Party System Polarization, Citizenship, and Immigrant Party Allegiances in Western Europe

This article examines the role of party system polarization in shaping immigrants’ party loyalties in their host country. It suggests that foreign-born individuals are more likely to become partisans when political parties take more distinct policy positions on immigration control. Moreover, this relationship is more pronounced among foreign-born non-citizens than foreign-born citizens. Using individual-level public opinion data from eight rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS), 2002–2017, and measures of party system polarization constructed using party policy positions from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) in 17 West European democracies, the analyses confirm these expectations. The findings presented here suggest that party polarization on immigration control enhances, rather than undermines, immigrant political integration in contemporary democracies.

Electoral Systems and Issue Polarization

This chapter reviews theoretical and empirical research pertaining to the question: How do electoral systems influence parties’ programmatic incentives, that is, the policy positions party elites present to the public? More specifically, it discusses whether electoral systems influence the diversity of party policy positions, measured via the degree of party system polarization. It emphasizes electoral laws’ permissiveness or proportionality, defined in terms of the relationship between parties’ national vote shares and their share of parliamentary seats. The review of theoretical arguments suggests that any effects of proportionality on polarization should be modest, a prediction supported by empirical studies that identify only weak and inconsistent relationships between proportionality and party polarization along the left–right ideological dimension.

The Informational Role of Party Leader Changes on Voter Perceptions of Party Positions

According to spatial models of elections, citizen perceptions of party policy positions are a key determinant of voting choices. Yet recent scholarship from Europe suggests that voters do not adjust their perceptions according to what parties advocate in their campaigns. This article argues that voters develop a more accurate understanding of parties’ ideological positions following a leadership change because a new leader increases the credibility of party policy offerings. Focusing on Western European parties in the 1979–2012 period, it shows that having a new leader is a necessary condition for voters to more accurately perceive the left–right placements of opposition parties. Voters do not use party platforms to form perceptions of incumbent parties’ positions, regardless of whether the leader is new or veteran. These results have important implications for models of party competition and democratic representation.

Nonpolicy Factors in Party Competition

Moving beyond the assumption that voters care about only the party policy positions on offer, this chapter models the possibility that they also care about perceived “nonpolicy” attributes of political candidates, such as competence, charisma, honesty. These characterize what have become known as “valence” models of party competition. Voters balance utility derived from each candidate's nonpolicy valence against utility derived from the candidate's policy position. The contribution of valence models has been to explain why all parties do not all converge on regions of the policy space with the highest densities of voter ideal points. Higher valence parties tend to go to regions of the policy space with higher voter densities, while lower valence parties are forced to steer well clear of these parties and pick policy positions in regions with lower voter densities.

Benchmarking the Baseline Model

This chapter begins the investigation of multiparty competition using the baseline model specified in Chapter 3 and methods and procedures specified in Chapter 4. The most significant results concern the representativeness of evolved configurations of party policy positions. In symmetric populations, the ideal points of voters are not best represented by a set of (Hunter) parties who compete for their support by trying to find popular policy positions. Instead, voter preferences are better represented by a set of (Aggregator) parties that do not compete with each other on policy at all but instead seek to represent the policy preferences only of their current supporters. This happens because the dynamics of vote-seeking competition in this setting cause parties to set policy positions closer to the center of the policy space than would be needed for optimal representation—while at the same time avoiding the dead center of the space.

A Baseline ABM of Party Competition

This chapter specifies the “baseline” agent-based model of dynamic multiparty competition, which derives from an article published by (Laver 2005). This assumes that each voter has in mind some personal ideal “package” of policy positions and supports the political party that offers the policy package closest to this. The dynamic system at the heart of the model is as follows: voters support their “closest” party in this sense; party leaders adapt the policy packages they offer in light of the revealed pattern of voter support; voters reconsider which party they support in light of the revealed pattern of party policy packages; and this process continues forever. This recursive model describes policy-based party competition as a complex system, and the baseline model specifies three decision rules that party leaders may deploy when they choose party policy positions in such a setting. These rules are Sticker (always keep the same position), Aggregator (move policy to the centroid of the ideal policy positions of your current supporters), and Hunter (if your last policy move increased your support, make another move in the same direction; or else change heading and move in a different direction).

Agree or disagree

Political party leaders are among the most influential actors in parliamentary democracies, and a change in party leadership is an important event for a party organization. Yet, we do not know how these leadership changes affect voter perceptions about party policy positions. On the one hand, we may expect party leadership changes to renew attention to the party, educate voters about its policy positions, and hence reduce disagreement among voters about party positions. On the other hand, rival parties may use a leadership change as an opportunity to defame the party, its leadership, and policies, and hence, increase voter confusion about the party’s policies. Using data from seven Western European democracies, I show that leadership changes help parties reduce voter disagreement about party policy positions. This effect is stronger if the new leader shifts the party’s policy positions.

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.

UK fiscal policy must tighten from election promises

Subject Parties' economic policy promises in the May 7 election. Significance The tightest UK election in years is taking place at a time when growth prospects are uncertain. The closeness of the race is encouraging all main parties to make unrealistic tax and spending promises. The likelihood of political uncertainty, the nature of some party policy positions and the possibility of some form of Labour/Scottish National Party (SNP) government are prompting investor and market concerns. Some party proposals, especially on tax, would damage UK residents or companies; some large companies are threatening to leave the country. Impacts Especially if Labour forms the next government, some large companies could relocate their headquarters from the United Kingdom. If the Conservatives form the government, the risk of a UK exit from the EU will rise, heightening international business concerns. Labour and the SNP have the closest economic policy positions among the main parties. If the SNP holds the balance of power, it will extract -- often fiscal -- policy concessions from the UK government. Greater Scottish fiscal powers will strain the UK fiscal transfer formula. Adjusting this could increase the risk of Scottish independence.