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The ideological positions of European Socialist parties at the beginning of the 20th century varied across countries and across time within a single country, ranging from Reformist to Radical. Many previous attempts to understand sources of Radicalism and Reformism have faltered because they see ideological frameworks as enjoying long periods of stability, interrupted only by exogenous shocks. This paper, however, views ideational change as the result of concrete political struggles. And because ideas, like institutions, have distributional effects, they are constantly under attack. I argue that the process of suffrage extension â€" whether from above or below â€" so completely validated the ideas of one faction and discredited those of the other, that this event strengthened the former faction to the point of determining the ideational character of Socialist parties at the beginning of the interwar years. As European Socialists parties were an integral part of the coalitions of the interwar period, and because such coalitions served as the foundation for interwar institutional formation, this paper seeks to contribute both to the discussion of how ideas change and institutional genesis. Cases compared: Sweden and Italy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops and tests an actor-based model of the committee assignment procedure in the European Parliament. The model reconciles and goes beyond the distributional and informational explanations of committee government developed in the US context. Empirical findings show that MEPs face a trade-off between representing the concerns of their national party and maximising their policy influence. Additionally, incumbents tend to represent their national party better than freshmen, whereas party size does not have any impact on committee assignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party politics in Europe has become more volatile. Parties require flexibility to respond to this volatility, but the EU constrains the behavior of parties. This paper examines how this contributes to the volatility of the European party space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project addresses a central question in the comparative study of democratic institutions: How do coalition governments, which are composed of multiple parties with often conflicting ideological goals, manage to make policy? Surprisingly, relatively few studies have examined this issue in a systematic cross-national fashion. Instead, most research on multiparty government has focused on the formation and termination of coalitions, largely neglecting the policymaking process between these events. In this study, we address this question by examining lawmaking in two European parliamentary democracies, Germany and the Netherlands. The theoretical model in the project focuses on a central principal-agent problem that coalition cabinets must solve if they are to govern successfully. Because expertise is needed to plan and implement public policy, governments in parliamentary democracies must delegate important policymaking powers to individual ministers who have control over relevant issue areas. In particular, cabinet ministers enjoy considerable autonomy in drafting government legislation within their jurisdiction. For coalition governments, such delegation creates the risk that ministers will use their autonomy to bias policy in favor of their own parties without adequately taking into account the interests of their coalition partners. The incentive to do so grows particularly strong on issues that greatly divide coalition members. The argument proposed here is that parliamentary oversight provides a key institutional mechanism that allows coalition parties to deal with this problem. While it is difficult to police ministers from within the cabinet, coalition members can make use of the legislative process to scrutinize and amend legislation introduced by hostile ministers. We contend that this mechanism is particularly important where the coalition is internally divided. If correct, this argument challenges the common perception that parliaments in Western Europe are largely irrelevant institutions. Legislatures may play a crucial role as an intra-coalition conflict management tool that allows parties with divergent preferences to govern jointly. To evaluate this argument empirically, we examine the relationship between the extent to which government bills are changed in the legislative process (as measured by the proportion of articles in the bill that are amended) and the policy divisions between coalition partners. We perform statistical analysis using original data on over 400 government bills introduced in Germany and the Netherlands from 1982 to 2002. This paper thus provides one of the first systematic attempts to examine the policy-making process within coalition governments and the vital role that parliaments may play in allowing parties with divergent preferences to govern jointly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. This paper focuses on one form of political representation of ethnic minorities ? ethnic political parties and analyses the way in which the electoral arrangements in the region have encouraged or discouraged ethnic parties. It uses the experience of Bulgaria and Romania to examine in detail the relationship between electoral arrangements and success of ethnic parties, and the impact of the presence of ethnic parties on trends of political participation of minorities. The results of the analysis support the paper’s argument that electoral arrangements are important but no key to achieving meaningful political representation. Electoral arrangements thus seem to matter, but to mostly do so in situations where other factors of political mobilization seem to make representation uncertain. The effect of electoral arrangements on the success of ethnic parties is clearly mitigated by the size and dynamics of the minority they represent. However, there seems to be some link between the presence of ethnic parties in the political system and the level of political participation of the ethnic minority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focused on sensitivity over liberalizing emerging land markets to foreigners, this paper tells the story of how policies towards foreign land ownership developed in East-Central Europe in the 1990s. It also explains why foreign ownership can be a potential gold mine for nationalists. Mining the land issue ultimately strikes a deeper tension between foreign-driven pressures to liberalize land markets within a pan-European free market and the still-strong local belief that states should control land sales for the good of the nation. Poland receives in-depth treatment given land’s central position in the recent rise of nationalist right-wing parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will focus on the emergence and success of new parties in New Europe. It makes a two-fold contribution to the existing literature on party system development. First, it argues that, in the context of unstructured party systems, the elite level decision to enter the electoral arena is influenced by the cost of entry, benefits of office, and the perception of viability that changes with the electoral histories of all parties. Second, based on the theory of economic voting, it argues that the voter level decision to support new parties is influenced by the extent of disappointment with the existing parties. These propositions are tested using a pooled cross-sectional time-series dataset of all national legislative elections in 15 East European countries (1990-2003). Both propositions find empirical support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom about the behavior of New Left parties in Europe. I test the hypothesis that the institutional context influences party behavior by looking at the strategic decisions of the French Green Party from 1997 to 2002 in various electoral contests. I demonstrate that in order for the Greens to compete with the larger more established parties, they have to recognize the demands of different institutional contexts and act accordingly. Specifically, I explore the circumstances under which the party decides to enter into a pre-election alliance with the Socialists for the legislative elections and when it does not. I find that the existence of a pact in the previous election, the vote shares of the Greens? presidential candidate, the mainstream right, and the extreme right in the preceding elections have the greatest influence on whether the parties will enter into a pre-election alliance in the subsequent legislative contest. Moreover, once the district has been chosen for an alliance, the higher the vote share of the extreme right, the more likely there will be a Socialist candidate, supported by the Greens. The higher the mainstream right?s vote share, the higher the probability that there will be a Green candidate, supported by the Socialists. I argue that the strategic decisions of the Green Party have important implications both for the outcome of the pending election as well as for the future of the party as a viable competitor in the French political space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who gives to political parties, and why? Small individual donations to political parties are often seen as the least tainted form of political finance. Because of this, many countries have developed political finance policies which encourage individual giving. Despite this, there are wide cross-party and cross-national differences in the extent to which parties rely on donations, differences which persist whether finances are measured in absolute or relative terms. This paper explores some the reasons for these differences, using both survey and institutional data to examine how contemporary European parties benefit from cultural patterns of philanthropy, whether tax laws actually stimulate political contributions, and how parties’ fundraising strategies reflect these different patterns of individual giving. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AAs the ideological gap between political parties' narrows and party identification decreases, parties need new strategies to attract voters. Politicizing political corruption is one option and this paper explores to what extent and with what results political parties have used the issue of corruption in European parliamentary elections between 1983 and 2007. 171 electoral campaigns in 32 European democracies are analyzed and the main results are that politicization of corruption is correlated with the level of corruption. Moreover, the issue is rather under than over politicized, implying that it is not a used as a populist strategy to win votes. Rather it is established mainstream parties that are the main champions of anti-corruption. Finally, the results show that corruption allegations quite substantially increase the likelihood of governmental turnover in medium and highly corrupt countries, whereas corruption is not politicized at all in low corrupt countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using party position data of European national political parties, the paper examines political party support and resistance for continued security and foreign policy integration in the European Union. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative speeches are an important part of parliamentary activity in the European Parliament. This paper presents new data on the allocation of speaking time in the EP, including a new survey of European party groups and a statistical analysis of speeches during the 5th European Parliament (1999-2004). Contrary to common assumptions in the EP literature, our findings suggest that party groups do not punish dissenters by limiting their speaking time on the floor despite their formal power to do so. Instead, party mavericks take the floor significantly more often than party faithfuls. We argue that there is an institutional explanation of parliamentary debates. Speaking time actually serves as a communication outlet for dissenting MEPs to put the reasons for their defection on the public record, in particular when there is a conflict between the national party and the European political group. The electoral disconnection between European party groups and the European electorate does not motivate the groups to prevent those dissenters from taking the floor. It does not matter whether dissenters denigrate the party label as this has little effect on the party's prospects as a whole. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses that the maximum likelihood estimation of censored proportion data such as the voteshare of extremist right-wing parties using the censored beta distribution may provide more accurate and more precise statistical results than OLS or Tobit estimation using the normal distribution During a recent decade, the electoral success of extremist right-wing parties, especially in Western Europe, has been under close scrutiny by many quantitative social scientists such as Jackman and Volpert (1996), Swank and Betz (1996), and Golder (2003). They are faced with methodological problems in modeling their dependent variable, the voteshare of extremist right-wing parties, that is largely left-censored, significantly skewed and a proportion at the same time; these characteristics of the dependent variable violate many of the classical assumptions such as normality and homoskedasticity. However, by relying upon OLS, many existing studies fail to produce unbiased and consistent statistical estimators. Furthermore, more advanced efforts, which introduce the Tobit procedure to this discipline, also do not recognize important aspects of proportion data; as voteshare cannot be negative, and as the distribution of the extreme right-wing party data is significantly skewed, Tobit, which assumes observations smaller than zero, whether observed or not, as zero under the normality assumption, may be inappropriate. In fact, since anyone can theoretically run for election and get at least one vote, the probability should never be zero. To adequately handle these problems, this paper applies beta maximum likelihood estimation (BMLE), which is recently introduced by Paolino (2001) to political scientists. Nevertheless, since the beta distribution does not allow zero, I make it allow left-censored data by using the censored beta distribution; this approach assumes a threshold, below which values were not observed, more than zero and smaller than the smallest nonzero percentage; various values of the threshold are tested to make sure whether the statistical results are robust. Then, I will demonstrate that censored BMLE is a better method than OLS or Tobit in analyzing censored proportion data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous observers have noted the recent trends of increased voter abstention, reduced confidence in politicians and political parties in decline. Such complaints are levied against the advanced democracies of Europe, their post-communist neighbors, the United States, and Latin America. Some use the term “anti-politics” to capture these apparently global phenomena that affect new and old democracies alike. This usage includes everything from relatively benign conditions of voter apathy to the more consequential loss of regime legitimacy. Whatever the specific symptom, they reflect varying degrees of negative public attitudes toward politics. Along with the rise of anti-politics, particularly in the 1990s, came a resurgence of populism. Several right-wing populists emerged in Europe, at times capturing surprisingly large shares of the popular vote. In Latin America, so-called neopopulists generated discussions of delegative democracy, hyperpresidentialism, illiberal democracy and so forth. Populist leaders of all stripes tend to exploit domestic problems to their own advantage. They play on the complaints of common citizens and blame the nation’s rulers from causing the hardships. As such, their efforts and rhetoric could be described as “anti-political.” Yet this raises an interesting question: what, exactly, is the relationship of anti-politics to populism? Are these merely two terms that describe the same phenomena, or are they analytically distinct? This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between populism and anti-politics. It enters into the conceptual discussion of populism—offering a new definition of populism as a political movement, rather than a style or strategy and so forth—and argues that anti-politics is best considered as a means of securing support. That is, if populism is not in itself a political strategy, then anti-politics must be the strategy populist leaders use. Although one can conceive of non-populists using anti-political strategies, it is difficult to conceive of populists not relying on anti-politics. Populists of all stripes rely on it. The classic populists in Latin America rose in reaction to the oligarchical parties that dominated politics at the time, and infused their messages with nationalist rhetoric. Neopopulists of the 1990s similarly reacted to the so-called political class that seemed aloof and removed from the problems of ordinary citizens. In these, as well as with the agrarian populism in the United States and the right wing populism in Europe, the effort to mobilize support includes the claim that the political system is not working properly, that the interests of ordinary citizens are ignored, and without some big changes the status quo will remain. In all of these cases the predominant argument in favor of the change is that the system needs fixing. Populists claim to offer an appropriate solution. This paper will present the logic behind this conceptualization and explore their relationships in the cases of Peru and Venezuela, with an eye toward providing an inter-regional comparative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study cross-nationally combines the public policy mood and issue emphasis concepts to empirically test the responsiveness of both American and European political parties to public opinion in terms of changing party manifesto content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the extent to which the transnational European Political Parties have a role to play as supranational actors within the EU’s governance architecture. .x000d.It will look at their structure; role and responsibilities; response to their changing institutional environment. In so doing it will highlight an interaction between path-dependent legacies and individual agency..x000d..x000d.Against a backdrop of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections the paper argues that the Euro-parties have been suffering from four genetic deficits:.x000d..x000d.Genetic deficit: to what extent is it possible to develop political parties beyond the nation state.x000d..x000d.Functional Deficit: despite Article 191 (EC Treaty ex. Article 138a) the role of the Euro-parties has yet to be given substance within the EU institutional architecture .x000d.Linkage Deficit: Euro-parties lack a structured linkage platform with Europe’s citizens/national party members.x000d.Emotional/psychological deficit: European citizens lack the knowledge/awareness of what the Euro-parties do and what they are there for. .x000d.Thus the Euro-parties face considerable obstacles that constrain their capacity to deliver. This paper will focus on how the parties have sought to overcome those obstacles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of a new extreme right populism has been identified as a byproduct of crisis of confidence in the democratic and representative institutions. Both the xenophobic behavior and the distrust in politics and politician have been appointed as the main reasons for voters that have voted in Extreme Right Political Parties (ERPs). The ERPs’ agendas are mostly oriented by euroskeptism because European institutions represent the extension of new representative arenas where national interests can count little as well as the opening of all sorts of frontiers between member states. This paper follow the argues that economic issues are not more important than identity for voters that support ERPs, above all sovereignty defense and national culture are crucial issues for them. Scholars have already analyzed cultural factors influencing support for integration, such as attitudes towards foreigners, however the ways to measure the euroskepticist attitude are not already sufficiently explored. This paper claims that the representation deficit in European institutions is the key aspect to be analyzed in order to have a better understanding of the growth of votes on ERPs in the Western Europe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of calls for new modes of governance this paper will explore the extent to which the transnational European Political Parties (Euro-parties) have sought to enhance their role and significance within the EU’s governance architecture. It will look at their structure; role and responsibilities; response to changing institutional environments. In so doing it will highlight an interaction between path-dependent legacies and individual agency. The paper argues that the Euro-parties have had to deal with three path-dependent deficits:.x000d..x000d.Genetic deficit: to what extent is it possible to develop political parties beyond the nation state?.x000d..x000d.Functional Deficit: despite Article 191 (EC Treaty) their role within the EU institutional architecture remained undefined .x000d..x000d.Linkage Deficit: Euro-parties lack a structured linkage platform with Europe’s citizens/national party members.x000d..x000d.Taken together, such deficits clearly constrain their capacity to deliver. This paper will show that by pursuing a process of institutionalisation the Euro-parties have sought to overcome those obstacles in the run-up to the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2008, the Irish public rejected the EU Constitution in Europe’s only referendum on the document. The purpose of this paper is to examine the official one-month pre-referendum period in order to better understand the debate on both sides and discuss its impact on Irish relations with the EU. Why did the “no” side prevail during the referendum despite a massive government campaign to persuade voters to support the EU Constitution? The paper will examine the arguments of both sides through a discussion of their positions. The pro-constitution position will be evaluated based on the arguments of the government, political parties, and other organizations in support of closer European integration while the anti-constitution side will be evaluated from the arguments of the political parties and groups opposed to Ireland’s participation in a strengthened EU. I visited Ireland for two weeks in May 2008 to observe the pre-referendum debate process on the EU Constitution and this paper will reflect personal observations and conversations with the Irish public as well as information from the pro and con organizations behind of the issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do private actors have a decisive role in the transnational diffusion of radical economic reforms and, if so, under what conditions and through what mechanisms?.x000d.This paper answers this question by studying the attempted diffusion of a radical policy idea (the shift from progressive taxation to a regressive “flat tax” system) from transnational right-libertarian networks of economists and conservative think tanks to policy debates in Germany, Spain, Slovakia and Romania. .x000d.While the flat tax was successful in Romania and Slovakia, it failed in Germany and Spain. The paper argues that this can be explained by variations in the political opportunity structure of transnational advocacy networks. The following factors were found to be necessary and sufficient for success:: weak organizational and expertise capacity of the state’s finance bureaucracy, exclusion of domestic economists from the public debate and high dependence of political parties on the economic knowledge, political capital and status resources of the transnational policy network..x000d.The paper contributes to debates on the role of economic ideas on policy, the mechanisms of transnational policy diffusion and the nature of authority in global governence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the variation in the success of far right parties in Poland, the Czech Republic, can be explained by the different responses of mainstream political parties to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electoral increase of the extreme right-wing parties (ERPs) in some Western European democracies since the 1970s have led to the emergence of an extensive literature regarding possible individual and macro-level factors behind this ?unexpected? upsurge. Nevertheless, ideological or issue-based reactions to the ERPs from established mainstream parties have mostly been neglected. It is acknowledged by many scholars that especially the new-type ERPs (those that do not associate themselves with the interwar fascist era) influence political agenda not only by spreading socially authoritarian opinions regarding restrictions on immigrants as well as a ?need? for strict law and order, but also by changing the locations of the established parties in general and the center-right parties in particular. For instance, it has been argued that both of the center-right parties in France (RPR and UDF) have, in time, taken similar positions to that of the National Front on the immigration issue by giving negative messages to immigrants such as encouraging them to leave the country or proposing to cut social benefits provided for them by the government. Another option for established parties can be to further marginalize the ERPs by detaching themselves from them altogether (rather than accommodate) and creating a ?cordon sanitaire? against such parties. In my paper, I will present the possible factors that may encourage the established center-right parties to accommodate the political demands of the ERPs by shifting towards more to the right, hence, closer to the position of the ERPs. Arguing that all parties want to gain and maintain office, I will put forward the following hypotheses: 1-Convergence of established parties toward the center of the ideological spectrum increases the likelihood of a center-right party to move closer to the position of the ERP if that party has an equally powerful challenger (increases the likelihood of accommodation), and 2-Decreasing levels of disproportionality and increasing levels of multi-partyism increase the likelihood of accommodation by the center-right parties in accordance with the ERPs. I will benefit from Comparative Political Dataset 1960-2001 (Armingeon, Meyeler and Menegale) as well as expert scores for political parties in order to measure my outcome and predictor variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profile of the European Green voter has been studied and analyzed extensively over the past decade. We know that Green voters tend to be younger, better educated, urban, white collar, ideologically more on the left, and care about environmental and quality of life issues. When asked which party is their second choice, a high percentage of these voters say it is the Greens. But, we know that Green parties in many European countries do not do very well at the polls and have little, if any, representation in their countries’ national parliaments. Why, then, do more voters who fit this socio-economic and political profile not vote for the Greens? Using both national survey data and qualitative interview data, this paper helps us to understand why some voters choose the Greens and why other do not. Looking specifically at the voters of the French Green Party in various legislative districts, I demonstrate that the intensity of conviction on the issues and the local context—both the presence and activity of the Green party at the local level and municipal election results—are the dominant factors that impact the voter’s decision to vote Green in the national elections. The higher the level of conviction and the greater the Greens’ presence at the local level, the more likely an individual with the above set of characteristics is to vote Green. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the emergence of populist parties? Emphasizing populist parties’ universal reliance upon strong leaders and aggrieved electorates, this paper argues that populism will flourish under conditions that simultaneously promote voter discontent and the rise of charismatic leaders. It proposes that populist parties emerge as a function of decreasing party system nationalization and institutionalization. Party system nationalization determines the concentration of political losers in the electorate and institutionalization determines the ease with which populist leaders can mobilize. The model predicts three broad outcomes. First, in systems with low nationalization and low institutionalization, uneven party returns result in exclusive benefits distribution and produce more aggrieved voters, and strong leaders can quickly emerge to appeal to them. Second, populist parties are not expected to emerge in systems where both nationalization and institutionalization are high. Third, in systems where nationalization and institutionalization are incongruent, populist party emergence is conditional on exogenous political or economic shocks. These propositions are empirically tested with data on 100 political parties in 25 countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze in detail consequences of lowering voter turnout in CEE countries. I hypothesize that lowering voter turnout was associated with increasing support for pro-European parties (or more broadly defined pro-European camp). I asses my hypothesis through quantitative analysis of electoral data from pre-accession period (years 1990-2003, 10 new EU member states). My statistical analysis suggests that support for pro-European parties was gradually increasing (in most CEE countries) as the voter turnout was going down. The analysis therefore has important implications for our understanding of voter turnout decrease in CEE. Usually it has been argued that this process has only negative consequences. My findings show somewhat different picture: successful EU enlargement and accession of 10 new members was possible not despite the lowering voter turnout, but due to this process. If voter turnout had not been decreasing, more citizens would have participated in elections (among them opponents of accession), election results had been different, anti-European parties had been stronger, and thus the whole process of accession had been much more complex and difficult to control (or maybe even unsuccessful). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who have examined the concept of euroscepticism to date have argued that opposition to European integration is multifaceted. An increasingly popular debate surrounding this differentiation of eurosceptics attempts to separate so-called “hard” euroscepticism (complete rejection of attempts to integrate) from “soft” euroscepticism (qualified objection to Europeanization). Much of the existing inquiries of this kind have been conducted in terms of how these forms affect the party system, but little is known about what individual level factors might drive each of these forms of euroscepticism, especially when it comes to regions that have recently entered into the process of integration. Our paper looks at these multiple types of euroscepticism in the context of central and eastern Europe and asks which demographic, political, and attitudinal factors drive views toward the structural and policy-based questions driving integration. We also inquire into the conceptual distinctness of these types of euroscepticism at the micro level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the nature of political competition regarding the issue of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries’ EU accession. The conventional arguments in the literature emphasize the importance of the presence of political competition and pro-EU consensus in public as the main factors leading to the decision to join the EU in CEE. This “convergence” argument emphasizes parties’ responsiveness to public’s interests on this issue area. We suggest that rather than political competition the accession to the EU can be better explained by theories that examine the tools available to political elites to manipulate the policy space (for details see Dunleavy (1991), Rabinowitz and MacDonald (1989), Budge and Farlie (1983). We examine this argument by analyzing the party manifesto positions and the public’s position on the EU membership in the period before the accession and present evidence contrary to the “convergence” argument. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the collapse of communist regimes in East-Central Europe (1989-1991), party competition emerged in the region that was once dominated by a single communist party. However, this process differed greatly form country to country. On the one hand, in some countries such as Romania or Latvia, first elections were characterized by a small number of electoral parties (2-3 parties). Opposite to this was Poland that produced during its first free and fair election no less than thirteen successful electoral parties. Others, for instance, such as Estonia, Slovakia or Czech Republic, registered mid-range values between 4 and 6 for the number of electoral parties. Almost twenty years later, Romania and Poland are more similar than dissimilar in terms of the number of electoral parties, while countries such as Slovakia increased from mid-range values to upper extreme of 9 parties. What explains the variation over time in party system size in East-Central Europe? This paper aims to answer this question by considering the interplay among the institutions (electoral systems and electoral laws), state subventions, and societal heterogeneity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to reconceptualize ethnic parties and to investigate how internal features of such parties interact with external incentives to affect their behavior in European states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of internal party democracy in candidate selection on the legitimacy, the representativeness, and the responsiveness of political parties in the European old and new democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores one understudied aspect of declining birthrates across Europe: the potential impact that non-uniform demographic shifts could have on the voting bases of European political parties such as the Social or Christian Democrats. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistically speaking, the literature on electoralcompetition focusses on ¯rst moments such as the mean or themedian. In contrast, moments on dispersion are used as a measureof error in the process of data generation. This paper argues thatwe better pay a closer look to these moments, since they havetheir own scienti¯c value. What, for instance, if parties do notreally know how to position themselves on an ideological scale,but rather want to create strategic uncertainty among voters?In such a case it is obvious that party experts cannot agree onhow to position these parties, but that this form of dispersion ishighly relevant for academic research. Since this data is usuallyordinally scaled and has a limited range, classic measures such asthe standard deviation are not valid. We discuss better measuresof dispersion in these cases and apply such measures to a speci¯cexample where strategic uncertainty is not unlikely: the positionof political parties in Europe on the issue of EU membership. Wewill show that experts abilities to agree are necessarily limited andthat measuring dispersion is an important source of additionalinformation to fully grasp electoral competition on this topic. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper carries out a comparative analysis of high-skilled immigration (HIS thereafter) policies in advanced industrial countries and seeks to explain differences in countries' policies in terms of openness towards HSI. I take from the traditional partisanship approach that political parties will pursue policies consistent with the preferences of their major constituencies. However, I divide labour into high- and low-skilled workers and capital into high- and low- skilled sectors and propose the following hypotheses. 1) If the constituency of the Left is strong among high-skilled workers, then I expect the Left to be against HSI. If the constituency of the Left is strong among low-skilled workers, then the Left should be guardedly supportive of HSI. 2) If the Right's constituency is made up to a large extent of high-skilled capital (businesses and employers), then I assume that the Right will be more supportive of HSI than the Left.I argue that divergence between advanced industrial countries' HSI policies continues, even if national governments display converging policy goals for more open HSI in order to fill labour market shortages at the high-skilled end. The shift toward greater HSI liberalization is visible in most countries, but it is not going on to the same extent or at the same rate. No consistent HSI position of left and right parties exists cross-nationally because different coalitions between sectors of high-skilled labour, low-skilled labour and high-skilled capital take place. I present several country examples to analyze different HSI outcomes by portraying the preferences of actors that are aggregated in various coalitions and intermediated by different institutional constraints (such as labour market organization and electoral system) across advanced industrial countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of the polarization of the party system on ideological voting. It tests the hypothesis that voting choices are more strongly influenced by left-right ideology when polarization increases. The analyses are based on data from the 1999 European election, and combine individual-level data on voters' preferences with contextual information on the positions of parties. The results show that polarization affect the level of ideological voting, but that this effect is mediated by party identification and by voters' level of political sophistication ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the explanatory power of three different measures of immigration on radical right voting in Western Europe and Europe as a whole. The analysis compares the explanatory power of immigration flows, immigration stocks, and perceptions of immigration. The findings indicate that the three measures are substantially different in their ability to predict radical right voting in the sample. Moreover, the findings suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom and popular opinion, immigration is not a key explanatory variable driving voting for radical right parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that politicians try to draw attention to those issues that benefit them and their party is well-established in the literature on "issue-ownership" and party competition. What we do not know from this literature is when a political party succeeds in this agenda setting endeavor, forcing its opponents to pay attention to the same set of issues. Inspired by the policy agendas literature and the concept of a party system known from the literature on political parties in Western Europe, this paper develops an agenda setting model of issue competition that addresses this central question. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses cross-national survey evidence to examine changing levels of paticipation within political parties in established and new European democracies. Have activity patterns changed as memberships have shrunk? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of Green parties on policies in western Europe. We look at two cases where Green parties may have been influential - phasing out nuclear power and encouraging renewable energy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a theoretical account of the politics of privatization that leads to predictions regarding the effect of partisanship that are contingent on the strength of traditionally left-leaning interest groups. However, in marked contrast to predictions derived from a traditional interest group approach, my claim is that stronger left-leaning interest groups will make it more likely that left-wing parties will engage in privatization programmes that are likely to be at least partially detrimental to those interest groups. At root, left-wing parties face a trade-off between protecting their traditional allies and enhancing macro-economic performance. The balance of this trade-off varies based on the prevailing strength of those allies. Estimates from Bayesian Tobit models for data from 14 Western European countries over the period 1980--2004 support this theoretical claim. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine how parties respond to different electoral subconstituencies by shifting their policy positions. I argue that parties tend to respond disproportionately to the policy preferences of their supporters, and also to subconstituencies composed of the religious, ethnic, and sociodemographic groups of voters that have traditionally supported the party. Basing my conclusions on analyses of the Comparative Manifesto Project data on party positions, and national election study data on voter preferences from several European democracies, I find evidence that supports my hypotheses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different investigations have reached contradictory conclusions regarding the effect of the number of parties on voter turnout. One line of argument points out that turnout should be higher when there are many parties because the number of choices and the mobilization by parties increases. However, a contradictory argument states that more parties means less clarity in government selection and larger information costs, thus turnout can be expected to decrease when there are many parties. We aim to shed light on that question by examining different pathways that link the number of parties to voter turnout, focusing on the Spanish case. Firstly, we examine the relationship between voter turnout, number of parties and other contextual variables with data at the regional level from regional, general and European elections between 1984 and 2008. Next, we look at the conditional impact of the number of parties on different types of individuals with data from the recent 2008 general election. At first glance, there is a negative link between the number of parties and voter turnout. However, once we control for cultural fragmentation -which depresses turnout but is positively correlated to the number of parties- the link between the number of parties and turnout is weak but positive. A larger number of parties are found to disproportionately increase the probability to participate of those who don't identify with parties and are not in networks where political discussion takes place frequently. We conclude that the Spanish case provides support for the argument that the number of parties has positive impact on voter turnout. Surprisingly, this happens because the less involved in politics are more likely to vote when there are many choices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on coalition governments in 13 European countries, I demonstrate that the institutional arrangements affect portfolio allocations. In particular, the investiture vote promotes the formateur advantage, while bicameralism obstructs it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a veto players model, we evaluate how international actors and the cohesion of political parties affect policy production in Europe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence or re-emergence of radical right political parties in Europe has been met with some disquiet. What is the real effect of these parties on policy making as they participate in regional government? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party effects on legislative behavior are difficult to isolate due to multiple forms of party influence and non-party influences on legislators. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical analysis delineates the families of party systems in East-Central Europe, challenges historical institutionalism of Kitschelt et al. 1999, and offers micro-level examination of parties and electorates. Includes Bulgaria as case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the empirical status of proximity versus directional voting (as well as alternative models due to Lacy and Paolino, Kedar, and others in which voters discount the parties’ policy promises) are hampered by difficulties surrounding the analysis of election survey data. We employ an alternative approach in which we analyze the electoral effects associated with shifts in political parties’ policy positions in Western European elections. We ask the question: Do parties tend to gain votes when they move towards the center, as proximity theory predicts, or is such policy moderation associated with vote losses, as directional theory implies? Alternatively, is it the case that the electoral effects of policy moderation vary depending on the institutional context, as Kedar’s balancing theory of policy voting predicts? For our analyses we take as our dependent variable the changes in political parties’ vote shares between elections, while our key independent variable is the degree to which the party’s policy programme (as coded by the Manifesto Research Group) has become more/less centrist since the last election. Our analyses will encompass most of the major Western European political parties over the time period 1976-1998. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between the dispersion of policy choices on offer in a party system and citizen satisfaction. Cross-national analyses, based on twelve countries from 1973-2003, are presented that suggest that when parties in a political system are more ideologically proximate to the mean voter position in Left-Right terms that overall satisfaction increases. The central impli-cation of this finding is that for understanding within country changes in satisfaction, party posi-tions matter. And, when the average party’s policy position is more proximate to the mean voter position, satisfaction increases. Our macro-level approach produces new insights for understand-ing within country changes in satisfaction over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2005 EU constitutional referenda results reflect the growing Euroscepticism in Europe. The literature focused on the French or Dutch rejection, ignoring the positive votes in Spain and Luxembourg. Given the similar sociodemographics of the ‘no’ vote and the political party preferences in all four cases, what explains the variation in the results? The literature has so far been divided between the ‘second-order’ and ‘attitude’ models, attributing the results to domestic or European factors, leading to inconclusive results. First, I hypothesize that the more the Eurosceptic arguments/frames resonated with contentious domestic issues in a member state, the less support that state’s public would give the EU in a referendum. I argue that in France and the Netherlands while no campaigners started early and addressed people’s daily problems by priming key contentious themes, the yes campaigners came into the debate late and failed to deliver a uniform message. Second, I hypothesize that sequencing mattered; the later a country held its referendum, the more the previous referenda results and campaigns in other states influenced its public. I use field work data including interviews with campaign leaders and public opinion surveys. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous attempts have been made to put European political parties on a common ideological scale, including content analysis of political statements, hand coding of party manifestos, and surveys of expert opinion. At the same time, there have been numerous attempts at using roll call-based ideal point estimation techniques on national and transnational parliaments. These have the satisfying property of using newly available roll call data, which due to their presumed consequentiality may reveal latent preferences better than other methods. However, we cannot compare within-state parliament estimates to those of other countries or the European Parliament. The solution to the problem lies in the existence of bridge actors--in this case, substantial numbers of national parliamentarians who also serve in the EP before and after their national service. Their revealed preferences in the form of roll call votes on the European Parliament's agenda allow us to rescale solely national members of parliament with a common space score. I test this approach with roll call data on several national parliaments and all sessions of the EP. The common space estimates allow me to explore important questions in comparative politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]