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INTRODUCTION The cautionary but moderately encouraging conclusions from Britain and Canada are also likely to hold for other countries – certainly for those (like Australia and New Zealand) with similar governmental and party arrangements – but probably for others too. The country studies reported in Chapters 3–17 all assess the place of the manifesto or its programmatic equivalent in national political processes. The qualitative evidence produced there suggests (even within the context of coalition negotiations) that they form genuine statements of preference rather than mere bargaining counters. The elaborate negotiations of joint programmes before an election, as in Ireland and France in 1973, is an indication of the importance accorded them by parties as well as by the electorate. These bits of evidence require more systematic investigation to tie them conclusively together. Even so, they allow us to proceed to our ‘internal’ analysis with further reassurance that the texts have an effect on the external world. Of course election programmes are interesting not only for their bearing on government action, but also for their contribution to the electoral success of the party, to the formation of like-minded coalitions, and to the study of policy-spaces constraining the choices rational actors will make. All these lines of investigation are followed up below and in the parallel analyses currently underway. THE COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK Regardless of the particular interest one has, campaign appeals are studied to best advantage on a comparative rather than on a single-country or single-party basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although we discuss methods of data collection and coding in broad outline in Chapter 2 (Section 5), we go into less detail there than for factor analysis (Chapter 2, Section 8). This is because collecting and coding decisions, though of fundamental importance, are even more technical; and closely tied to details of the overall coding frame. We therefore present our full description and justification here, in immediate juxtoposition to the frame itself, so that cross-reference is immediate and easy. The Appendix therefore falls into three sections: a general account and justification of the decisions taken on quantification and classification of the election programmes – which refers also to certain aspects of the succeeding statistical analyses where data related decisions affected these (B1); a short account of operational procedures (B2); and the coding frame itself (B3). Some supplementary technical analyses will be reported in the associated microfiche publication. B1 BASIC RESEARCH DESIGN The research design for this book is the product of deliberation and experimentation over five years by a group of scholars. Although the basic outlines were fixed at the beginning of the project, the details are the product of a lengthy inductive process, and the result of technical problems which could not be identified ahead of time but had to be resolved as they occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY AND REVIEW OF THE COUNTRY FINDINGS With the exception of Chapters 3 and 9 where we presented parallel but separate analyses of four ‘Anglo-Saxon’ democracies and two Scandinavian systems, each chapter has explored the dimensions and cleavages of party competition, within one country, independently, and in detail. Within the common coding frame of Appendix B, country investigators were free to introduce additional sub-categories to capture the idiosyncracies of their ‘own’ system. It is significant that many did not feel this need, or introduced no more than a few refinements and additions. It is also significant that most country-specific categories introduced at the outset of the coding, on the a priori assumption that they were necessary to accommodate idiosyncracies of the countries involved, were found to collect few references and had to be collapsed back into the general categories. All this demonstrates that the general coding frame accommodated the major issues of party politics in a very diverse set of countries. It worked least well where it was least relevant, in the basically rural if developing society of Sri Lanka. This was not unexpected, but even here the results made broad sense. In retrospect, other general coding categories might have been added. This is perhaps more obvious in the External Relations categories than elsewhere, as no direct reference is made to East–West relations nor to the leading alliances such as NATO (though references to foreign special relationships and military pick this up). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]Coding With the exception of Chapters 3 and 9 where we presented parallel but separate analyses of four ‘Anglo-Saxon’ democracies and two Scandinavian systems, each chapter has explored the dimensions and cleavages of party competition, within one country, independently, and in detail. Within the common coding frame of Appendix B, country investigators were free to introduce additional sub-categories to capture the idiosyncracies of their ‘own’ system. It is significant that many did not feel this need, or introduced no more than a few refinements and additions. It is also significant that most country-specific categories introduced at the outset of the coding, on the a priori assumption that they were necessary to accommodate idiosyncracies of the countries involved, were found to collect few references and had to be collapsed back into the general categories. All this demonstrates that the general coding frame accommodated the major issues of party politics in a very diverse set of countries. It worked least well where it was least relevant, in the basically rural if developing society of Sri Lanka. This was not unexpected, but even here the results made broad sense. In retrospect, other general coding categories might have been added. This is perhaps more obvious in the External Relations categories than elsewhere, as no direct reference is made to East–West relations nor to the leading alliances such as NATO (though references to foreign special relationships and military pick this up). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]