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This paper examines strategic voting at Scottish Parliamentary elections since 1999. The emergence of the pro-independence Scottish National Party as the dominant party in Scotland has forced unionist voters to carefully consider their options. Analysing differences between the simultaneous pluralist constituency ballot and proportional list ballot of Scotland's Additional Member System provides a unique insight into how voter behaviour has changed in response to Scotland's changing political reality. This paper finds that many unionist voters have put aside left-right rivalries to support fellow unionist candidates on the constituency ballot. This examination finds that Labour and Conservative voters are willing to work together, in some circumstances, to defeat a significant number of pro-independence candidates. I find that intra-unionist strategic voting helped prevent the separatist majorities in parliament in both 2016 and 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue positions of political actors are often ambiguous, resulting in uncertainty on the part of voters. Such ambiguity constitutes a challenge to representation, as it prevents voters from getting a clear understanding of parties' positions. Ironically, despite growing interest in the concept, the concept itself is remarkably ambiguous: different studies use different conceptualisations of ambiguity, which hampers theory integration. This paper proposes a three-dimensional conceptualization of ambiguity: party positions are ambiguous to the extent that parties deemphasize them, remain vague or are inconsistent on them. A review of 103 studies establishes the prevalence of these three dimensions in the literature, shows that most studies focus on a single dimension, and reveals lacunae in the current research on ambiguity. Based on the three-dimensional conceptualisation, the paper then develops a preliminary framework on the causes of ambiguity, outlines key gaps in the literature and suggests promising avenues of theory development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do electoral institutions affect primary competition and legislative behavior? This paper examines the understudied electoral rule known as ballot access laws, advancing the novel theory that denying ballot access to minor candidates forces these outsiders into major parties. I find that in American states that adopt high ballot access thresholds experience higher rates of ideological heterogeneity and primary competition, and those that reduce their thresholds experience a reduction in heterogeneity and competition. Using an original dataset on state-level changes to ballot access thresholds from 1990 to 2018, I find that an increase in the number and types of primary competition leads to an increase in heterogeneity within both party caucuses. This paper adds to the literature on legislative behavior and electoral institutions, demonstrating institutions' role in shaping electoral competition and the ideology of those represented in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Districted proportional systems give an edge to right-wing parties that are more popular in rural areas where district magnitude is small and large parties are mechanically advantaged. In this paper, we explore the role played by voters in this bias by looking at how ideology correlates with strategic voting. We analyze survey data from 44 elections in Western Europe and find that left-wing voters are more likely to support a party that is not viable (p < 0.01), but once in this position they seem less likely to desert this party for one that is viable (p < 0.1). Further, we find that this pattern is likely driven by the intensity of partisan preferences as left-wing voters are on average more attached to their favorite party and thus more reluctant to desert it (p < 0.01). Our study thus demonstrates that the psychological effect of districted proportional systems amplifies the mechanical one in advanced industrial democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a three-dimensional approach to party political conflict at the local level, drawing from an anti-elitism dimension, the left-right dimension and a localism dimension. More than 4500 parties participating in the 2014 and 2018 Dutch municipal elections are placed on these dimensions on the basis of their manifestos using quantitative textual analysis. A three-pronged approach is used to justify this three-dimensional model. The three dimensions are shown to be empirically distinctive. They are revealed to reflect meaningful differences between parties that are also visible in their names; and finally, these dimensions are shown to predict participation in local executive coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable progress in the study of party switching, scholarly interest in institutional constraints explicitly designed to limit or penalise inter-party mobility remains limited in the literature. This paper contributes to the emerging scholarship on party switching and legal institutional constrains by assessing the effectiveness of the new anti-defection regulations introduced in the Italian Senate starting from 2018. To evaluate the impact of this intervention, we develop two quasi-experimental research approaches that take advantage of the bicameral structure of the Italian Parliament and the fact that the anti-defection regulations were only implemented in the Senate and not in the Chamber of Deputies. Our results indicate that anti-defection regulations failed both to limit inter-party mobility and the formation of new legislative parties. However, they were effective in influencing the timing of party switching, concentrating it in the phases of government formation and dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of party primaries on turnout at the meso level has been particularly under-researched. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore the determinants of turnout on party primaries by employing an original dataset comprising over 300 selection processes of candidates and leaders in Spain from 1991 to 2021 at both the national and regional level. One of our main findings suggests, in line with what has been affirmed by previous literature, a positive impact of competitiveness on turnout. We also find some contradictory effects of ideology on turnout: as expected most left-wing parties have better turnout averages than right-wing parties, but turnout is higher in primaries organised by right-wing parties. In addition, the type of primaries and the (online-offline) format of the event also appear to be a relevant factor shaping participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of macro-economic conditions on partisan policymaking through an analysis of novel data on the fulfilment of 2412 Italian pledges. Are parties able to produce ideologically driven policies even during economic downturns? And how does the economic context affect parties' capacity to fulfil their pledges? In this paper, I contend that the interaction between macroeconomic conditions and the policymaking process is more complex than it is usually depicted and cannot be restricted to the constraints, financial above all, engendered by a recession period. Results from binary logistic regressions indeed suggest that parties do maintain a certain room for manoeuvre to influence the governing agenda in times of crisis. Even though in some cases pledge fulfilment is severely affected by deteriorations of economic conditions, parties are still able to carry out a large share of their programmatic priorities. Moreover, the economic situation mostly challenges left-leaning governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explain why some anti-systemic parties come to power while others remain as permanent opposition or disappear over time. The evidence is sought from the comparative analysis of the socialist Workers' Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, 1961-1971, permanent opposition) and the pro-Islamic Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, 1983-1998, in power). In particular, the parties are compared and contrasted in terms of their organizational style, leadership structure, and linkage with the voters. The paper argues that while the TIP built a loose and vertical local organization, the RP had a strong grassroots organization cemented through Islamic ideology. Second, while the RP had an unchallenged leadership of Necmettin Erbakan, the TIP had a fragmented leadership resulting from multiple ideological conflicts which undermined the efficiency of the decision-making process and its implementation. Finally, while the TIP was a textbook example of a programmatic party under the guidance of socialist ideology, the RP heavily relied on the distribution of clientelist resources – mostly emanating from its control in the municipalities and central government – to address voters. Overall, the RP took advantage of these strategies to rapidly extend its voter base beyond core voters, particularly in metropolitan areas, while the TIP largely remained restricted to narrow constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the subject of populism receives increasing scholarly attention from both political scientists and criminologists, so far these two bodies of literature have existed mostly in isolation of each other. This paper aims to connect them by investigating whether parties that political scientists describe as populist are likely to evince positions on criminal justice that criminologists describe as populist. Relying on a secondary data analysis comparing mainstream right-wing and populist right-wing parties for 131 elections in 24 countries since 1973, this paper concludes that the populist right on average expresses slightly more support for penal populism than the mainstream right, but that its positioning is crucially shaped by considerations relating to issues of immigration and multiculturalism. These findings suggest that most contemporary populist parties on the right primarily pursue a nativist agenda and will only invoke penal populism when it fits this overall strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining ideological conflict has always been a classic theme of studies of party organizations. The aim of this paper is to re-examine May's law, based on rational choice theory, which suggests that due to differential incentives sub-leaders are likely to prove the most extreme stratum in parry organizations, while non-leaders are the most moderate, and top leaders are located equidistant between these groups. The study, based on large-scale surveys of politicians, local constituency officers, party members and voters in the 1992 British general election, throws considerable doubt on this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does politics impact happiness? This paper evaluates how being a political "winner" or "loser" – whether one's preferred party controls government or not – is linked to multiple measures of life satisfaction. Using Gallup survey data on self-reported well-being for Democrats and for Republicans within the U.S. states for 2008–2016 (a time period when party control of government changed in several states) and a difference-in-difference model with two-way fixed effects, I find consistent evidence that citizens report lower levels of well-being when the opposing party controls state government. The substantive effect is particularly large for Democrats living in Republican controlled states. Conversely, there is little evidence that citizens' well-being is boosted when their own party controls state government. These findings have important implications for our understanding about how partisan competition and election outcomes can impact subjective well-being and further highlight the significance of negative partisanship for American public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know that political parties play a crucial role in the electoral processes of established democracies. However, we know much less about how this role fades away. In this paper, we study the case of Chile, a country that, until a few years ago, was cited as an example of a stable and institutionalized party system. We study how the phenomenon of independent candidates has shaken the national party system. We use two separate strategies to study this phenomenon. First, we measure the marginal effect of the independent label, compared to other party labels, using a conjoint experiment. Our findings show that candidates who are presented as independents have a significant increase in their probability of being chosen. Second, we measure whether this electoral effect relates to party identification. We find that respondents show low animosity towards independent candidates and high animosity towards traditional parties. Furthermore, a majority of the studied population can be classified as negative partisans. These findings suggest that the recent emergence of independent candidates is a result of negative views on parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central theme emerging from recent research on party competition is that political actors sometimes remain deliberately opaque in their communication. This phenomenon has been investigated under labels such as position-blurring, ambiguity, issue clarity or ideological clarity. In this paper we propose a distinction between two concepts that are sometimes conflated in this literature: ambiguity and vagueness. While ambiguity means that there is substantial variance in parties' positional signals, vagueness denotes political statements that are non-committal in terms of the policy action to be taken or the outcome to be achieved. We explore the co-variation of these two dimensions and their relationship to issue ownership and government status using manifesto data produced by the Austrian National Election Study. These data are unique in that they provide detailed positional information as well as information on policy commitment (election pledges). We show that the two dimensions are uncorrelated and have opposite relationships with issue ownership (vagueness positive, ambiguity negative). We conclude that analyses of position-blurring in party competition should take different strategies of non-clarity in party communication into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies examining parties' attack behaviour, also called negative campaigning, largely neglect temporal dynamics. Therefoe, this paper examines how the electoral cycle, the period between two elections, impacts parties' attack behaviour in parliaments. We argue that parties attack all the time but that the (i) level, (ii) type, and (iii) nature of attacks are affected by the electoral cycle as parties adapt their objectives. Analysing longitudinal data on parties' attacks in the parliaments of Belgium, Croatia, and the UK (2010–2020), we find that when elections draw closer parties' use of attacks, trait attacks, and uncivil attacks increases. We also find support for the notion that not all parties' attack behaviour is equally impacted by the electoral cycle, as parties differ in sensitivity to the electoral cycle based on risk acceptance. Overall, the impact of the electoral cycle on parties' strategic choices in general, and attack behaviour specifically, should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians compete with each other for votes, political positions and popularity in an attempt to translate their ideological ideas into policy. Due to a lack of face-to-face interactions, voters base their vote mainly on what they see in the media. To measure the influence of media on political success during routine periods, this paper links popularity polls to media coverage of individual politicians. Using automated content analysis on longitudinal newspaper data (2003–2019), the visibility of individual politicians and the used tone was analyzed. We find that media visibility has an impact on popularity. This media effect is especially important for MPs seeing that the function of higher-ranking politicians already affects their popularity without media visibility. A significant effect is also found for tone on popularity scores. We find a negativity bias in which negative news affects the popularity of politicians, whereas positive news does not make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Europe's parties realign around a new, transnational cleavage, this article turns back to a historical case in which national identity conflicts also coincided with profound economic transformation: multinational and industrializing Imperial Austria. While Austria is an important case for Lipset and Rokkan's classic cleavage theory, they overlooked the long evolution of its party system pre-WWI. This paper introduces the Habsburg Manifesto Dataset (HMD), demonstrating its usefulness by tracking the formation of Imperial Austrian party system cleavages under universal manhood suffrage. Based on the qualitative content analysis of historical electoral manifestos, HMD measures the policy offers and group appeals made by Imperial Austria's German and Czech parties. This allows testing Lipset and Rokkan's claims by applying contemporary methodologies to a case that was effectively excluded from their original analysis. Doing so reveals a surprising degree of structure: parties consistently combined issue and group claims around center-periphery, class, and state-church cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The organisation of populist radical right parties significantly shapes their long-term electoral success. Within this party family, great organisational variation can be found, with the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) representing a least-likely case: in terms of candidate selection (CS), it ranks much higher on democracy scales than the other Bundestag parties. This paper explores the reasons for this high level of intra-party democracy (IPD) by focusing on three explanatory dimensions: ideology, institutionalisation, and party unity. Methodologically, we apply multivariate analyses of representative quantitative data collected among AfD members in CS prior to the 2017 federal election. The results show that high political dissatisfaction and low levels of institutionalisation are important drivers of inclusive CS procedures. Overall, the article provides a deeper understanding of the underlying attitudes for the AfD's inclusive IPD, and offers substantial theoretical and empirical implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines party strategies in the short run during election campaigns? In this paper, I highlight a novel aspect of party behavior pertaining to the connection between election programs and actual campaign statements issued by party elites in the media. I argue that party leaders may feel compelled to fine-tune their rhetoric and stances during campaigns and thus deviate from their party's election programs. Nonetheless, their ability to conduct ad-hoc adaptations is limited. The theory I propose posits that two features of party organizations will determine if party leaders can engage in short-term inconsistencies. First, membership-dominated parties will be less likely to be inconsistent because their leaders will fear alienating (the strong) party members and getting punished as a result. Second, parties with strong societal integration—those that maintain strong ties with society and an extensive network of local branches—are more likely to indulge in ideological inconsistency because they establish close bonds with voters based on problem-solving rather than broad ideological principles. I test these dynamics in 14 European democracies between 1972 and 2017 and find strong empirical support. The findings show that intricate party organizations and robust connections with normal citizens influence parties' short-term strategies during election campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines when parties listen to interest groups and adopt their input. Interest group information can help parties bolster their positions, and by taking their input into account, parties show that they are responsive to the groups' interests which can increase their appeal to their constituents. Listening to interest groups can, however, also repel voters who disagree with the groups' positions. This paper argues that party and issue-level characteristics affect whether the benefits of listening to interest groups exceed the costs. Examining more than 25,000 party-interest group observations on 88 Norwegian policy proposals and using a text reuse approach to measure interest group influence, the findings indicate that public salience, party issue emphasis, interest group coalitions, and government status affect parties' propensity to listen. This implies that interest groups can be a pertinent source of information for parties under certain circumstances which affects the link between voters and parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government formation in multiparty systems requires election winners to strike deals to form a coalition government. Do voters respond and how do they respond to coalition government deals? This paper examines the short-term consequences of coalition government formation on voters in European democracies relying on survey panel data and original content analysis of coalition agreements. It tests theoretical expectations that deal with both the actual and perceived ideological shifts parties make when joining coalition deals as well as the effect of a much simpler heuristic cue based on preferences. The findings indicate that coalition deals have consequences on party preferences, but voter perceptions play a much stronger effect than the actual content of coalition deals. These results have important implications for our understanding of public opinion and provide important insights into the current difficulties and challenges of government formation and representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the way parties assign members to parliamentary committees in fragmented multiparty settings. Thus, it analyzes how the two most central institutions of parliamentary politics––political parties and parliamentary committees––interact with one another. To the best of our knowledge, no research into this subject has systematically explored the intersection of considerations based on individual legislator characteristics and coalition management in committee assignment. Using Israel as our case study, we show that legislators' expertise modestly shapes committee assignment patterns. However, parties in coalition often have another set of considerations to take into account when assigning members to committees. We show that parties in coalition do not only bargain on ministerial positions or committee chairs––they also bargain on their members' assignment to committees and use this resource to allow (or hinder) each other to augment influence and control in a given policy area, or to perform affective monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Duverger's law holds that single member district rules produce two-party systems, but third party voting remains an important feature of these institutional contexts. To explain the discrepancy between theory and empirical reality, Gary Cox specified four conditions that are necessary for the theoretical expectations to bear out. Yet, subsequent research has focused mostly on just one of these conditions, namely, that voters have correct information about the competitiveness of their preferred party in the district. The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of all four conditions. Using original survey data from the 2015 United Kingdom general election, the analysis suggests that violations of the information condition matter, but that violations of the short-term instrumental rationality condition can be a significant factor as well. Consequently, future research should pay more attention to this condition when seeking to explain third party voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses how parties strategically vary their populist positions in party competition. The useful conceptualization of populism as a matter of degree has been established by previous studies. However, we know little about the conditions that drive parties to alter their degree of populism and, importantly, whether this varies between mainstream and populist parties. This paper analyzes the impact of vote and office loss on parties' populist position-taking. It draws upon German and Austrian parliamentary debate speeches from the 1990s until 2018. Populism is measured using a dictionary method, an automated text analysis approach. The results show that parties react to contextual incentives by altering their degree of populism. Mainstream and populist parties are more populist when in opposition. Electoral losses affect mainstream and populist parties less clearly. The contribution of this paper is to integrate research on populism with a theoretical framework on party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foundational studies of political behavior find that university education facilitates the development of political attitudes and shapes socialization outcomes. But in unconsolidated democracies where identity is politically salient and ethnic political parties dominate, education may play a different role in shaping mass politics. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the consequences of political party intervention in annual university elections, a common feature of university life in the Middle East and the Global South. We draw on pre- and post-election surveys at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon to argue that ethnic political parties rely on partisan students to act as "party agents" who mobilize unaffiliated students through intensive peer-to-peer contact. Using a conjoint experiment embedded in both survey waves, we show that the university elections increase support in hypothetical national elections for in-group political elites and, to a lesser extent, ethnic political parties. By locating the university as an understudied site of competitive and contentious politics, our findings contribute new insights regarding the role of education in shaping political attitudes. We show that the persistence of ethnic political power can be attributed in part to party activity in less obviously political arenas that have not been systematically studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the democratic character of the European Union (EU) has been a center-point of decades of political research. An important critique suggests that the development of the European political arena is still incomplete, with European parliamentarians primarily orienting themselves to national issues and politicians, implying a problematic mismatch between the political arena and their policy jurisdiction. Research has however been limited by methodological difficulties of capturing the level of Europeanization of the political arena. This paper contributes a novel method for measuring Europeanization by studying interactions between the European Parliament to their national parliamentarians on Twitter in 15 EU countries. Contrary to expectations in the literature, we find substantial Europeanization of the political arena. The level of Europeanization furthermore varies greatly across countries and political groups. This has important implications on the debate on EU's democratic deficit, as communication across different levels of parliament indicates democratic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides causal estimates of the effects of increases in the size of candidate lists on the political careers of newcomers to the political arena. We explore an exogenous discontinuity in district magnitude that allows parties to expand their candidate lists in the Brazilian open-list local elections and find that the additional candidacies are allocated to weaker candidates, mainly newcomers, who end up occupying a significant share of the additional seats. We also find that the electoral experience provided by the additional candidacies increases the number of newcomers elected in their second attempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many argue populist radical-right parties to be the largest contemporary threat to democracy, much of the evidence either focuses on the rare case of a populist radical-right prime minister, or conflates right-populist prime ministers with right-populist government participation, with some asserting that it would be difficult for these parties to have any real effect without holding the prime ministership. In this paper I conduct a large-scale analysis of European nations to quantify the effect right-populist junior coalition partners have on liberal democracy. I argue that as junior coalition partners, they will indeed affect democratic quality, albeit in ways that differ from that of a right-populist prime minister. While previous literature has demonstrated that populist radical-right parties bring with them decreases in the level of democratic quality pertaining to institutional constraints on power and mass civil liberties, junior coalition partners are only able to effect the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does an authoritarian past shape voters' left-right orientation? Recent studies investigate "anti-dictator bias" in political ideology, where citizens in a former right-wing (left-wing) dictatorship may display a leftist (rightist) bias in their ideological self-identification. In this paper, I provide evidence for a "pro-dictator bias" where citizens hold ideological positions close to those of the dictator, depending on their experiences prior to transition. In countries with high economic growth under dictatorship and without violent ruling party ouster, authoritarian successors could continue mobilizing the popular base and invoke positive sentiment on the past in democratic elections. Such positive sentiment can facilitate individual ideological orientation close to the ideological label of the former dictatorship. I test this hypothesis by combining individual- and country-level data covering 1985 to 2018 from 48 countries. I demonstrate that voters in countries with high economic growth during dictatorship and without violent party exit are more likely to have pro-dictator bias in ideology. I further show that voters in former developmental states show pro-dictator bias from the history of economic growth and more peaceful transition. The findings emphasize the role of pre-transition features in shaping alternative legacies on voter attitudes in post-authoritarian societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of election ballots can influence voters' behavior. Features of the ballot are particularly important if they systematically harm the electoral chances of some groups. In Brazil, voters type the four or five-digit number of their chosen candidate into an electronic voting machine to cast a ballot. Some numbers have sequences that are easier to memorize and recall than others. I show that candidates with memorable numbers receive a boost in their vote share. Moreover, I demonstrate that women are less likely to be assigned memorable numbers. This paper highlights the importance of thinking thoroughly about the implications of seemingly innocuous characteristics of voting procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties are the nucleus of modern parliaments. Therefore it is crucial to understand cooperation and competition within parties. In most parliaments, we can observe some form of cooperation, like cosponsorship. In this paper, cosponsorship is used to identify the relationships of MPs within their parliamentary party group, and to infer whether this relational position has an effect on their reselection. Are better embedded and connected MPs more likely to be reselected? Do peers matter in reselection? This question is also of theoretical interest in the light of competing principals (Carey, 2007). The empirical analysis first replicates the model of MP renomination by Baumann et al. (2017), adding a new data set from the German Bundestag, used to provide the relational independent variables of cosponsorship centrality. The key finding of the analysis is that cosponsorship closeness is a significant predictor of MP reselection and can be seen as a compelling complement to the model by Baumann et al. With cooperation shown to be significant when it comes to renomination, the understanding of peer-induced competition, competing principals theory can be further developed to aid our understanding of MP cooperation and competition, delegation, agency and collective principals in modern parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the electoral personalization of politics has stressed a trend towards a greater role of top prominent political figures (party leaders and ministers). This trend was described as centralized electoral personalization. Yet, this trend is merely one side of a more complex story. No leader attracts all voters' support, and other candidates manage to stand out despite lower resources and visibility. Using a unique dataset of 47,239 actual ballot papers cast for the 2018 Belgian local elections, we show that candidate-level, list-level and district-level factors result in distinct preference voting behaviour. While these factors lead to unmistakable forms of (de-)centralized personalized forms of elections, we furthermore, show that intermediary situations distinctively emerge. A significant number of 'subtop' candidates stand out among candidates, by attracting support from voters who do not support the mere leader of the list. This 'oligarchized personalization' would deserve greater attention in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party membership seems to lose relevance for political careers in many established democracies. Increasing numbers of parties are recruiting non-members as candidates. Yet, what are the implications of a lack of long-term party membership for party cohesion? In this paper, I argue that pre-parliamentary party membership is in fact crucial for cohesion. Using data from the Comparative Candidate Survey and voting behavior of ca. 2,000 MPs of the German Bundestag on free votes from 1953 to 2013, I examine the effect of length of previous party membership and the age of joining the party on indicators of party cohesion. Examining free votes allows for credibly controlling alternative explanations of unified voting behavior. Results are in line with expectations generated from social identity theory and underscore the importance of party membership for party cohesion. The paper concludes with a discussion on the findings' implications in light of recent developments in parties' candidate recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties in Western democracies with large immigrant populations have become increasingly interested in nominating immigrant-origin candidates. This paper investigates how contextual factors explain parties' effort of immigrant representation. I argue that nominations of immigrant-origin candidates are shaped by parties' strategic calculations weighing out potential vote gains among immigrant-origin voters compared to a potential native backlash. I contend that alien enfranchisement and liberal naturalization policies provide decisive incentives to nominate immigrant-origin candidates. In contrast, economic insecurity implies potential material threat perceptions generating a native backlash against immigrants, reducing the nomination of immigrant-origin candidates. Using a novel dataset on candidates in Switzerland, the analysis reveals that the political and economic contexts indeed determine the number of immigrant-origin candidates and their ballot position, particularly those of non-Western origin. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of strategic behaviors of political parties and the promotion of immigrant representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay introduces a collection of papers dealing with the responsive–responsible dilemma of party government. The political developments surrounding the Eurozone crisis attest that the duties of government and the demands of political representation may at times be in sharp contrast with one another. In such contexts, it becomes hard for parties in government to combine responsiveness with responsible policy-making. Late Peter Mair theorized this phenomenon as the increasing bifurcation between the growing complexity of governing in a world of interdependence and the need to respond to often polarizing electoral demands. The key question is whether and how in such contexts parties find the balance between their representative and governing duties. The papers included in this special issue deal with this question in the context of the Eurozone crisis and present evidence about parties' behavior, rhetoric, and policy outputs. In introducing the contributions here, we illustrate how this collective endeavor helps advance the debate on the major challenges to contemporary representative democracy. More specifically, we first discuss how the framework of the responsive–responsible dilemma helps understanding contemporary political developments. We then critically reflect on the distinction between responsiveness and responsibility. Finally, we present how each individual contribution approaches the question of how parties manage the tension between electoral incentives and governmental duties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research into the relationship between income inequality and turnout inequality has produced mixed results, as consensus is lacking whether inequality reduces turnout for all income groups, low-income earners, or no one. Therefore, this paper builds on this literature by introducing supply-side logic, through the first individual-level test of the impact that income inequality (moderated by policy manifesto positions) has on turnout. It does so through multilevel logistic regressions utilizing mixed effects, on a sample of 30 advanced democracies in 102 elections from 1996 to 2016. It finds that higher levels of income inequality significantly reduce turnout and widen the turnout gap between rich and poor. However, it also finds that when party systems are more polarized, low-income earners are mobilized the greatest extent coupled with higher inequality, resulting in a significantly reduced income gap in turnout. The findings magnify the negative impacts income inequality can exert on political behavior and contribute to the study of policy offerings as a key moderating mechanism in the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are party members more radical than voters and party elites? This is the expectation according to May's Law, which has faced significant challenges from recent scholarship. Utilizing several survey sources covering four levels of all Swedish parliamentary parties between 1985 and 2018, this paper shows that the Swedish case follows May's propositions with some qualifications. The parties organized along the left-right dimension follow the pattern of the mid-level being more radical in this respect, while on a secondary GAL-TAN dimension the parties that organize along this dimension rather exhibit a pattern of elite polarization. Additionally, the relative order of groups within parties is stable over the considered time period, when party membership is sharply declining. This suggests that party members are not becoming less ideologically representative over time, while they are consistently more radical than respective parties' voters and elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, social democratic parties have been confronted with the rise of second dimension issues. These issues often see social democratic parties facing a choice between competing portions of their own electorate. A particularly prominent second dimension issue is that of the EU: should social democratic parties take pro or anti-EU positions? I look at the case of the UK as an instructive example of this debate. I estimate a narrow counterfactual, simulating how the Labour Party's vote share and seat count would have changed as its position on Brexit changes. I call this counterfactual narrow because I only consider the effect of these position changes on vote choice and turnout, and not any broader consequences. I run two simulations to compare the implications of pure proximity and proximity-categorisation models of vote choice. I generate seat predictions from the simulation results by using Uniform National Swing and Uniform Regional Swing. Broadly, I find that being pro-Remain clearly benefited the party in terms of votes, but that results are more mixed in terms of seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1990, multilateral organizations have invested in the idea that multiparty political systems are an essential part of building durable peace, and that former insurgents must be converted to political actors. To what extent does this foster longer term democracy and stability? In this paper, we focus on the role of electoral inclusion for post-rebel parties in the creation of stable party systems as one feature that supports both democratization and durable peace. We find that political integration of former insurgents in electoral politics not only serves the short-term purpose of bringing such groups "inside the tent" and smoothing the transition from war to peace. It also lays a foundation for the creation of stable party systems. We test our propositions with an original dataset and offer explanatory analysis of small set of parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does political representation of radical right parties (RRP) affect the relationship between immigration and right-wing terrorism targeting out-group members? Drawing on right-wing terrorism data of 31 OECD member states between 1970 and 2017, this paper explored the threefold relationship. Causal mediation analysis revealed that while growing immigration increases right-wing terrorism, RRPs have a mediation effect of decreasing attacks. Sensitivity analysis and robustness checks lend support to the findings. The article provides novel implications for the political consequences of RRP success and the effect of political representation on extremist violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a violent and extremist past, some armed rebel movements often abandon their arms and successfully contest power through elections. This paper seeks to understand the environmental factors that determine an insurgent successor party's electoral success. Using first a cross-national analysis of insurgent successor party performance and then a subnational analysis of Salvadoran elections from 1994–2019, it is shown that the party's ability to leverage identities forged during the war and organize its appeals along a highly polarized pro- and anti-government axis is crucial to electoral success. This is understood as an organizational capability, the capacity to oppose. At the national level, the existence of an authoritarian successor party increases the longevity of such polarization while subnationally levels of violence help to solidify the wartime cleavage as the most important for local politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New parties pose a challenge to the claim that time is an essential element in the construction of partisanship. By definition, new parties have not been around for much time, so the opportunities for the construction of meaningful attachments could be considered limited. In this paper, we test this expectation, unpacking the dynamics and implications of the attachment to new parties. Using panel data collected in Spain during a period of profound party system change, we estimate the extent to which partisanship with new parties is stable and strong, works as a heuristic for preference formation, and predicts vote choice. Our data suggest that attachments to new parties can be as meaningful as those that citizens have with old parties. These findings seem particularly relevant in a context where new parties are on the rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of 'thin' anti-establishment supply assess mainly the extent of populist messages. This paper analyses the diversity of thin contestation beyond just populism. I conduct a content analysis of 142 social media campaigns by anti-establishment (AEPs) and conventional parties during 23 elections across Europe 2010–2019. We find that in addition to popular will and extra-political technocratic expertise, AEPs increasingly enacted exceptional political calling, depicted as necessary to revive 'true' formal-representative politics itself. Regression analysis shows that political vocation cues played an important auxiliary role in AEP mobilization strategies. On average, those AEPs across the political spectrum which used more political vocation messages performed better electorally ceteris paribus than those which used them less. Conventional parties instead did not universally benefit if they increasingly spotlighted thin messages. The salience of anti-establishment and populism-related rhetoric played a further role within particular AEP groups, but neither was significantly associated with stronger AEP performance altogether. In order to better understand recent political turbulence, it is therefore useful to account for more diverse thin contestation supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, an increasing number of presidential candidates across the world have been nominated in primary elections. Yet, our understanding of presidential primaries outside of the U.S. remains very limited. This paper advances a theoretical argument linking presidential primary outcomes to the strategic behavior of subnational party elites, particularly those with the resources to mobilize primary voters in their regions. I provide support for this claim using an original dataset from the 2012 presidential primary of the Mexican Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), in which one of the candidates was very closely linked to (and informally endorsed by) the PAN leadership. The results show the levels of support for this candidate were higher in places with PAN officeholders. Additional evidence suggests this pattern is driven by PAN officeholders (1) investing resources into electoral mobilization and (2) tampering with the lists of registered voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of institutionalization is widely employed but often poorly defined in the literature on political parties. This paper argues that 'institutionalization' as it is frequently used encompasses a diverse set of meanings that are better thought of as conceptually distinct. The paper examines two phenomena that have been widely associated with institutionalization: 'value infusion' and 'behavioral routinization'. It uses the case of Peronism in Argentina, which is infused with value but poorly routinized, to demonstrate that these phenomena can vary independently. The paper argues that the failure to make these conceptual distinctions may pose serious problems for causal analysis. As an example, it shows how different conceptions of institutionalization lead to opposing arguments about the relation between institutionalization and the capacity of parties to adapt to changing electoral and policy environments. The paper then examines the distinction between formal and informal routinization with respect to political parties, arguing that many studies of political parties fail to incorporate informally routinized behavior patterns into their conceptions of institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the credibility of opinion polls, and for whom? Opinion polls assessing voting intention are an increasingly prominent aspect of pre-election media discourse, yet they often vary in terms of their estimations, who conducted the poll, and where the poll is ultimately published. This research note considers the determinants of pre-election poll credibility when citizens are exposed to conflicting polls, contributing to a growing field which considers the subjectivity with which partisan-relevant information is perceived in polarised contexts. Using a conjoint analysis in Turkey, this paper produces strong evidence that polls are perceived differently across partisan lines. Whereas government supporters rely almost exclusively on a poll's result, opposition supporters place considerably more weight on the media source when determining poll credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties face a dilemma when confronted with shifting public opinion or changing rival parties' issue positions: while ignoring ongoing changes could lead to electoral losses, position shifts on a salient issue might be perceived as flip - flopping and alienate supporters. This paper proposes a model combining positional and framing approaches in order to understand how parties can shift their position on a specific issue without losing face. The empirical analysis of rhetoric-based estimates of party strategies draws upon a corpus of 8790 press releases issued by Swiss parties between 2007 and 2016 on the issue of migration. The results show that parties, rather than bluntly shifting their opinion on the issue, prefer to draw the public's attention toward another set of frames that allows for a different position. These results have important implications for our understanding of parties' competition on issues, as well as for the literature on mass-elite linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many democratic political parties hold primary elections, which nicely reflects their democratic nature and promotes, among other things, the democratic value of inclusiveness. However, the methods currently used for holding such primary elections may not be the most suitable, especially if some form of proportional ranking is desired. In this paper, we compare different algorithmic methods for holding primaries (i.e., different aggregation methods for voters' ballots) by evaluating the degree of proportional ranking that is achieved by each of them using real-world data. In particular, we compare six different algorithms by analyzing real-world data from a recent primary election conducted by the Israeli Democratit party. Technically, we analyze unique voter data and evaluate the proportionality achieved by means of cluster analysis, aiming at pinpointing the representation that is granted to different voter groups under each of the algorithmic methods considered. Our findings suggest that, contrary to the most-prominent primaries algorithm used (i.e., Approval), other methods such as Sequential Proportional Approval or Phragmen can bring about better proportional ranking and thus may be better suited for primary elections in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, ethnicity has been considered to play a fundamental role in voting behaviour in Africa. However, researchers on the issue have found contradictory conclusions. The most recent research concludes that the African voter is more rational than expected. Overall ethnicity seems to be less influential than theory used to suggest. Against this background, this paper analyses vote for governing party in Africa and presents evidence that the method and data set used will have an important influence upon the final result. The research takes form of a quantitative analysis making extensive use of survey data from 2005 to 2019. Results indicate that ethnicity, although not exclusively, is still an explanatory factor. At a glance, African vote is rationally ethnic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several theories have been created to explain party unity in Congress, but previous studies have generally assumed the same factors affect party unity for both parties. Given the differences between the two parties (the ideological heterogeneity of their electoral coalitions, how the party's electoral coalitions view partisanship, etc.), this assumption may limit our understanding of the sources of party unity. In this paper, I test three theories of party unity (cartel theory, Conditional Party Government, and Strategic Party Government) on separate panels for the two parties. I find cartel theory helps explain party unity for both parties, but, unlike what has previously been argued, I find this is not entirely due to Reed's Rules. I further find Conditional Party Government better explains party unity for the Republicans, while Strategic Party Government better explains party unity for the Democrats. I provide theoretical reasons for these findings and how they may impact future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]