Seth Jolly

Measuring party positions in Europe The Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999–2010

This article reports on the 2010 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES) and introduces the CHES trend file, which contains measures of national party positioning on European integration, ideology and several European Union (EU) and non-EU policies for 1999−2010. We examine the reliability of expert judgments and cross-validate the 2010 CHES data with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project and the 2009 European Elections Studies survey, and explore basic trends on party positioning since 1999. The dataset is available at the CHES website.

The Europhile Fringe? Regionalist Party Support for European Integration

The relationship between European integration and regionalist parties is still a largely unexplored area of research. In this paper, I evaluate whether regionalist parties perceive the European Union (EU) as an ally or an enemy. Using expert surveys, I assess the views of regionalist parties on European integration and I find that regionalist political parties are consistently pro-EU across time, space, and issue area. I find further support for this finding in a case study of the Scottish National Party.

Complexity in the European party space: Exploring dimensionality with experts

Does the n-issue space in domestic European polities reduce to one, two, or more dimensions? How do these dimensions relate to each other? More broadly, how does dimensionality vary across countries? We attempt to advance our understanding of political contestation in Europe by mapping the dimensionality of the political space across 24 countries using Chapel Hill expert survey (CHES) data. We test how well different models of the European political space fit the CHES data and find that three-dimensional models best fit the data in all countries. However, there is considerable cross-national variation in how the three dimensions relate to one another. Given this, we present a new measure of dimensional complexity that captures the degree to which these three dimensions are related. In so doing, we improve our understanding of the complexity of the political space in European countries.

Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data

This article addresses the variation of anti-corruption and anti-elite salience in party positioning across Europe. It demonstrates that while anti-corruption salience is primarily related to the (regional) context in which a party operates, anti-elite salience is primarily a function of party ideology. Extreme left and extreme conservative (TAN) parties are significantly more likely to emphasize anti-elite views. Through its use of the new 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey wave, this article also introduces the dataset.

The European Common Space: Extending the Use of Anchoring Vignettes

In this article, we combine advances in both survey research and scaling techniques to estimate a common dimension for political parties across the member states of the European Union. Most previous scholarship has either ignored or assumed cross-national comparability of party placements across a variety of dimensions. The 2010 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey includes anchoring vignettes which we use as “bridge votes” to place parties from different countries on a common space. We estimate our dimensions using the “blackbox” technique. Our results demonstrate both the usefulness of anchoring vignettes and the broad applicability of the blackbox scaling routine. Further, the resulting scale offers a cross-nationally comparable interval-level measure of a party’s left/right ideological position with a high degree of face validity. In short, we argue that the left/right economic dimension travels well across European countries.

Xenophobia and immigrant contact: French public attitudes toward immigration

Abstract How does the presence of immigrants in a local community affect xenophobic attitudes? Does contact with immigrants ameliorate or exacerbate anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens? Synthesizing public opinion, economic, and demographic data from France, we test hypotheses concerning the relationship between the presence of immigrant populations and xenophobic sentiments. Supportive of the contact theory, we find that larger immigrant populations decrease xenophobic attitudes. This finding challenges much of the country-level research on immigrant concentration and xenophobia and offers some hope for those who are concerned about the rise of xenophobia and the radical right in the midst of diverse European polities.

Anchoring the experts: Using vignettes to compare party ideology across countries

Expert surveys are a valuable, commonly used instrument to measure party positions. Some critics question the cross-national comparability of these measures, though, suggesting that experts may lack a common anchor for fundamental concepts such as economic left–right. Using anchoring vignettes in the 2010 Chapel Hill Expert Survey, we examine the extent of cross-national difference in expert ideological placements. We find limited evidence of cross-national differences; on the whole, our findings further establish expert surveys as a rigorous instrument for measuring party positions in a cross-national context.