Ian Budge

Ideology, strategy and party change : spatial analyses of post-war election programmes in 19 democracies

1. Influence of election programmes: Britain and Canada 1945-1979 Colin Rallings 2. The internal analysis of election programmes Ian Budge 3. Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the United States 1946-1981, an initial comparative analysis David Robertson 4. Canada 1945-1980: party platforms and campaign strategies William P. Irvine 5. Sri Lanka 1947-1977: elite programmes and mass politics Judith Bara 6. Israel 1949-1981 Judith Bara 7. Ireland 1948-1981: issues, parties, strategies Peter Mair 8. Northern Ireland 1921-1973: party manifestos and platforms Michael Laver 9. Sweden and Denmark 1945-1982: election programmes in the Scandinavian setting Margareta Holmstedt and Tove-Lise Schou 10. The Netherlands 1946-81 Karl Dittrich 11. Belgium 1946-1981 Derek J. Hearl 12. Luxembourg 1945-1982: dimensions and strategies Derek J. Hearl 13. Austria 1945-1978 Franz Horner 14. Electoral programmes in West Germany 1949-1980: explorations in the nature of political controversy Hans-Dieter Klingemann 15. France 1958-1981: the strategy of joint government platforms Francois Petry 16. Italy 1946-1979: ideological distances and party movements Alfio Mastropaolo 17. Japan 1960-1980: party programmes in elections Takashi Inoguchi 18. Do parties differ, and how? Comparative discriminant and factor analyses Ian Budge and David Robertson Appendices General bibliography.

Party policy and government coalitions

Notes on Contributors - Introduction - Coalition Theory, Government Policy and Party Policy I.Budge & M.J.Laver - Measuring Policy Distances and Modelling Coalition Formation M.J.Laver & I.Budge - Coalition and Party Policy in Ireland M.J.Laver - Norway: Policy Pursuit and Coalition Avoidance K.Strom & J.Leipart - Sweden: Social Democratic Dominance in One Dimension K.Strom & T.Bergman - Party and Coalition Policy in Denmark T-L.Schou & D.J.Hearl - Coalition Governments in the Federal Republic of Germany: Does Policy Matter? H-D.Klingemann & A.Volkens - Party and Coalition in Luxembourg D.J.Hearl - Policy and Coalition in Belgium D.J.Hearl - The Role of Policy in Dutch Coalition Building, 1946-8 P.Tops & K.Dittrich - Party Policy and Coalition Bargaining in Italy from 1948-87. Is there Order behind the Chaos A.Mastropaolo & M.Slater - Party Policy and Coalition Bargaining in Israel J.Bara - Coaliton Bargaining in the French Fourth Republic, 1946-58 F.Petry - The Relationship between Party and Coalition Policy in Europe: an Empirical Synthesis I.Budge & M.J.Laver - Index

A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria Viewed Comparatively and Temporally

This article considers how parties can decide on policy when there is no reliable information about the effect of these decisions on voting. Where this is the case they must base their stands on a priori assumptions about appropriate priorities, namely on political ideologies. These indicate the general policy area a party should occupy, but do not give detailed guidance on which position to take within it. Five different ways of deciding on this, within ideological constraints, are specified. The predictions derived from these models well anticipate the actual decisions made by post-war parties in twenty democracies, as summarized in the unique spatial maps of policy movements published by the Manifesto Research Group of the European Consortium for Political Research.

Parties and democracy : coalition formation and government functioning in twenty states

1. Explaining Democratic Government: Background Considerations 2. The General Theory of Party Government 3. Government Formation 4. The Distribution of Ministries 5. Party Influences on Government Policy 6. Government Termination: Causes and Effects 7. Parties Steering the State: Evaluation and Development of the Theory Appendix A: Party Factions and Cabinet Reshuffles Appendix B: Data: Sources and Preparation

Constraints on cabinet formation in parliamentary democracies

Coalition theory typically treats political parties involved in government formation in parliamentary democracies as if they were unconstrained players in an institution-free world. Yet actual coalition options are often severely constrained by institutional arrangements and prior commitments. We develop a systematic account of different constraints on government formation and examine their frequency across 10 parliamentary democracies. Hypothetical and empirical examples demonstrate how a small number of constraints can dramatically reduce the range of coalition options and redistribute bargaining power among political parties. More adequate coalition theories need to recognize the effects of such constraints and to build on the theoretical lessons of the neoinstitutionalist approach to legislative behavior.

Party government in 20 democracies: an update (1990–1995)

The country tables of the data collection ‘Political Data 1945–1990. Party Government in 20 Democracies’ (European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 24, No. 1 (July 1993), pp. 1–119) are updated and corrected to the end of 1995. Errors and omissions on the level of separate Ministers and/or Ministries have been corrected as well. These are listed as ‘changes/corrections’ in the corresponding tables in the original data collection.

What Are Elections For? Conferring the Median Mandate

Democracy is often described as a system in which a majority of electors choose one out of a number of competing parties to form a government and carry out its programme. Unfortunately, spontaneous majorities rarely form in support of one party. We generalize from a ‘government’ to a ‘median’ mandate, in which the median elector chooses the pivotal party in parliament, which then translates his or her preferences into public policy. To check this we investigate how accurately parliaments and governments represent the left–right position of the median voter in each of twenty parliamentary democracies. Distortions depend on the type of electoral arrangement, being relatively smaller under proportional representation than under single-member districts. Distortions do not equate to biased representation, however. Once we consider how distortions at one step or one time are compensated by distortions in the opposite direction at another, overall representation of the median voter position is reasonably accurate.

Expert judgements of party policy positions: Uses and limitations in political research

Estimates of party policy positions obtained from specialists through postal surveys (Castles & Mair 1984; Huber & Inglehart 1995; Laver & Hunt 1992; Ray 1997) have been increasingly used in the last 15 years to provide spatial pictures of party policy and ideology (Kitschelt 1994: 256; Ware 1996: 27– 28). Their popularity rests partly on sheer accessibility – the mean judgements of specialists about Left–Right locations or particular policy positions can be used as reported without tedious data-processing. Expert judgements are also perceived as authoritative – if we cannot trust the consensus of party specialists about where their national parties stand, what can we trust? Estimating the policy preferences of collective actors is crucially important to all branches of political science, particularly to studies of democracy and the mandate (Klingemann et al.1994) and to rational choice models which show how the distribution of initial preferences interact with rules and structural constraints to produce given outcomes (Baron 1991; Budge 1994). With expect surveys, have we found an easy, economical and authoritative way to identify party preferences as they change over time (Knutsen 1998), which is also capable of operationalising theory and checking it out (Laver & Shepsle 1996)? Maybe. But some problems remain. These have rarely been systematically discussed because the spatial picture experts give of party systems is both beguiling and in accord with previous ‘institutional’ classifications (e.g., of party family, cf. Smith 1984: 328–331). Thus the judgements have been taken at face value rather than having their bases critically examined. 1

Parties and Democracy

Parties are the central institution through which mass representative democracies now work. This book covers four aspects of their activities at governmental level—the actual formation and termination of governments; the distribution of ministries between parties forming the government; and policymaking. In each area, it proposes theories and models of how parties drive these processes, and checks them against comparative evidence for 20 States from 1946–85. Initial hypotheses are broadly upheld by this evidence, supporting a general theory of democratic functioning described in Chs. 3 and 7. This has considerable implications for the general theory of the State. The evidence used in the book has been updated and extended. It is now published as Jqap Woldendorp, hans E. Keman, and Ian Budge Party Government in 48 Democracies (1945–98): Composition, Duration, Personnel.

The Party Mandate and the Westminster Model: Election Programmes and Government Spending in Britain, 1948–85

Do party manifestos matter to government policy? Does a genuine party mandate operate within the British political process? These questions are generally neglected in analyses of British politics, but they are crucial in assessing how far political parties transmit electoral preferences into government action. We try to answer them through a novel use of available data, using content analysis to code and classify policy emphases within the post-war election programmes of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties. Statistical analysis reveals that government party programmes are remarkably well reflected in post-election policy priorities, measured as percentages of central government spending in major policy areas. This gives strong support to traditional mandate theory within the context of the ‘Westminster model’ of party government. Anomalies, such as a strong relationship between Liberal emphases and expenditures in three key areas, and the more consistent relationship of expenditures with Conservative rather than Labour priorities, are also considered.