Measuring and Comparing Party Ideology and Heterogeneity

Estimates of party ideological positions in Western Democracies yield useful party-level information, but lack the ability to provide insight into intraparty politics. In this paper, we generate comparable measures of latent individual policy positions from elite survey data which enable analysis of elite-level party ideology and heterogeneity. This approach has advantages over both expert surveys and approaches based on behavioral data, such as roll call voting and is directly relevant to the study of party cohesion. We generate a measure of elite positions for several European countries using a common space scaling approach and demonstrate its validity as a measure of party ideology. We then apply these data to determine the sources of party heterogeneity, focusing on the role of intraparty competition in electoral systems, nomination rules, and party goals. We find that policy-seeking parties and centralized party nomination rules reduce party heterogeneity. While intraparty competition has no effect, the presence of these electoral rules conditions the effect of district magnitude

Positions of interest groups towards labour market reforms in Germany : a novel content analysis of press releases

Unions, employers’ associations and social welfare organizations play an important part in reforming the labour market. This study investigates their positions in this policy field, in particular towards minimum wages and labour market regulations. Two contradicting arguments are outlined concerning the interest groups’ strategic interests. They have to represent their core membership and, at the same time, pursue strategic long-term goals that might contradict their clienteles’ interests. We estimate the interest groups’ positions with a content analysis. This method is regularly used for political parties but has not been applied to interest groups so far. About 1500 press releases from 14 organizations serve as our data source. We find that unions pursue different strategies depending on their (potential) membership. The service union strongly advocate the introduction of a minimum wage while industrial unions focus on stricter regulation of atypical contracts. Employers’ associations generally oppose minimum wages but their main priority is defending the flexibility of agency work. The positions of social welfare organizations are shaped by their dual role as representative of the marginalized and as employers in the social sector. Overall, we show that content analysis is a valuable tool to analyse positions of interest groups