Parties’ group appeals across time, countries, and communication channels—examining appeals to social groups via the Parties’ Group Appeals Dataset

Abstract

While policy appeals receive the bulk of scholars’ attention, recent studies show that group appeals are prevalent in parties' election campaign materials to voters over time. Yet, few studies to date focus on group appeals as a distinct concept, and little data are available to support longitudinal and cross-national examinations. Aiming to better understand group-based appeals’ role in political processes, this article introduces new and unique data using a concise definition of group appeals, contributing to this growing literature. The Parties’ Group Appeals Dataset (PGAD) provides text-as-data from manual analyses of 69 parties' names, 249 manifestos, and 2772 print campaign advertisements in Israel and the Netherlands between 1977 and 2015, offering one of the first (if not the first) opportunities to compare parties' group appeals over time, between countries, and across communication channels.

Affective polarization in Europe

“…The kind of affective polarization between partisans so often studied is thus likely to have its roots in other identities, and these interconnections deserve further study. This work also ties in well with a recent focus on the role of groups in party discourse (Evans and Tilley, 2017;Thau, 2021;Huber, 2022;Dolinsky, 2023).…”

Parties’ Group Appeals as Representative Claims: A New Perspective on Parties’ Efforts to Connect with Voters

“…Only recently, scholars began to define social "group appeals" as a distinct concept differentiated from parties' policy positions and to investigate the use of these appeals across different groups, parties, countries, and communication channels (Dolinsky 2022;Huber 2022;Stuckelberger and Tresch 2022;Thau 2019). This emerging literature primarily views group appeals as part of parties' electoral strategies to maximize votes.…”

“…While policy appeals are most widely studied type of appeal (Evans and Graaf 2013;Evans and Tilley 2012a), a growing body of literature distinguishes appeals to social groups from conventional policy appeals (Dolinsky 2022;Huber 2022;Stuckelberger and Tresch 2022;Thau 2019). What exactly are these group appeals?…”

How parties shape their relationship with social groups: A roadmap to the study of group-based appeals

“…Within this conceptual and terminological confusion over the phenomenon of appeals to social groups, recent studies have made efforts to provide distinct definitions for the concept of social group appeals and investigate their use across different parties, countries, and communication channels (Dolinsky 2023;Horn et al 2021;Huber 2022;Stuckelberger and Tresch 2022;Thau 2019). These studies, however, still diverge both conceptually and in the terminology used.…”

“…These studies, however, still diverge both conceptually and in the terminology used. Thau (2019, 65) defines group-based appeals as "explicit statements that link a political party to some category of people"; Stuckelberger and Tresch (2022, 5) as "explicitly stated support (positive group appeals) or criticism of group categories (negative group appeals) by parties or candidates"; and Dolinsky (2023Dolinsky ( , 1131 as "explicitly stated support of some social group category(ies)." In these two latter studies, group-based appeals constitute the larger category left undefined in itself, and group appeal is supposedly one specific subtype of group-based appeal.…”