Combining ideological and policy distances with valence for a model of party competition in Germany 2009

Abstract

This paper addresses two problems: how can we identify a verisimilar policy space and how can we detect Nash equilibria in this space for parties’ policy positions? We argue that the ideological party positions that voters perceive are fixed during the time span of one electoral campaign and that they constrain the policies parties offer the electorate in search of optimal vote shares. We apply the valence model developed by Schofield to party competition during the German federal election campaign 2009. First three issue scales are combined with a left–right scale to form one homogeneous space in which equilibrium locations of parties are sought. The results show that local Nash equilibria in this combined space depend heavily on the start values and are implausible. Fixing the ideological dimension leads to a stable and meaningful equilibrium configuration in which large parties move to more central positions and smaller parties move to more peripheral positions in the policy space.

Beyond Disaster and Risk: Post-Fukushima Nuclear News in U.S. and German Press

“…Germany, the other country addressed in this study, has a political structure that entails more than three significant parties, and as such, contains a more diverse political structure. In terms of nuclear policy, the Green Party in Germany originated from the antinuclear energy movement in the 1980s and initially consisted of environmentalists and peace activists (Kurella & Pappi, ). However, the Greens were not the only political group during the past several decades opposed to nuclear energy.…”

“…However, the Greens were not the only political group during the past several decades opposed to nuclear energy. A total of five parties (Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, the Liberal Party, the Greens, and the leftist party Linke) entered the German parliament in 2009, each representing various positions on a diverse ideological left–right scale (Kurella & Pappi, ).…”

The Rise of Cultural Issues as an Opportunity for the Right? Insights from the 2015 Swiss Election

“…One important result of the literature on spatial models of voting and party competition is that no stable equilibrium exists in higher‐dimensional policy spaces, and the mean in both directions might not be closer to the political outcome than any other point in the policy space (McKelvey ; Schofield ). Although more recent empirical work found political equilibria in multidimensional policy spaces (Kurella and Pappi ; Schofield and Sened ), the conditions for convergence are strict and equilibria might not be unique (Schofield ). This leaves much leeway for major shifts in political outcomes.…”

The Role of Competitive Advantage in Party Competition

“…While there is no clear equivalent to a competitive advantage in the party competition literature, there are a number of concepts in utility‐based approaches that show a substantial overlap with that idea. Those models that presume a positional competition between parties on relevant policy dimensions come closest to the idea of a competitive advantage where they combine a valence aspect, primarily performance evaluations, with policy positions (Adams, Merrill, and Grofman ; Ansolabehere and Snyder ; Kurella and Pappi ; Laver and Sergenti ; Nyhuis ). In doing so, they acknowledge the possibility that parties can have a strong appeal among certain voters that is rooted in nonpolicy (nonpositional) reasons: that is, greater valence.…”