What Motivates Moderation? Policy Shifts of Ruling Parties, Opposition Parties and Niche Parties

Abstract

What makes political parties moderate their policy platforms? Previous research has emphasised such factors as electoral systems, past election results and changes in voters’ preferences as influencing the policy positions that parties take. This study considers a variable that has been ignored in the literature: whether a party is in power or in opposition. I argue that the behaviour of opposition parties stems from their powerless status and their desire to change this status (unless they are niche parties that tend to stick to their positions). It is expected that non-niche opposition parties are more likely to moderate their policy positions than ruling parties or niche opposition parties. A statistical analysis provides strong supportive evidence for the hypothesis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2008 American Political Science Association conference and the 2015 Midwest Political Science Association conference. The author appreciates the comments received at the conferences and from John Ishiyama and Akitaka Matsuo.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Of course, there should be cases where a ruling party is rapidly losing its popularity—due to a major scandal, for example—and tries to modify its image by shifting its policies. Yet, those cases are exceptions, and it is difficult to identify them objectively. Also, they may move either to the centre or to the extreme; there is no theoretically predicted direction of their moves.

2. Germany’s Green Party joined a coalition as a result of the 1998 election. But the party in fact reduced its vote share and seats in the 1998 election from the previous election.

3. Adams et al. (2012) is a recent study that demonstrates that voters perceive policy shifts of mainstream and niche parties differently.

4. There may be additional factors that make ruling parties less mobile in terms of policy positions. First, ruling parties are expected by their supporters to implement the policies they advocated during the previous electoral campaigns, which bind their behaviours. Second, parties in a coalition cabinet may be bound by the coalition agreement they sign with coalition partners.

5. More specifically, they chose the countries for which Eurobarometer data were available for at least ten years during the observation period. Belgium, Germany and Ireland are not included in ACEG’s analysis because, according to Huber (1989), Eurobarometer’s left–right self-placements from those three countries are not comparable with others, among which measures can be compared cross-nationally.

6. Schmitt and Scholz’s (2005) Mannheim Eurobarometer Trend File, which compiles Eurobarometer surveys by countries, currently covers up to 2002.

7. Among the sample observations, 38% of cases had a movement that is larger than .5 in absolute values; 14% moved more than 1 in absolute values. The largest concentration of cases is found near zero; 29% were within the range between −0.2 and.2.

8. The data on this variable were provided by Ron Lehrer.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ko Maeda

Ko Maeda (PhD, Michigan State University, 2005) is an associate professor of political science at the University of North Texas, specialising in elections, party competition and political institutions. His work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics.