Measurement of party positions on the basis of party programmes, media coverage and voter perceptions

Kleinnijenhuis, J.; Pennings, Paul

doi:10.4324/9780203451656_chapter_11

Cited by 66 publications

(55 citation statements)

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“…Traditional computer-coded content analysis, however, is simply a direct attempt to reproduce the hand-coding of texts, using computer algorithms to match texts to coding dictionaries. With proper dictionaries linking specific words or phrases to predetermined policy positions, traditional techniques for the computer-coding of texts can produce estimates of policy positions that have a high cross-validity when measured against hand-coded content analyses of the same texts, as well as against completely independent data sources (Bara 2001;de Vries, Giannetti, and Mansergh 2001;Kleinnijenhuis and Pennings 2001;Laver and Garry 2000). Paradoxically, however, this approach does not dispense with the need for heavy human input, given the extensive effort needed to develop and test coding dictionaries that are sensitive to the strategic contextboth substantive and temporal-of the texts analyzed.…”

Section: W E Present a New Way Of Extracting Policy Positions From Pomentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data

2003

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Section: W E Present a New Way Of Extracting Policy Positions From Pomentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data

2003

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“…In each country, all articles related to the electoral contest or politics in general were selected from a quality newspaper and a tabloid, covering the last 2 months before the election. 3 The articles were coded sentence-by-sentence using a method developed by Kleinnijenhuis and Pennings (2001). The data predominantly captures statements that party exponents make at press conferences and on other occasions, and the campaign data therefore closely reflects what voters actually know of the parties' positions.…”

Section: The Extreme Populist Right In France and Germany: Research Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why a right-wing populist party emerged in France but not in Germany: cleavages and actors in the formation of a new cultural divide

Bornschier

2011

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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This article analyzes why, despite similar transformations in the dimensions structuring political space since the late 1980s, extreme right-wing populist parties have emerged in some West European countries, but not in others. Two factors may affect the fortunes of these parties. First, if electorates remain firmly entrenched in older cleavages, new parties will find it difficult to establish themselves. Second, the positions of the established actors with respect to the new cultural divide that the extreme populist right mobilizes may be crucial. This article systematizes the various explanations regarding the impact of mainstream party positions on the electoral fortunes of the extreme right, and develops two new hypotheses that differentiate between the conditions that favor the entry of the extreme right, and its subsequent success. The various hypotheses are then tested in an empirical analysis of election campaigns in France and Germany, combining data on party positions as reflected in the news media with mass-level surveys. The results show that the diverging behavior of the established parties, rather than the strength of the traditional state-market cleavage, explains the differences between these two countries. More specifically, the differing strategy of the mainstream left in the two contexts has allowed the Front National to anchor itself in the French party system, whereas similar parties have not achieved a breakthrough in Germany.

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“…The content analysis leads to a frequency distribution that reveals the relative weight of all policy areas. Earlier content analysis on the basis of this technique has shown that it is possible to code manifestos with word lists and to arrive at reliable results that are comparable to or even better than the coding done by humans (Kleinnijenhuis and Pennings, 2001;Laver and Garry, 2000;Laver et al, 2003). The dictionary is validated by means of the Keyword-In-Context technique, which allows one to examine the occurrences of key words in their textual environment.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parties, Voters and Policy Priorities in the Netherlands, 1971-2002

Pennings

2005

Party Politics

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To what extent are the priorities of voters reflected by the policy pledges of parties? And how decisive are party pledges for the policy-making of governments? The chain of delegation assumes direct linkages between voters, parties and governments, of which the voters are the principal actor. When this assumption is tested for The Netherlands, it turns out that parties are not very responsive to voter priorities and that the policy distances between parliamentary parties and governments are relatively small. This pattern makes sense in a consensus democracy in which parties have to compromise and cannot afford simply to reflect what voters perceive as important. It also suggests that the mandate theory is more directly applicable to majoritarian democracies, where the winner takes all and therefore has more scope to translate voter priorities into policy-making.

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Measurement of party positions on the basis of party programmes, media coverage and voter perceptions

Cited by 66 publications

References 0 publications

Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data

Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data

Why a right-wing populist party emerged in France but not in Germany: cleavages and actors in the formation of a new cultural divide

Parties, Voters and Policy Priorities in the Netherlands, 1971-2002

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