Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:08:54.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Analyzing the cross-national comparability of party positions on the socio-cultural and EU dimensions in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2020

Ryan Bakker
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Seth Jolly*
Affiliation:
Political Science, Syracuse University, Eggers Hall 100, Syracuse, NY13244, USA
Jonathan Polk
Affiliation:
Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Using survey vignettes and scaling techniques, we estimate common socio-cultural and European integration dimensions for political parties across the member states of the European Union. Previous research shows that party placements on the economic left-right dimension are cross-nationally comparable across the EU; however, the socio-cultural dimension is more complex, with different issues forming the core of the dimension in different countries. The 2014 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey included anchoring vignettes which we use as “bridge votes” to place parties from different countries on a common liberal/authoritarian dimension and a separate common scale for European integration. We estimate the dimensions using the Bayesian Aldrich–McKelvey technique. The resulting scales offer cross-nationally comparable, interval-level measures of a party's socio-cultural and EU ideological positions.

Type
Research Note
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, J, Ezrow, L and Somer-Topcu, Z (2014) Do voters respond to party manifestos or to a wider information environment? An analysis of mass-elite linkages on European integration. American Journal of Political Science 58, 967978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J, Ezrow, L and Wlezien, C (2016) The company you keep: how voters infer party positions on European integration from governing coalition arrangements. American Journal of Political Science 60, 811823.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, JH and McKelvey, RD (1977) A method of scaling with applications to the 1968 and 1972 Presidential Elections. American Political Science Review 71, 111130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, R, Jolly, S, Polk, J and Poole, K (2014) The European common space: extending the use of anchoring vignettes. The Journal of Politics 76, 10891101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, R, De Vries, C, Edwards, E, Hooghe, L, Jolly, S, Marks, G, Polk, J, Rovny, J, Steenbergen, M and Vachudova, MA (2015) Measuring party positions in Europe The Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999-2010. Party Politics 21, 143152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, MM, Hainmueller, J and Margalit, Y (2014) Preferences for international redistribution: the divide over the Eurozone bailouts. American Journal of Political Science 58, 835856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benoit, K and Laver, M (2006) Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Böhmelt, T, Ezrow, L, Lehrer, R and Ward, H (2016) Party policy diffusion. American Political Science Review 110, 397410.Google Scholar
Bornschier, S (2010) The new cultural divide and the two-dimensional political space in Western Europe. West European Politics 33, 419444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budge, I (2000) Expert judgements of party policy positions: uses and limitations in political research. European Journal of Political Research 37, 103113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caramani, D (2017) Will vs. reason: the populist and technocratic forms of political representation and their critique to party government. American Political Science Review 111, 5467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copelovitch, M, Frieden, J and Walter, S (2016) The political economy of the Euro crisis. Comparative Political Studies 49, 811840.Google Scholar
Hare, C, Armstrong, DA, Bakker, R, Carroll, R and Poole, KT (2015) Using Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey scaling to study citizens’ ideological preferences and perceptions. American Journal of Political Science 59, 759774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, S and de Vries, C (2015) Issue entrepreneurship and multiparty competition. Comparative Political Studies 48, 11591185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB and Tilley, J (2016) Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the Euro crisis. West European Politics 39, 971991.Google Scholar
Hooghe, L and Marks, G (2009) A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: from permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39, 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Invernizzi-Accetti, C and Wolkenstein, F (2017) The crisis of party democracy, cognitive mobilization, and the case for making parties more deliberative. American Political Science Review 111, 97109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, G and Wand, J (2007) Comparing incomparable survey responses: evaluating and selecting anchoring vignettes. Political Analysis 15, 4666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, G, Murray, CJL, Salmon, JA and Tandon, A (2004) Enhancing the validity and cross-cultural comparability of measurement in survey research. American Political Science Review 98, 191207.10.1017/S000305540400108XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H, Grande, E, Dolezal, M, Helbling, M, Höglinger, D, Hutter, S and Wüest, B (2012) Political Conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindberg, SI, Coppedge, M, Gerring, J and Teorell, J (2014) V-Dem: a new way to measure democracy. Journal of Democracy 25, 159169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marks, G, Hooghe, L, Nelson, M, Edwards, E (2006) Party competition and European integration in East and West. Different structure, same causality. Comparative Political Studies 39, 155175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, MD, Mendes, SM and Kim, M (2007) Cross-temporal and cross-national comparisons of party left-right positions. Electoral Studies 26, 6275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McElroy, G and Benoit, K (2010) Party policy and group affilation in the European parliament. British Journal of Political Science 40, 377398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, P, Frank, RW and Martínez i Coma, F (2014) Measuring electoral integrity around the world: a new dataset. PS: Political Science & Politics 47, 789798.Google Scholar
Polk, J, Rovny, J, Bakker, R, Edwards, E, Hooghe, L, Jolly, S and Koedam, J, Kostelka, F, Marks, G, Schumacher, G, Steenbergen, M, Vachudova, M and Zilovic, M (2017) Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill expert survey data. Research & Politics 4, 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrschneider, R and Whitefield, S (2012) The Strain of Representation: How Parties Represent Diverse Voters in Western and Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rovny, J (2014) Communism, federalism, and ethnic minorities: explaining party competition patterns in Eastern Europe. World Politics 66, 669708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, H, Hobolt, SB and Popa, SA (2015) Does personalization increase turnout? Spitzenkandidaten in the 2014 European Parliament elections. European Union Politics 16, 347368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teorell, J, Dahlström, C and Dahlberg, S (2011) The QoG Expert Survey Dataset. http://www.qog.pol.gu.se. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3569575.Google Scholar
Warwick, PV (2005) Do policy horizons structure the formation of parliamentary governments?: the evidence from an expert survey. American Journal of Political Science 49, 373387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Bakker et al. Dataset

Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Bakker et al. supplementary material

Bakker et al. supplementary material

Download Bakker et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 652.8 KB