On Observing the Variety of Party Policy Offerings in National Left-Right Policy Space.

The policy options political parties put on offer for voters are important elements in the operation of democracy. More versus less party variety of party policy choices has been shown to influence electoral choice, collective representation, political stability, and turnout. This paper steps back from the consequences of party system choices offered in order to distinguish among the ideas used to discuss and analyze party policy variety. We divide the notion of party policy variety into eight concepts and empirical referents. The analysis is exploratory and the results are descriptive. Nevertheless, the descriptions prove informative with respect to the following three observations. First, larger party systems with more polarization, more diversity, and more dispersion along a left-right dimension tend to come from systems with more permissive electoral formats—to be read here as PR systems, in comparison to SMD systems. But, second, because permissive systems are more likely to permit viable entry by both centrist and extreme parties, measurements showing more polarization and dispersion are not uniformly the characteristics of party systems operating under more permissive electoral rules. And, third, because voters in more permissive systems tend to concentrate their votes on one or more centrist alternatives, polarization and dispersion differences between more and less permissive systems are further reduced when the concept of interest is either electoral polarization or electoral dispersion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]