From Text to Political Positions on Foreign Aid: Analysis of Aid Mentions in Party Manifestos from 1960 to 2015

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 980-990
Author(s):  
Simone Dietrich ◽  
Helen V Milner ◽  
Jonathan B Slapin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
Positive Sentiment

Abstract Looking at texts of election manifestos, this paper examines systematic differences among political parties within and across countries in how they position themselves on foreign aid and in how these manifesto pledges translate into commitments to disburse aid. Conventional wisdom suggests that left-leaning parties may be more supportive of foreign aid than rightwing parties, but also that foreign aid may not be sufficiently electorally salient for parties to stake out positions in campaign materials, such as manifestos. We leverage a new data set that codes party positions on foreign aid in election manifestos for 13 donors from 1960 to 2015. We find that parties differ systematically in how they engage with foreign aid. Left-leaning governments are more likely to express positive sentiment vis-à-vis aid than right-leaning governments. We evaluate the effects of positions on aid outcomes and find that positive aid views expressed by the party in government translate into higher aid commitments, though only for left-leaning parties.

scholarly journals When Does Income Inequality Cause Polarization?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jacob R. Gunderson
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
The Right ◽  
Issue Content

Scholars have long been concerned with the implications of income inequality for democracy. Conventional wisdom suggests that high income inequality is associated with political parties taking polarized positions as the left advocates for increased redistribution while the right aims to entrench the position of economic elites. This article argues that the connection between party positions and income inequality depends on how party bases are sorted by income and the issue content of national elections. It uses data from European national elections from 1996 to 2016 to show that income inequality has a positive relationship with party polarization on economic issues when partisans are sorted with respect to income and when economic issues are relatively salient in elections. When these factors are weak, however, the author finds no relationship between income inequality and polarization.

Private Donations and Policy Ambiguity

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 754-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Cahill ◽  
Andrey Tomashevskiy
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Political Finance ◽  
Private Donations ◽  
Cross National

An important dimension of party positioning remains largely unexamined—that is, the clarity with which parties present policies to the electorate. Moreover, the effects of private campaign contributions on party positions are also vastly understudied. We address these gaps using a unique new data set on private contributions to political parties in eight Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from the early 1990s to the present. We argue that parties are incentivized to present increasingly ambiguous, or broad appeal, policy positions as a result of increased private campaign contributions. Broad appeal campaigns allow parties to appease their donors with more extreme policy preferences while maintaining the support of their more moderate base supporters. We find support for this argument and show that increasing donations are associated with increased policy ambiguity. Using new data, this article is the first to examine an important connection between political finance and party positioning on a cross-national and time-series basis.

The Evolution of the Immigration Debate: Evidence from a New Dataset of Party Positions Over the Last Half-Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 734-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaela Dancygier ◽  
Yotam Margalit
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Made In

Immigration is one of the most contentious issues across contemporary democracies, but this has not always been the case. What accounts for this development? We study how immigration has evolved in the political debate in Western Europe over five decades by creating and analyzing a comprehensive new data set—Immigration in Party Manifestos (IPM)—of all immigration-related appeals made in preelection manifestos by major parties. Our account focuses on three central debates. First, contra to perceived wisdom, we find no evidence of polarization between left and right. Instead, we document a striking co-movement. Second, we find only modest support for the argument that the success of anti-immigrant parties significantly shapes how centrist parties position themselves on immigration. Finally, our evidence counters the claim that cultural issues have overtaken the debate over immigration. Although the prominence of immigration-related cultural appeals has increased in certain countries and elections, the economic dimension has remained prevalent.

scholarly journals It’s Not Only What you Say, It’s Also How You Say It: The Strategic Use of Campaign Sentiment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Crabtree ◽  
Matt Golder ◽  
Thomas Gschwend ◽  
Indridi H. Indridason
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Electoral Campaign ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Positive Sentiment ◽  
New Perspective

What explains the type of electoral campaign run by political parties? We provide a new perspective on campaigns by focusing on the strategic use of emotive language. We argue that the level of positive sentiment parties adopt in their campaigns depends on their incumbency status, their policy position, and objective economic conditions. We test these claims with a novel dataset that captures the emotive language used in over 400 party manifestos across eight European countries. As predicted, we find that incumbent parties, particularly incumbent prime ministerial parties, use more positive sentiment than opposition parties. We find that ideologically moderate parties employ higher levels of positive sentiment than extremist parties. And we find that all parties exhibit lower levels of positive sentiment when the economy is performing poorly but that this negative effect is weaker for incumbents. Our analysis has important implications for research on campaign strategies and retrospective economic voting.

scholarly journals Estimating party positions on immigration: Assessing the reliability and validity of different methods

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Ruedin ◽  
Laura Morales
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Policy Domain ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Automated Coding ◽  
Expert Surveys

We provide a systematic assessment of various methods to position political parties on immigration, a policy domain that does not necessarily overlap with left–right and is characterized by varying salience and issue complexity. Manual and automated coding methods drawing on 283 party manifestos are compared – manual sentence-by-sentence coding using a conventional codebook, manual coding using checklists, automated coding using Wordscores, Wordfish and keywords. We also use expert surveys and the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), covering the main parties in Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, between 1993 and 2013. We find high levels of consistency between expert positioning, manual sentence-by-sentence coding and manual checklist coding and poor or inconsistent results with the CMP, Wordscores, Wordfish and the dictionary approach. An often-neglected method – manual coding using checklists – offers resource efficiency with no loss in validity or reliability.

Different emphases, same positions? The election manifestos of political parties in the EU multilevel electoral system compared

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 640-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Braun ◽  
Hermann Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
Issue Emphasis ◽  
The Eu

Political parties increasingly operate at multiple political levels. Nevertheless, we do not yet know much about the consequences of these multilevel electoral systems (MLESs) on party behaviour. To fill this gap, we examine party manifestos for European Parliament (EP) elections and compare them with party manifestos for national elections. Using manifesto data and covering 15 European Union (EU) countries between 1979 and 2014, we focus on European issues and ask whether parties’ issue emphasis and the positions they take are the same in both kinds of documents and respectively at both levels of the MLES. We show that although parties put more emphasis on EU issues in EP than in national elections, they behave sincerely regarding their position towards the EU – these are very similar irrespective of the electoral context. As many elections take place in MLES environments, in Europe, in particular, but far beyond, this noteworthy finding is highly relevant for scholars of party competition in general and even more instructive for the so far fragmented literature exploring the implications of MLESs.

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

2019 ◽  
pp. 135406881987560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Otjes ◽  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
Project Data

This article analyses the conditions under which political parties spend attention to labour issues. This article 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 spend 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.

scholarly journals How Parties React to Voter Transitions

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 940-945
Author(s):  
TARIK ABOU-CHADI ◽  
LUKAS F. STOETZER
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Competitive Behavior ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Strategic Policy ◽  
Election Results

This letter investigates how voter transitions between parties affect parties’ policy positioning. While a growing literature investigates the role of election results as signals for parties’ policy adaption, it has mostly focused on vote changes of individual parties. However, parties do not know only whether they have won or lost in an election; they also have detailed information on which parties they won votes from and which parties they lost votes to. We make two arguments about how voter transitions should affect the strategic policy choices of political parties. First, when a party has lost votes to another party it will adapt its policy positions toward that party. Second, parties that have overall lost more votes become more likely to adapt their positions. Making use of a data set on individual voter transitions and party positions we can demonstrate that voter transitions indeed affect parties’ competitive behavior.

Dilemmas of Inclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaela M. Dancygier
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Equality And Diversity

As Europe's Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. This book explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. The book sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. It demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. The book highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, the book advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today's democracies.

Forging the Franchise

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Langan Teele
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Strategic Alliances ◽  
National Level ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Massive Change ◽  
Political Emancipation ◽  
Women’S Preferences ◽  
Do So

In the 1880s, women were barred from voting in all national-level elections, but by 1920 they were going to the polls in nearly thirty countries. What caused this massive change? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not because of progressive ideas about women or suffragists' pluck. In most countries, elected politicians fiercely resisted enfranchising women, preferring to extend such rights only when it seemed electorally prudent and necessary to do so. This book demonstrates that the formation of a broad movement across social divides, and strategic alliances with political parties in competitive electoral conditions, provided the leverage that ultimately transformed women into voters. As the book shows, in competitive environments, politicians had incentives to seek out new sources of electoral influence. A broad-based suffrage movement could reinforce those incentives by providing information about women's preferences, and an infrastructure with which to mobilize future female voters. At the same time that politicians wanted to enfranchise women who were likely to support their party, suffragists also wanted to enfranchise women whose political preferences were similar to theirs. In contexts where political rifts were too deep, suffragists who were in favor of the vote in principle mobilized against their own political emancipation. Exploring tensions between elected leaders and suffragists and the uncertainty surrounding women as an electoral group, the book sheds new light on the strategic reasons behind women's enfranchisement.

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