scholarly journals Party Positions from Wikipedia Classifications of Party Ideology

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Herrmann ◽  
Holger Döring
Keyword(s):  
Simple Model ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
High Stability ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Common Space ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Measurement Strategy ◽  
Party Position ◽  
Party Ideology ◽  
Expert Surveys

We develop a new measure of party position based on a scaling of ideology tags supplied in infoboxes on political parties' Wikipedia pages. Assuming a simple model of tag assignment, we estimate the locations of parties and ideologies in a common space. We find that the recovered scale can be interpreted in familiar terms of 'left vs. right'. Estimated party positions correlate well with ratings of parties' positions from extant large-scale expert surveys, most strongly with ratings of general left-right ideology. Party position estimates also show high stability in a test-retest scenario. Our results demonstrate that a Wikipedia-based approach yields valid and reliable left-right scores comparable to scores obtained via conventional expert coding methods. It thus provides a measure with potentially unlimited party coverage. Our measurement strategy is also applicable beyond Wikipedia.

scholarly journals Helping Citizens to Locate Political Parties in the Policy Space: a Dataset for the 2014 elections to the European Parliament

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Kostas Gemenis ◽  
Fernando Mendez ◽  
Jonathan Wheatley
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Party Position ◽  
Voter Information

The authors present a dataset that contains the positions of 231 political parties across 28 countries on 30 policy issues that were considered salient for the 2014 elections to the European Parliament. The party position estimates were originally used in a voter information tool which compared the policy preferences of citizens to those of political parties. The paper discusses the estimation method in the context of the literature on estimating party positions, outlines the coding methodology, and introduces the value of the dataset for third-party users interested in studying political participation and representation.

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.

scholarly journals From convergence to congruence: European integration and citizen–elite congruence

2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652110249
Author(s):  
Daniel Devine ◽  
Raimondas Ibenskas
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The European Union ◽  
State Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Expert Surveys

Recent research argues that European integration has led to an ideological convergence of member state party systems, which is purported to have significant consequences for democratic representation. We argue that convergence of party positions is less problematic if congruence between governed and governing is maintained. We therefore turn to test whether integration has had an effect on congruence between the public and their governing elites. Using five measures of integration, two sources of public opinion data, and expert surveys on political parties, we find little evidence that integration into the European Union reduces congruence between the public and the national party system, government or legislature either ideologically or across five issue areas. These results should assuage concerns about integration’s effect on domestic political representation.

scholarly journals Measuring and comparing party ideology and heterogeneity

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Royce Carroll ◽  
Hiroki Kubo
Keyword(s):  
Policy Positions ◽  
Common Space ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Party Ideology ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Expert Surveys ◽  
Western Democracies

Estimates of party ideological positions in Western Democracies yield useful party-level information, but generally lack the ability to provide an insight into the intraparty politics of party elites. In this article, we generate comparable measures of latent individual policy positions from elite survey data that enable analysis of elite-level party ideology and heterogeneity. This approach has some advantages over both expert surveys and approaches based on behavioral data, such as roll-call voting, and is directly relevant to the study of party cohesion. We generate a measure of elite positions for several mostly European countries using a common space scaling approach and demonstrate its validity as a measure of party ideology. We then apply these data to examine sources of party elite heterogeneity, focusing on the role of intraparty competition in electoral systems, nomination rules, and party goals. We find that policy-seeking parties and centralized party nomination rules are associated with less party heterogeneity. While intraparty competition has no effect, such contexts appear to condition the effect of district magnitude.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Party Responsiveness to Public Opinion in Young Democracies

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172199363
Author(s):  
Raimondas Ibenskas ◽  
Jonathan Polk
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Established Democracies ◽  
Expert Surveys ◽  
Cross National

Are political parties in young democracies responsive to the policy preferences of the public? Compared to extensive scholarship on party responsiveness in established democracies, research on party responsiveness in young democracies is limited. We argue that weaker programmatic party–voter linkages in post-communist democracies create incentives for parties to respond to their supporters rather than the more general electorate. Such responsiveness occurs in two ways. First, parties follow shifts in the mean position of their supporters. Second, drawing on the research on party–voter congruence, we argue that parties adjust their policy positions to eliminate previous incongruence between themselves and their supporters. Analyses based on a comprehensive dataset that uses expert surveys, parties’ manifestoes and election surveys to measure parties’ positions, and several cross-national and national surveys to measure voters’ preferences provide strong support for this argument.

Legal restrictions on the right of association in political parties and their interpretation in court decisions: comparative legal analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-179
Author(s):  
Andrey Vershinin
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Party System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Creation

The article examines the issue of exercising the freedom of association in political parties in Russia in a comparative analysis with the leading democratic countries of the world. Modern democracies cannot be imagined without political parties, which are the representors of the interests of their voters in legislative bodies and local government bodies. The development of civil society and the entire political system in the country depends on how the freedom of association in political parties and the access of parties to participate in elections is realized. The development of legislation on political parties in the Russian Federation proceeded unevenly. In the first years after the adoption of the Constitution the legislative body did not introduce strict requirements for parties. The adoption of a special federal law on political parties in 2001 became a turning point in the development of the party system. The author identifies two large blocks of restrictions on the creation of parties. The first is legislative restrictions, the second is the restrictions that arise from the unfair activities of legislative and law enforcement agencies. In this work, legislative restrictions are compared with restrictions in other democracies, as well as based on legal positions developed by the European Court of Human Rights. The author comes to the opinion that some restrictions on the creation of parties are not necessary now, in the meantime they significantly narrow the possibilities of party creation and political competition. First, we are talking about a ban on the creation of regional parties. The Constitutional Court in its legal positions indicated that this restriction is temporary and will be lifted over time. Within the framework of this work, the author will give suggestions on changing the approach to the creation of political parties in Russia, which should affect the emergence of new strong parties at different levels of public authority. The author believes that a system of “controlled multiparty system” has developed in Russia, which is implemented both in changing the legislation on political parties based on the interests of the “party in power” and the practice of the registration body, which prevents the formation of new parties claiming to redistribute the existing distribution of forces. Based on the analysis of the legislation on political parties, law enforcement practice, decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the ECHR and the legislation of foreign countries, the author proposes approaches to reforming the existing party system, which include small cosmetic changes and large-scale changes in approaches to the creation of parties.

scholarly journals How Voters Distort their Perceptions and Why this Matters

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea De Angelis
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Ideal Point ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Perceptual Bias ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Perceptual Distortions ◽  
European Election ◽  
Election Studies

Voters’ ability to perceive political parties’ positions on policy scales is a precondition for a functioning and responsive electoral democracy. Appropriate measures of policy distance are thus key to addressing the link between political parties and the citizens. This chapter reviews the scholarship on ideal point estimation, identifying the main methodological and substantial implications for empirical studies involving issue scales. Next, the chapter applies two-stage Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey scaling to European Election Studies data to find evidence of systematic perceptual distortions: right-wing voters perceive political parties as more progressive than they actually are, while knowledgeable voters perceive greater differences between parties. Perceptual bias is also shown to correlate with standard polarization measures based on perceived party positions.

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