Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties' Policy Shifts, 1976–1998

Abstract

, we presented empirical evidence that political parties in Western European democracies tend to shift their ideological orientations in response to shifts in voters' policy preferences, as suggested by the model of "dynamic representation" developed by Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson (1995; see also Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002). Here, we extend this analysis to consider whether the type of party makes a difference. Specifically, we explore whether the members of party families who present either an extreme ideology (such as Communist and extreme nationalist parties) or James Adams is associate professor of political science, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616 (jfadams@ucdavis.edu). Michael Clark is a Ph.D. candidate in political science, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9420 (mcl@umail.ucsb.edu). Lawrence Ezrow is a postdoctoral fellow of political science, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (lj.ezrow@fsw.vu.nl). Garrett Glasgow is assistant professor of political science, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9420 (glasgow@polsci.ucsb.edu).Authors are listed in alphabetical order. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association and at a 2004 departmental symposium at the University of Texas at Austin. We thank Neal Beck, Melvin Hinich, Jonathan Katz, Orit Kedar, Gary King, George Krause, Jeff Lewis, Michael Lewis-Beck, Michael McDonald, Bonnie Meguid, Lorelei Moosbrugger, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments. Any remaining errors are the authors' sole responsibility. a noncentrist "niche" ideology (i.e., the Greens) respond differently to shifts in public opinion than do the political elites who represent mainstream or catch-all parties such as Labor, Socialist, Social Democratic, Liberal, Conservative, and Christian Democratic parties. We label the members of the Communist, Green, and extreme nationalist party families as niche parties.Our study, which encompasses eight Western European party systems over the period 1976-1998, produces two central findings. First, we conclude that while mainstream parties' policy shifts during this period corresponded strongly to shifts in public opinion, niche parties

Exploiting the Cracks: Wedge Issues in Multiparty Competition

“…14 The online appendix provides an overview of the challenger parties that were included in our dataset and an explanation of how our definition of challenger parties differs from the well-known classification of niche parties (Adams et al 2006;Meguid 2005 We treat the data as pooled time-series data and define political parties as the crosssectional units that vary over time, in this case, over the various rounds of the CHES. Taking into 15 The mean voter left-right position was calculated from Eurobarometer data on the self-reported leftright positions of respondents on a discrete 1 (left) to 10 (right) scale.…”

Moderate as Necessary: The Role of Electoral Competitiveness and Party Size in Explaining Parties’ Policy Shifts

“…This literature has established that parties, indeed, follow a pattern of "dynamic representation" (Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson, 1995) and adapt their position to shifts in public opinion (Adams et al, 2004), economic conditions (Adams, Haupt, and Stoll, 2008), and the behavior and success of other parties (Abou-Chadi, 2014;Adams and Somer-Topcu, 2009b). Moreover, the degree and direction of these shifts depends on the type of party as well as their internal organization (Adams et al, 2006;Schumacher, Vries, and Vis, 2013). Elections should play a crucial role in this process since they signal the preferences of the electorate to parties, and, thus, influence parties' future policy positions (Budge, 1994).…”

“…Following recent advances in the literature on party competition, we argue that, in the context of multi-party competition, this assumption is too general. In contrast to their mainstream competitors, small and niche parties have an interest in "product differentiation" (Kitschelt, 1994) and, thus, take more extreme positions in order to maximize their potential vote share (Adams et al, 2006;Ezrow, 2008). Taking these varying incentives into account, the effect of electoral competitiveness on parties' policy positions should be moderated by party type.…”

Voters’ commitment problem and reforms in welfare programs

“…Although we do not dismiss the fact the voters' preferences may very well vary, from the perspective of the governing party (or parties) the median voter's preferences are key. There is an extensive body of literature showing that mainstream parties that typically make up the government cater to precisely this median voter (e.g., Adams et al 2006;Ezrow et al 2011). If the median voter opposes reform of one or more welfare programs-either because it hurts her own consumption directly or because she sociotropically cares about the income of welfare programs' recipients-the reform entails an electoral risk for the governing party (or parties).…”