Issue salience in regional party manifestos in Spain

Abstract

Abstract. This article analyses the dynamics of electoral competition in a multilevel setting. It is based on a content analysis of the party manifestos of the Spanish PP and PSOE in eight regional elections held between 2001 and 2003. It provides an innovative coding scheme for analysing regional party manifestos and on that basis seeks to account for inter‐regional, intra‐party and inter‐party differences in regional campaigning. The authors have tried to explain the inter‐regional variation of the issue profiles of state‐wide parties in regional elections on the basis of a model with four independent variables: the asymmetric nature of the system, the electoral cycle, the regional party systems and the organisation of the state‐wide parties. Three of their hypotheses are rejected, but the stronger variations in the regional issue profiles of the PSOE corroborate the assumption that parties with a more decentralised party organisation support regionally more diverse campaigning. The article concludes by offering an alternative explanation for this finding and by suggesting avenues for further research.

Die Bedeutung des regionalen Kontexts für die programmatische Positionierung von Schweizer Kantonalparteien1

“…etwa Budge 1994; Laver 2005). Zudem können sich aus programmatischer Heterogenität innerparteiliche Spannungen ergeben, die kaum noch durch etwaige Stimmengewinne auf regionaler Ebene zu kompensieren sind (Libbrecht et al 2009; van Biezen und Hopkin 2006). Es stellt sich demnach die Frage, inwieweit sich die regionale Verankerung von parteipolitischen Akteuren, die in einem Mehrebenensystem agieren, in ihrer Programmatik widerspiegelt und inwiefern sich diese Unterschiede in der Programmatik der Kantonalparteien durch die Eigenschaften der regionalen Wählerschaften und weitere regionale Kontextfaktoren erklären lassen.…”

Question Hour Activity and Party Behaviour in India

“…Legislators may hold basic preferences that influence their behaviour, but they may also forego their preferences in favour of party discipline and thereby promote the party's ability to control the legislative agenda (Lawrence, Maltzman, & Smith, 2006). The literature has explored how party behaviour in parliament is affected by whether a party is in opposition rather than in government (Hix & Noury, forthcoming), by party platforms (Libbrecht, Maddens, Swenden, & Fabre, 2009) and policy heterogeneity within parties (Dewan & Spirling, 2011).…”

Party Strategies on Territorial Reform: State-wide Parties and the State of Autonomies in Spain

“…They often remain a contested issue, particularly in multinational countries, where decentralisation raises issues of differentiated autonomy and symbolic recognition for distinct regions with national minorities (Keating 1996). Although state-wide parties are found to accommodate territorial demands in order to compete with regionalist parties (see Swenden and Maddens 2009), decentralisation also brings about direct confrontation between them regarding the depth and direction of subsequent territorial reforms.…”