant attitude questions in the INES. The results provide a methodological template for locating voters and parties in a common space - a significant problem for any analyst who wants to create an empirical elaboration of a spatial model of party competition.

Opposition Party Strategy and Spatial Competition in Dominant Party Regimes

This article provides a non-formal modification of the standard spatial model of party competition to make it more applicable to the study of opposition parties in dominant party systems in transition. Dominant parties' virtual monopoly over resources forces challengers to rely on activist-based strategies. Challengers then face the problem of balancing programmatically radical activists against the moderate preference of the median voter. The article shows that opposition parties' programmatic locations depend on the number of competing parties. Contrary to standard expectations, it finds that two-party competition between the incumbent and one challenger produces a center-fleeing strategy by the challenger, whereas three-party competition between the incumbent and two challengers yields center-seeking strategies by both challengers. The second half of the article applies this modified model to the case of Mexico. Data come from in-depth interviews, electoral returns, public opinion polls, and original sample surveys of national party leaders and activists.

A Theory of Spatial Competition with Biased Voters: Party Policies Viewed Temporally and Comparatively

The spatial maps of parties' policy programmes published by the Manifesto Research Group (MRG) for the European Consortium for Political Research reveal the following empirical patterns: that parties differentiate their policy positions from one another; that parties rarely leapfrog each other; that parties shift their positions over time but only within ‘ideologically delimited’ areas of the policy space. These findings are not well explained by existing spatial models of party competition, which typically predict policy convergence and which moreover do not examine temporal patterns of party policies. This article modifies the standard Downsian model to incorporate a concept originally developed by Chapman that, in addition to policies, voters are motivated by non-policy considerations arising from such factors as party leaders' images, social-psychological attachments rooted in class, religion, ethnicity and so on. For this ‘biased vote’ model I present illustrative arguments that vote-seeking parties are motivated to differentiate their policy positions from each other, and that over time they can be expected to vary their policy proposals but without leapfrogging – predictions that accord well with the MRG's empirical findings. I apply the biased vote model to empirical data on the distributions of voter preferences in recent British and French elections. My results support the illustrative arguments, and also suggest that these arguments apply even when the degree of voter bias in the electorate is quite low.

Modeling Party Strategies and Policy Representation in Multiparty Elections: Why Are Strategies so Extreme?

Existing spatial models of multiparty spatial competition have difficulty accounting for two related features of party behavior: that parties typically propose divergent policy programs, and that these programs are similar to, but more extreme than, the policies of their supporters. We expand and elaborate Iversen's representational policy leadership model, which combines insights from the proximity and directional theories of voting, in an effort to explain this phenomenon. By developing a spatial model of party competition that incorporates voters' nonpolicy motivations (i.e., sociodemographic characteristics, retrospective economic evaluations, partisanship) and a mixed directional-proximity policy utility metric, we significantly improve our ability to explain parties' policy strategies, compared to alternative models that ignore either nonpolicy motivations or the directional component of voters' policy utilities. We illustrate and test our arguments with conditional logit analysis of voter choice for 1989 Norwegian election data. We show that a model that includes nonpolicy motivations in addition to proximity and directional motivations accurately accounts for the actual locations of parties but that the proximity and directional components alone are insufficient. Voters' nonpolicy motivations are crucial for explaining parties' policy strategies and also for understanding the connection between parties' policy positions and the positions of their supporters.

A spatial model of political competition and proportional representation

A spatial model of party competition is studied in which: (i) Parties are supposed to have ideology. By this we mean that their goal is to maximize the welfare of their constituencies. (ii) The policy implemented after the election does not need to coincide with the one proposed by the winner. The policy implemented should be a compromise that considers the proposals made by the different parties. In the case of proportional representation this compromise is modeled as a convex combination of the proposed policies with weights proportional to the number of votes obtained by each party. We provide some existence theorems and compare the equilibrium in our model with the equilibrium that exists under some probabilistic models. It is also shown that proportional representation will create incentives for the parties to announce radical platforms.

Salient issues in Taiwan's electoral politics

Electoral politics in Taiwan has undergone drastic change in the past few years. The Democratic Progressive Party was established in 1986 and has proven to be a viable political force challenging the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) which has been the dominant party in Taiwan since 1945. The dominance of the KMT in Taiwanese politics was further threatened by the defection of some KMT members to form the New Party. The new configuration of Taiwan's party system seriously complicates Taiwan's electoral politics and increases uncertainty over the electoral fortune of each political party in future elections. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of issues in voters' evaluations of the political parties. Information on issue positions and salience and their impact on vote choice will be helpful to understand each party's strategy in formulating its party platform to compete for votes. Survey data from the 1993 election of the county magistrates and city mayors in the Republic of China on Taiwan, collected by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University in February 1994, are used to explore voters' preferences; their perception of the parties' positions on important issues; and the weights they attach to different issues. We employ a spatial model of party competition to investigate the impact of the issues and party identification on voters' evaluation of the parties' performance.

Thatcherism and the Conservative Party

Neither spatial models of party competition nor the ‘Westminster’ model of British politics explain the phenomenon of Thatcherism. One explanation of its success, examined by Crewe and Searing, suggests that Mrs Thatcher sought to convert the Conservative party and the wider electorate to her distinctive brand of liberal Whiggism and traditional Toryism. They found little evidence of the success of this, however, among the British electorate as a whole. In this paper, data from the first national survey of Conservative party members demonstrates that she had little success in converting the Conservative party to these ideas either, although she did have a secure ideological base within the party. The results also suggest that her successor, John Major, has a rather different support base within the party from that of Mrs Thatcher. The implications of these findings for spatial models of party competition and the Westminster model of British politics are discussed.

A Game Theoretic Analysis of the Republic of China's Emerging Electoral System

Despite differences in history, culture, and stages of political development, the same theoretical constructs used to study American and European political processes can be used to understand the Republic of China's evolving electoral institutions and processes. The particular theoretical constructs upon which we focus are game theory and its application to electoral politics, spatial models of party competition. After reviewing the core results of spatial analysis — that electoral systems dominated by a single issue occasion stable and convergent party platforms and that systems with multiple salient issues occasion instability — we examine the types of issues that opposition parties are most likely to use in challenging KMT rule. Based on this discussion we argue that the ROC ought to be especially sensitive to Riker's conclusion that evolving democracies should devote special attention to developing institutional structures such as bicameralism and staggered terms of office for legislators that avoid the populist ideal of direct democracy. Theoretical results reveal the fragility of the idea of a popular will, so that populist institutions designed to achieve it can foster electoral instability. We use a recent result about multi-candidate elections to argue that the form of electoral competition and the forces operating to produce factionalism within parties are functions of the extent to which voters perceive electoral competition in terms of individual candidate characteristics versus party labels. To the extent that voters evaluate candidates on the basis of their party label, the parties will tend to converge on issues; whereas, to the extent that voters focus on the specific characteristics of candidates and their policy pronouncements, the candidates will diverge on issues. Finally, we examine the circumstances under which the nature of the issues that concern an electorate determines the form of competition in democracies characterized by a single dominant party.

New Players in an Old Game

This article compares two spatial models of party competition: (a) the traditional proximity model and (b) the directional model of voter choice. The article first lays out the differences between the two models in multiparty systems. The traditional proximity model makes no clear prediction about the spatial structure of political parties; the directional model predicts that optimal placement for parties will be along the circumference of a circle at a moderate distance from the center. Both theories have implications for overtime strategy and the success of new political parties. Traditional proximity theory emphasizes movement toward a location with high density of voters, while directional theory emphasizes the importance of a distinct directional strategy. The authors examine the Norwegian political system from 1969-1985 and the Swedish system from 1979-1982 and find the directional theory more strongly supported.

Location Modeling: Perspective and Overview

Geographical AnalysisVolume 22, Issue 1 p. 1-3 Free Access Location Modeling: Perspective and Overview John R. Current, John R. Current John R. Current is associate professorSearch for more papers by this authorDavid A. Schilling, David A. Schilling David A. Schilling is professor of management science, Ohio State University.Search for more papers by this author John R. Current, John R. Current John R. Current is associate professorSearch for more papers by this authorDavid A. Schilling, David A. Schilling David A. Schilling is professor of management science, Ohio State University.Search for more papers by this author First published: January 1990 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1538-4632.1990.tb00192.xCitations: 3 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat LITERATURE CITED Bell, T., and R. Church (1985). “Location-Allocation Modeling in Archaeological Settlement Pattern Research: Some Preliminary Applications.” World Archaeology 16, 354– 71. Berry, B., and J. Parr (1988). Market Centers and Retail Location Theory and Applications. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Cornuejols, G., M. Fisher, and G. Nemhauser (1977). “Location of Bank Accounts to Optimize Float: An Analytic Study of Exact and Approximate Algorithms.” Management Science 23, 789– 810. Ghosh, A., and S. McLafferty (1987). Location Strategies for Retail and Service Firms. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books. Ghosh, A., and G. Rushton (1987). Spatial Analysis and Location-Allocation Models. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. Ginsberg, V., P. Pestieau, and J.-F. Thisse (1987). “A Spatial Model of Party Competition with Electoral and Ideological Objectives.” In Spatial Analysis and Location-Allocation Models, edited by A. Ghosh and G. Rushton, pp. 101– 17. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. Hotelling, H. (1929). “Stability in Competition.” Economic Journal 39, 41– 57. Hurter, A., and J. Martinich (1989). Facility Location and the Theory of Production. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Love, R., J. Morris, and G. Wesolowsky (1988). Facilities Location Models and Methods. New York: North-Holland. Pirkul, H. (1986). “An Integer Programming Model for the Allocation of Databases in a Distributed Computer System.” European Journal of Operational Research 26, 401– 11. Reggia, J., D. Nau, and P. Wang (1983). “Diagnostic Expert Systems Based on a Set Covering Model.” International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 19, 437– 60. ReVelle, C., and R. Swain (1970). “Central Facilities Location.” Geographical Analysis 2, 30– 42. Social Sciences Citation Index (19701988). Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information, Incorporated. Vasko, F., F. Wolf, and K. Stott (1988). “Optimal Selection of Ingot Sizes Via Set Covering.” Operations Research 35, 346– 53. Vasko, F., F. Wolf, and K. Stott (1989). “A Set Covering Approach to Metallurgical Grade Assignment.” European Journal of Operational Research 38, 27– 34. Citing Literature Volume22, Issue1January 1990Pages 1-3 ReferencesRelatedInformation