Locating Political Parties in Policy Space

Abstract

Starting from a number of deficiencies in the Comparative Manifestos Project approach to studying left–right policy scales in election programs, an additive model based on the distinction between position and valence issues is proposed. This allows analysis of the policy space in established democracies under the assumption that left and right have different meanings from country to country and over time. The model is illustrated with regard to four Western European countries with different types of party system: Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Empirical findings affirm that the procedures are workable and that the data generated are capable of yielding detailed information beyond that which previous approaches are able to deliver. In addition, preliminary tests on external validity produce reassuring results.

Partisan Policy-Making in Western Europe

“…More specifically, Hansen (2008) remarked that the selection of Danish manifestos has not been handled systematically and that a third of their content had been excluded for being un- (Dinas/Gemenis, 2010), especially due to the used inductive inference (Jahn, 2011), whereas the "standard" CMP method has so far undergone extensive analytical scrutiny both in terms of validity and reliability (Budge/Pennings, 2007: 125). Franzmann/Kaiser (2006) claimed that the left-right scale should not be constructed merely in economic terms and that the content of the left-right dimension might differ over time and from country to country. The authors then place the parties on this dominant dimension by using regression scoring and by normalizing their scores to a scale ranging from 0 to 10.…”

Relevant Determinants of the Political Parties’ Environmental Preference

“…During the campaign period, political parties have the opportunity to reveal their ideological orientation via electoral platforms or party programs (Grossman and Helpman, 2005). The main advantages that bring the party's political program in the forefront of the political game are revealed by Michallet et al (2015, p. 4): it offers information shortcuts (Franzmann and Kaiser, 2006), it selects and aggregates the citizens' preferences in coherent policy packages (H. D. Klingemann et al, 1994), and election propaganda (Ray, 2007). But maybe one of the most striking features of these electoral manifestos consists in the fact that they inform the voters with regard to the policy preference of the party, including preference towards the environment.…”

Assessing the independence of state parties : issue ownership and morality politics in US state party platforms

“…I employ two methods of calculating right-left ideological measures. The first is the standard CMP RILE additive index that is used extensively in comparative political research (Budge, et al 1986;Budge 1987;Klingemann, et al 1994;2006;Laver and Budge 1992;Laver, et al 2003;Laver 2000;2001, for example). This measure is calculated by adding the proportions of all of the conservative policy position categories and subtracting from this the proportions of all of the liberal policy categories.…”

“…A scatterplot of scaled CMP ideology scores for the states is shown in Figure 11. Franzmann and Kaiser's (2006) measure, which provides a floating ideology measure that allows for variation between elections and directly addresses valence issues. This is the ideology measure of state party platforms that I will use for the duration of this study.…”

“…A score of .5 would indicate a perfect partisan balance. 85 and Kaiser's (2006) scaled ideology score for each state party platform. Consistent with hypothesis 4.6, the results indicate that conservative states are more likely to produce conservative state party platforms, even when we control for the partisan affiliation of the platforms.…”