Judith Bara

Mapping policy preferences from texts III : statistical solutions for manifesto analysts

PART I: VALIDATED, AUTHORITATIVE, INDISPENSIBLE: THE MANIFESTO ESTIMATES IN POLITICAL RESEARCH PART II: VALIDITY GUARANTEES RELIABILITY: HIGH RELIABILITY LIMITS ERROR PART III: DELIVERING QUALITY DATA: COLLECTION, CODING, CONTROLS, COMMUNICATION PART IV: EXPLOITING THE MULTI-LEVEL ESTIMATES TO STUDY REPRESENTATION COMPARATIVELY

The 2005 Manifestos: A Sense of Déjà Vu?

Abstract The Manifesto Research Group, since its establishment in 1979, has analysed the main party manifestos after every British general election, so that a clear, over time picture of changing policy priorities has emerged. Other investigations have compared issue saliency within manifestos, giving the parties’ “take” on the political situation in relation to voter perceptions of what the most important issues are. This article brings these two elements together, first in terms of mapping the most recent changes in right–left positioning of the parties and seeing how far policy estimates concerning economic matters, welfare and quality of life continue patterns set previously. Second, saliency rankings of “top” issues within the manifestos are contrasted with results from three opinion polls to establish whether the parties are using different policy agendas to attract support and how far these reflect public concerns. Third, the paper reports on how the three main parties see the role of manifestos. The article concludes that some changes in content have occurred since 2001 but these are neither new nor unexpected, creating a sense of “déjà vu”.

The UK Coalition Agreement of 2010: Who Won?

Abstract The UK general election of 2010 resulted in Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s. The coalition parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, agreed a comprehensive policy deal in a coalition agreement. This paper undertakes a content analysis of that agreement to determine which party gained (or lost) most. ‘Gained’ and ‘lost’ here both have very specific meanings since they are based on comparisons of party positions as set out in their respective manifestos with the position of the new government set out in the agreement. In global terms we find that the agreement is nearer to the Liberal Democrats’ left–right position than the Conservatives’. Nevertheless, a more detailed analysis of policy areas identifies several where the Conservatives gained more. Overall, both parties secured considerable gains on their own priority policies.

Debating Abortion, Deliberative Reciprocity and Parliamentary Advocacy

An influential model of deliberative democracy advances a principle of reciprocity as a norm of democratic debate on morally controversial issues. This norm is at odds with behaviour that has been observed in political campaigning and policy making where advocates of competing positions talk past one another. Does this inconsistency stem from a contrast between the normative and empirical or from not considering empirically plausible practices of democratic debate in which reciprocity might be respected? One such practice is free votes on conscience issues in the UK parliament. This article examines six second reading debates in the UK House of Commons on abortion legislation to assess whether, in favourable circumstances, political debate is consistent with reciprocity. Utilising computer-aided text analysis, via the Alceste program, it finds no gross departure from the norm of reciprocity, suitably operationalised, but neither does it find complete conformity to the norm of reciprocity. Because advocacy is an important component of political representation, deliberative norms are qualified in practice.

In a Different Parliamentary Voice

One question at the heart of the analysis of gender and politics is whether women and men act and speak in different ways to significant political effect. In terms of political representation, this issue is particularly important. Arguments for increasing the number of women representatives in parliament, for example, are not about an abstract numerical parity, but rest on a claim about the distinctive voice and experience that women bring to political debate and decisions. For some, the difference turns on the view that women bring a more empathetic and less adversarial style to politics. A number of feminist scholars have suggested that the quality of deliberation is correlated with the presence of women in a group—for Mansbridge (1996, 123), for example, the process of persuasion is related to a consultative and participatory style that seems to characterize women more than men. For others, arguments for increasing the number of women representatives in parliament turn on a difference of values. Such views were particularly widespread in the 1980s, when psychological and social theories of gender differences claimed to have found evidence of parallel but different moral reasoning in women and men (Gilligan 1982; Ruddick 1989; Tronto 1993). Gilligan (1982, 57), among others, advanced in her seminal work, In a Different Voice, that female politicians are more likely to espouse an “ethic of care” concerned with responsibility and interpersonal relationships, while men are, by contrast, prone to embrace an “ethic of justice.”

Finding a niche? Challenger parties and issue emphasis in the 2015 televised leaders’ debates

Do leaders of ‘challenger’ parties adopt a ‘niche’ strategy in national televised debates? This article answers this question by analysing the content of the two multiparty televised leaders’ debates that took place ahead of the 2015 British general election. Using computer-aided text analysis (CATA), it provides reliable and valid measures of what the leaders said in both debates and develops our theoretical understanding of how challenger-party leaders make their pitches. It finds that the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Green Party, Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru leaders all demonstrated a degree of ‘nicheness’ in their contributions in comparison with the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour leaders. It also finds that the challenger-party leaders placed a greater emphasis on their core concerns. Nevertheless, the debates covered much policy ground. Their structure obliged all party leaders to talk about a broad range of issues.