Follow the foreign leader? Why following foreign incumbents is an effective electoral strategy

Previous research suggests that political parties respond to left–right policy positions of successful foreign political parties (“foreign leaders”). We evaluate whether this is an effective electoral strategy: specifically, do political parties gain votes in elections when they respond to successful foreign parties? We argue that parties that follow foreign leaders will arrive at policy positions closer to their own (domestic) median voter, which increases their electoral support. The analysis is based on a two-stage model specification of parties’ vote shares and suggests that following foreign leaders is a beneficial election strategy in national election because it allows them to better identify the position of their own median voter. These findings have important implications for our understanding of political representation, parties’ election strategies, and for policy diffusion

Subsidiarity, the public and the EU credibility gap

The European Union and the 1996 IGC: crisis or opportunity? No.*1 of 16SIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

ECPR Party Manifestos Project, 1921-1987

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The internal analysis of election programmes (ie. of the concerns and emphases they contain) in both the domestic and the comparative contexts.A later version of this dataset is held at SN:3437. Users should note, however, that the later version does not totally supersede this version as the data does not always cover the early dates for all countries. See <i>Time Period Covered</i> for details. A later study based on the work of the Manifesto Research Group is also held at the Archive under SN:4091.Main Topics:Variables Fifty-nine specially derived issue categories grouped into seven major themes (external relations, economic policy, social groups etc.) The coding categories are designed, as far as possible, to be comparable both between countries and over time. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research

Citizen Satisfaction With Democracy and Parties’ Policy Offerings

The authors examine the relationship between the variation of policy choices on offer in a party system and citizen satisfaction. Cross-national analyses, based on 12 countries from 1976 to 2003, are presented that suggest that when party choices in a political system are more ideologically proximate to the mean voter position in left–right terms, overall citizen satisfaction increases. The central implication of this finding is that party positions matter for understanding within-country changes in satisfaction. </jats:p