On the relationship between party polarization and citizen polarization

Do party policy offerings simply reflect public opinion or do parties shape public demand for policies? Theories of party position-taking and the operation of democracy expect parties to track their supporters’ positions, while scholarship of public opinion has shown voters often adopt the position of their preferred parties. We apply both of these theoretical expectations to the relationship between citizen polarization and party polarization and additionally argue that the relationship between them should be stronger among more politically more engaged and sophisticated citizens. We draw on aggregated survey data from 174 cross-national and national election studies from 19 established democracies, to assess the extent to which citizen polarization responds to party polarization, the extent to which parties respond to changes in citizen polarization, and whether these relationships differ across different groups of citizens. We estimate seemingly unrelated error-correction models employing data on party and citizen positions from 1971 to 2019. Our findings suggest that citizen polarization follows party polarization and also that politically engaged and sophisticated citizens are more responsive to changes in party polarization than the politically less engaged and unsophisticated. In contrast, we find little evidence that party polarization responds to changes in citizen polarization.

How and why party position estimates from manifestos, expert, and party elite surveys diverge. A comparative analysis of the ‘left–right’ and the ‘European integration’ dimensions

This paper examines the validity of three approaches to estimate party positions on the general left–right and EU dimensions. We newly introduce party elite data from the comprehensive IntUne survey and cross-validate it with existing expert survey and manifesto data. The general left–right estimates generated by elites and experts show a higher congruence than those derived from party manifestos; neither measure clearly materializes as more valid regarding EU positions. We identify which factors explain diverging estimates. For instance, disagreement among experts has greater impact than their mere number. The substantial centrist bias of the manifesto estimates persists even when alternative documents are used to substitute manifestos. Low response rates among elites have no systematic detrimental effect on the validity of party position estimates.

Theatre life in the village – a new kind of leisure for peasant youth in the 1920s

The purpose of the article is to highlight theatrical art as a form of organized cultural leisure of peasant youth during the 1920s. Research methods: problem-chronological, historical-systemic and analytical. Main results. It is found that drama circles and rural theatre were in great demand among young people and became the most popular form of leisure in the village. The organizers of group theatrical work were Komsomol activists and teachers. It is found that the latter, being an educated part of the rural environment, became more productive and effective in setting up appropriate work with peasant youth. There were organizational and financial problems in the practice of theatre companies and drama circles. It was one of the reasons for the low quality of youth theatre performances. At the same time, there were many successful amateur groups in the districts of the Ukrainian SSR. The author shows that the role and place of peasant youth in drama circles and rural theatres was determined by the political education policy of the ruling party. The filling of youth leisure by rural theatre was to perform several functions, including raising the general cultural level of the population, deepening political consciousness, anti-religious propaganda and levelling the dominant traditional forms of leisure for young peasant population. Taking into consideration the functions and tasks, set by the ruling elite before theatrical and dramatic circles, the themes of plays and performances were also appropriate. They tried to select the whole repertoire in the direction of general strengthening of the Bolshevik Party position in the countryside. Considering the possibility of influence of this type of art on young people consciousness formation, in the conditions of the totalitarian regime it was doomed to its political and ideological service. Practical significance: recommended for use in the study of rural youth leisure, the study of history of rural theatre as an original phenomenon in the village of the NEP period. Originality: the author generalizes the experience of creating leisure of rural youth of the post-revolutionary period in the conditions of ideological and cultural transformations. Scientific novelty: for the first time peasant youth is considered by the author as a subject of the formation of a new type of leisure of the Ukrainian village of the 1920s. Article type: review-generalizing.

Comparing computational and non-computational methods in party position estimation: Finland, 2003–2019

It is often claimed that computational methods for examining textual data give good enough party position estimates at a fraction of the costs of many non-computational methods. However, the conclusive testing of these claims is still far from fully accomplished. We compare the performance of two computational methods, Wordscores and Wordfish, and four non-computational methods in estimating the political positions of parties in two dimensions, a left-right dimension and a progressive-conservative dimension. Our data comprise electoral party manifestos written in Finnish and published in Finland. The non-computational estimates are composed of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey estimates, the Manifesto Project estimates, estimates deriving from survey-based data on voter perceptions of party positions, and estimates derived from electoral candidates’ replies to voting advice application questions. Unlike Wordfish, Wordscores generates relatively well-performing estimates for many of the party positions, but despite this does not offer an even match to the non-computational methods.

The Two Faces of Party Ambiguity: A Comprehensive Model of Ambiguous Party Position Perceptions

Recent research on electoral behavior has suggested that policy-informed vote choices are frequently obstructed by uncertainty about party positions. Given the significance of clear and distinct party platforms for meaningful representation, several studies have investigated the conditions under which parties are perceived as ambiguous. Yet previous studies have often relied on measures of perceived positional ambiguity that are fairly remote from the concept, casting doubt on their substantive conclusions. This article introduces a statistical model to estimate a comprehensive measure of perceived ambiguity that incorporates the two principal factors: non-positions and positional inconsistency. The two-faces model employs issue perceptions in an item response framework to explicitly parametrize the perceived ambiguity of party positions. The model is applied to data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and subsequently associated with party characteristics that drive perceptions of party ambiguity. The results suggest that (a) there are notable differences between the proposed and competing measures, highlighting the need to be mindful of the intricacies of political information processing in research on perceptions of ambiguity and (b) involuntary ambiguity might be an underexplored explanation for unclear party perceptions.

A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE NOVEL «ASSEMBLY HALL» BY HERMANN KANT IN THE REUNIFIED GERMANY (AFTER 1991)

H. Kant’s novel received a high literary and aesthetic appreciation in criticism and wide recognition by readers. Criticism (before and after the unification of Germany) concerns mainly one aspect viz. authenticity of the events depicted in the novel and the charcters’ images. Opponents argue that Kant’s ideological views, his consistent socialist and party position have prompt him to embellish reality, create simulacra, and the idyllic world of socialist Biedermeyer. The article shows that these assessments ignore the nature of his talent, especially his creative personality peculiarities such as journalistic orientation of the motivated «political» person and writer.

From Personal to Partisan: Abortion, Party, and Religion Among California State Legislators

The parties’ polarization on abortion is a signal development. Yet while the issue has been much discussed, scholars have said less about how it reveals the unstable relationship between legislators’ personal backgrounds and their issue positions. We argue that the importance of personal characteristics may wane as links between parties and interest groups develop. We focus on the case of abortion in the California State Assembly—one of the first legislative bodies to wrestle with the issue in modern times. Drawing from newly collected evidence on legislator and district religion and Assembly voting, we show that divisions on abortion were chiefly religious in the 1960s—with Catholics in both parties opposing reform—but later became highly partisan. This shift was distinct from overall polarization and was not a result of district-level factors or “sorting” of legislators by religion into parties. Instead, growing ties between new movements and parties—feminists for Democrats and the Christian Right for the Republicans—made party affiliation supplant religion as the leading cue for legislators on abortion, impelling many incumbents to revise their positions. Archival and secondary evidence further show that activists sent new cues to legislators about the importance of their positions on these issues. Showing how personal characteristics became outweighed by partisan considerations contributes to understanding of party position change and polarization, as well as processes of representation and abortion politics.

Rightward Leanings and Nonstandard Party-Position Perceptions

Some individuals defy the consensus as to parties’ relative ideological positions, asserting that a party is more left-leaning than its rivals even when most observers have the opposite view. Such discrepancies undercut spatial models of politics. Rightward leaners’ tendency to use different, more self-anchored, bases for assessing ideology may make them especially likely to dissent in this way, as might their attention to distinct issues. Results from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems confirm that those on the political right are likelier to reverse typical left-right orderings, even on right-leaning or major parties. Evidence from the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study further shows that right-leaners’ nonstandard ordering extends to parties’ specific issue-positions—particularly, notably, on issues of higher salience to the left. Standard models of politics may accordingly apply less well to those who identify as being on the political right.