The Impact of the Socio-Economic Context on the Länder Parties' Policy Positions

Abstract

Like father, unlike sons: German parties at the state level (Länder parties) not only differ with regard to their roots, their membership structure and their electoral successes, they also exhibit remarkably varied policy preferences. Although several case studies of parties and party systems in the Länder offer important insights, we still lack systematic knowledge about the causes of this variation in policy. This article seeks to fill that void by examining the ways in which socio-economic variables influence a party's policy positions. Based on a comprehensive dataset representing the policy positions of 77 parties over several electoral terms, I test hypotheses related to the cleavage theory and to the concept of the politicised social structure. The policy positions are estimated using the wordscore method. The results show that the proportion of Catholics, rurality and economic situation affect the parties' policy positions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at the workshop on ‘Inhaltsanalytische Verfahren zur Messung der Präferenzen politischer Akteure’ at the MZES, Mannheim, in June 2008. The author thanks Anni Lehmann, Christian Stecker and Sebastian Theuerkauf for their valuable suggestions.

Notes

M. Haas, U. Jun and O. Niedermayer, ‘Die Parteien und Parteiensysteme der Bundesländer – Eine Einführung’, in Uwe Jun, Melanie Haas and Oskar Niedermayer (eds.), Parteien und Parteiensysteme in den deutschen Ländern (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008), p.16.

See K. Detterbeck and W. Renzsch, ‘Symmetrien und Asymmetrien im bundesstaatlichen Parteienwettbewerb’, in Jun et al. (eds.), Parteien und Parteiensysteme in den deutschen Ländern, pp.39f.

Haas et al., ‘Die Parteien und Parteiensysteme der Bundesländer – Eine Einführung’, p.18.

J. Adams, M. Clark, L. Ezrow and G. Glasgow, ‘Understanding Change and Stability in Party Ideologies: Do Parties Respond to Public Opinion or to Past Election Results?’, British Journal of Political Science 34/4 (2004), p.592.

Adams et al. (ibid.) identify the hypothesis that ‘[p]olitical parties systematically shift their ideological positions in response to shifts in public opinion’ as ‘a logical starting point’. They do this because, as they say, this hypothesis can be seen as ‘a straightforward application of the logic underlying spatial modelling studies, particularly those that ascribe vote-maximizing or office-maximizing motivations to parties’.

K. Deschouwer, ‘Political Parties in Multi-layered Systems’, European Urban and Regional Studies 10/3 (2003), p.224.

See K. Schmitt, ‘Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen. Eine Einführung’, in Dieter Oberndörfer and Karl Schmitt (eds.), Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), pp.10ff.

But see e.g. A. Ladner, Stabilität und Wandel von Parteien und Parteiensystemen. Eine vergleichende Analyse von Konfliktlinien, Parteien und Parteiensystemen in den Schweizer Kantonen (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004); L. Libbrecht, B. Maddens, W. Swenden and E. Fabre, ‘Issue Salience in Regional Party Manifestos in Spain’, European Journal of Political Research 48/1 (2009), pp.58–79; R. Pogorelis, B. Maddens, W. Swenden and E. Fabre, ‘Issue Salience in Regional and National Party Manifestos in the UK’, West European Politics 28/5 (2005), pp.992–1014.

Pogorelis et al., ‘Issue Salience in Regional and National Party Manifestos in the UK’, pp.997f., 1005.

M. Debus, ‘Die programmatischen Positionen der Parteien und Koalitionsregierungen in Baden-Württemberg und Rheinland-Pfalz zwischen 1996 und 2006’, in Josef Schmid and Udo Zolleis (eds.), Wahlkampf im Südwesten. Parteien, Kampagnen und Landtagswahlen 2006 in Baden-Württemberg und Rheinland-Pfalz (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2007), p.56.

R. Heinrich, ‘Das Parteiensystem Schleswig-Holsteins’, in Jun et al. (eds.), Parteien und Parteiensysteme in den deutschen Ländern, p.440; K. Rohe, Wahlen und Wählertraditionen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992); J. Schmid, Die CDU. Organisationsstrukturen, Politiken und Funktionsweise einer Partei im Föderalismus (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1990), pp.76–120; the sections in Oberndörfer and Schmitt (eds.), Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967).

Besides the strategy of the party – under which he not only subsumes campaign tactics and coalition building, but also the formulation of election manifestos – Deschouwer names, among other things, the following indicators: the selection of candidates for elections, the representation of regional parties in higher boards of the party and their financial independence (K. Deschouwer, ‘Political Parties as Multi-level Organizations’, in Richard S. Katz and William Crotty (eds.), Handbook of Party Politics (London: Sage, 2006), pp.294f; cf. M. Laffin, E. Shaw and G. Taylor, ‘The New Sub-National Politics of the British Labour Party’, Party Politics 13/1 (2007). pp.88–108).

Only if the regional level possesses very wide-ranging responsibilities do the regional party sections become the ‘core of the party’ (Deschouwer, ‘Political Parties as Multi-level Organizations’, pp.295f.). Therefore, it is normally the regional party sections whose autonomy is cut.

A certain degree of intra-party coordination is however necessary to actually speak of a party (ibid., p.294.).

See E. Fabre, ‘Party Organization in a Multi-level System: Party Organizational Change in Spain and the UK’, Regional & Federal Studies 18/4 (2008), p.311. The difference between this argument and the view on sub-national parties' policy objectives presented above is that the former focuses on the programmatic leeway of sub-national parties rather than concentrating on the effects of economic- and socio-structural factors as such.

Libbrecht et al., ‘Issue Salience in Regional Party Manifestos in Spain’, p.64.

See Deschouwer, ‘Political Parties as Multi-level Organizations’, p.296; K. Detterbeck, Zusammenlegung von Bundes- und Landtagswahlen? Die Terminierung von Wahlen und ihre Konsequenzen im europäischen Vergleich (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2006).

Fabre, ‘Party Organization in a Multi-level System’, p.311.

Ibid., p.325.

Deschouwer, ‘Political Parties as Multi-level Organizations’, p.294.

Fabre, ‘Party Organization in a Multi-level System’, p.326.

M. Debus, ‘Die programmatische Entwicklung der deutschen Parteien auf Bundes- und Landesebene zwischen den Bundestagswahlen 1998 und 2005’, in Frank Brettschneider, Oskar Niedermayer, Barbara Pfetsch and Bernhard Weßels (eds.), Die Bundestagswahl 2005. Analysen aus Sicht der Wahlforschung, der Kommunikationswissenschaft und der Parteienforschung (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007), p.58; J. Hopkin and J. Bradbury, ‘British Statewide Parties and Multilevel Politics’, Publius 36/1 (2006), pp.143–6; Pogorelis et al., ‘Issue Salience in Regional and National Party Manifestos in the UK’, p.1006.

D. Hough and C. Jeffery, ‘Introduction: Multi-Level Electoral Competition: Elections and Parties in Decentralized States’, European Urban and Regional Studies 10/3 (2003), p.195.

The effects that the party competition has on the cleavages and their relevance for electoral decision (see J.M. Colomer and R. Puglisi, ‘Cleavages, Issues and Parties: A Critical Overview of the Literature’, European Political Science 4/4 (2005), pp.502–20; M. Elff, ‘Social Structure and Electoral Behavior in Comparative Perspective: The Decline of Social Cleavages in Western Europe Revisited’, Perspectives on Politics 5/2 (2007), pp.277–94) are not included in this article.

However, the transformation of social conflicts into (party-)political alternatives is a complex process and is not happening automatically (see P. Mair, ‘Cleavages’, in Katz and Crotty (eds.), Handbook of Party Politics, pp.371f.). Its preconditions are that the conflict is rooted in different social realities, the conflicting parties are conscious of their common identity, intermediate organisations take up and represent the interests of the conflicting parties (Mair, ‘Cleavages’, p.373) and, furthermore, that there are no institutional barriers, for example in the form of characteristics of the suffrage (F.U. Pappi, ‘Die politisierte Sozialstruktur heute: Historische Reminiszenz oder aktuelles Erklärungspotential?’, in Frank Brettschneider, Jan van Deth and Edeltraud Roller (ed.), Das Ende der politisierten Sozialstruktur? (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2002), p.31). Moreover, the cleavages are ‘also a product of coincidences and are dependent on the people who lead a party’ (Ladner, Stabilität und Wandel von Parteien und Parteiensystemen, p.69).

F.U. Pappi, ‘Das Wahlverhalten sozialer Gruppen bei Bundestagswahlen’, in Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Max Kaase (eds.), Wahlen und politischer Prozeß. Analysen aus Anlaß der Bundestagswahl 1983 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), p.369.

Lipset and Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, p.5.

E.g. Adams et al., ‘Understanding Change and Stability in Party Ideologies’; J. Adams, M. Clark, L. Ezrow and G. Glasgow, ‘Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties’ Policy Shifts, 1976–1998', American Journal of Political Science 50/3 (2006), pp.513–29; J. Adams and Z. Somer-Topcu, ‘Policy Adjustment by Parties in Response to Rival Parties’ Policy Shifts: Spatial Theory and the Dynamics of Party Competition in Twenty-Five Postwar Democracies', British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming); Z. Somer-Topcu, ‘Timely Decisions: The Effects of Past National Elections on Party Policy Change’, Journal of Politics 71/1 (2009), pp.238–48.

E.g. M. Laver, ‘Policy and the Dynamics of Political Competition’, American Political Science Review 99/2 (2005), pp.263–81; I. Budge, ‘A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria Viewed Comparatively and Temporally’, British Journal of Political Science 24/4 (1994), pp.243–67. However, the difference between these perspectives does not mean that they stand in contrast to each other. It should rather be assumed that parties pursue several aims at the same time, which again complicates the achievement of individual goals (W.C. Müller and K. Str⊘m, ‘Political Parties and Hard Choices’, in Wolfgang C. Müller and Kaare Str⊘m (eds.), Policy, Office, or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Europe make Hard Decisions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 9–13). Numerous models are based on the coherent assumption that politicians and party members seek to win elections, but have political beliefs and goals at the same time. The latter can again be opposed to winning the maximum number of votes (B. Grofman, ‘Downs and Two-Party Convergence’, Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004), pp.37f; A. Hindmoor, Rational Choice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp.40f.).

See A. Engel, ‘Regionale politische Traditionen und die Entwicklung der CDU/CSU’, in Oberndörfer and Schmitt (eds.), Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, p.91.

Haas et al., ‘Die Parteien und Parteiensysteme der Bundesländer – Eine Einführung’, p.18; Pogorelis et al., ‘Issue Salience in Regional and National Party Manifestos in the UK’, pp.995f.

R.M. Lepsius, ‘Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur’, in Wilhelm Abel, Knut Borchart, Herrmann Kellenbenz and Wolfgang Zorn (eds.), Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Friedrich Lütge (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1966), pp.371–93; J.J. Linz, ‘Cleavage and Consensus in West German Politics: The Early Fifties’, in Lipset and Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments, pp.283–321; F.U. Pappi, ‘Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur in der Bundesrepublik’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 14/3 (1973), pp.191–213.

F.U. Pappi and S. Shikano, ‘Die politisierte Sozialstruktur als mittelfristig stabile Basis einer deutschen Normalwahl’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 54/3 (2002), p.449.

Ibid.

Ibid., pp.455f.

Ibid., p.450.

Ibid.

T. Emmert and D. Roth, ‘Zur wahlsoziologischen Bedeutung eines Modells sozialstrukturell verankerter Konfliktlinien im vereinten Deutschland’, Historical Social Research 20/2 (1995), pp.137f., 156.

Pappi and Shikano, ‘Die politisierte Sozialstruktur als mittelfristig stabile Basis einer deutschen Normalwahl’, pp.456f; cf. K. Schmitt, ‘Kirchenangehörige Parlamentarier in den neuen Bundesländern nach dem Systemumbruch’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 37/1 (2006), pp.47f.

In the following ‘The Left’ and ‘The Left Party.PDS’ are subsumed under the PDS. The same applies to Alliance ’90/The Greens. In this article several electoral lists and combined electoral lists are referred to which entered the East German Land elections in 1990 as ‘The Greens’: ‘Bündnis 90’ (Brandenburg und Mecklenburg-West Pomerania), ‘Neues Forum’ (Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt) and ‘Neues Forum – Die Grünen – Demokratie Jetzt’ (Thuringia).

R.J. Dalton and W. Bürklin, ‘The Two German Electorates’, in Russell J. Dalton (ed.), Germans Divided. The 1994 Bundestag Elections and the Evolution of the German Party System (Oxford: Berg, 1996); Detterbeck and Renzsch, ‘Symmetrien und Asymmetrien im bundesstaatlichen Parteienwettbewerb’, pp.45f; T. Poguntke, ‘The German Party System: Eternal Crisis?’, German Politics 10/2 (2001), pp.45f.

Pappi and Shikano, ‘‘Die politisierte Sozialstruktur als mittelfristig stabile Basis einer deutschen Normalwahl’.

R. Stöss, Stabilität im Umbruch. Wahlbeständigkeit und Parteienwettbewerb im ‘Superwahljahr’ 1994 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), pp.187f.

F. Bösch, ‘Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU)’, in Frank Decker and Viola Neu (eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Parteien (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007), p.211.

V. Neu, Die Mitglieder der CDU. Eine Umfrage der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Sankt Augustin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., 2007), pp.11–14.

See U. Zolleis, Die CDU. Das politische Leitbild im Wandel der Zeit (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008), pp.45–8.

Within this discussion Cardinal Meisner (Cologne), for example, called on the CDU to eliminate the ‘C’ from its name (see ibid., p.249.).

A. Mintzel, ‘Regionale politische Traditionen und CSU-Hegemonie in Bayern’, in Oberndörfer and Schmitt (eds.), Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, p.169.

See R. Harmel and A.C. Tan, ‘Party Actors and Party Change: Does Factional Dominance Matter?’, European Journal of Political Research 42/3 (2003), pp.409–24.

Mair, ‘Cleavages’, p.374.

See Oberndörfer and Schmitt (eds.), Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Bösch, ‘Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU)’, p.214.

M. Keating, ‘Conclusion’, European Urban and Regional Studies 10/3 (2003), p.272.

Ibid., pp.272f.

Ibid.

W. Bürklin, ‘Die Struktur politischer Konfliktlinien im vereinten Deutschland: Eine Nation – zwei getrennte politische Kulturen?’, in Christina Albertina (ed.), Presse- und Informationsstelle der Universität Kiel, Forschungsbericht und Halbjahresschrift der Universität Kiel, Kiel, 1992, p.31 (cited in Emmert and Roth, ‘Zur wahlsoziologischen Bedeutung eines Modells sozialstrukturell verankerter Konfliktlinien im vereinten Deutschland’).

Stöss, Stabilität im Umbruch, pp.171f.

Engel, ‘Regionale politische Traditionen und die Entwicklung der CDU/CSU’, p.91.

Detterbeck and Renzsch, ‘Symmetrien und Asymmetrien im bundesstaatlichen Parteienwettbewerb’, p.51; D. Hough, ‘“Made in Eastern Germany”: The PDS and the Articulation of Eastern German Interests’, German Politics 9/2 (2000); Poguntke, ‘The German Party System: Eternal Crisis?’, p.45.

Stöss, Stabilität im Umbruch, pp.188f. (emphasis original).

Haas et al., ‘Die Parteien und Parteiensysteme der Bundesländer – Eine Einführung’, p.18.

G. Mielke, ‘Alter und neuer Regionalismus: Sozialstruktur, politische Traditionen und Parteiensystem in Baden-Württemberg’, in Oberndörfer and Schmitt (eds.), Parteien und regionale politische Traditionen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pp.302f.

Ibid., p.313.

Ibid., pp.306, 313.

Ibid., p.304.

U. Eith, ‘Das Parteiensystem Baden-Württembergs’, in Jun et al. (eds.), Parteien und Parteiensysteme in den deutschen Ländern, p.106.

R. Magin, M. Freitag and A. Vatter, ‘Within-Nation Differences in Cleavage Structures and Voter Alignments. Testing Lipset and Rokkan's Theory on a Regional Level’, paper presented at the Jahreskongress der Schweizerischen Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft, St. Gallen, Switzerland, 8–9 Jan. 2009.

See Detterbeck and Renzsch, ‘Symmetrien und Asymmetrien im bundesstaatlichen Parteienwettbewerb’.

Deschouwer, ‘Political Parties as Multi-level Organizations’, p.296; Fabre, ‘Party Organization in a Multi-level System’, p.326.

The dataset has been used by several studies mainly on government formation and legislation. E.g. M. Brunner and M. Debus, ‘Between Programmatic Interests and Party Politics: The German Bundesrat in the Legislative Process’, German Politics 17/3 (2008), pp.232–51; T. Bräuninger and M. Debus, ‘Der Einfluss von Koalitionsaussagen, programmatischen Standpunkten und der Bundespolitik auf die Regierungsbildung in den deutschen Ländern’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 49/2 (2008), pp.309–38; T. Däubler and M. Debus, ‘Government Formation and Policy Formulation in the German States’, Regional & Federal Studies 19/1 (2009), pp.73–95.

Ladner, Stabilität und Wandel von Parteien und Parteiensystemen, p.149.

See M. Laver, K. Benoit and J. Garry, ‘Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data’, American Political Science Review 97/2 (2003), pp.311–31; for a discussion of promises and pitfalls of the wordscore method, see K. Benoit and M. Laver, ‘Benchmarks for Text Analysis: A Response to Budge and Pennings’, Electoral Studies 26/1 (2007), pp.130–5; K. Benoit and M. Laver, ‘Compared to What? A Comment on “A Robust Transformation Procedure for Interpreting Political Text” by Martin and Vanberg’, Political Analysis 16/1 (2008), pp.101–11; I. Budge and P. Pennings, ‘Missing the Message and Shooting the Messenger: Benoit and Laver's “Response”’, Electoral Studies 26/1 (2007), pp.136–41; I. Budge and P. Pennings, ‘Do they Work? Validating Computerised Word Frequency Estimates against Policy Series’, Electoral Studies 26/1 (2007), pp.121–29; R. Klemmensen, S.B. Hobolt and M.E. Hansen, ‘Estimating Policy Positions using Political Texts: An Evaluation of the Wordscores Approach’, Electoral Studies 26/4 (2007), pp.746–55; W. Lowe, ‘Understanding Wordscores’, Political Analysis 16/4 (2008), pp.356–71; L.W. Martin and G. Vanberg, ‘A Robust Transformation Procedure for Interpreting Political Texts’, Political Analysis 16/1 (2008), pp.93–100; L.W. Martin and G. Vanberg, ‘Reply to Benoit and Laver’, Political Analysis 16/1 (2008), pp.112–14.

M. Laver and B.W. Hunt, Policy and Party Competition (New York: Routledge, 1992); K. Benoit and M. Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies (London: Routledge, 2006).

Laver et al., ‘Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data’.

See S. de Lange, ‘In Search of the Radical, the Right, and the Populist: An Evaluation of Estimates of Radical Right-Wing Populist Party Positions’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, 28–31 Aug. 2008.

These are the PDS's regional party sections of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.

The West German regional party sections of the PDS and its successor parties are the main exception: for these sub-national parties it was only possible to estimate positions for one or two elections. The only other exception is the Brandenburgian CDU, which did not publish a manifesto in the run-up to the election in 1990.

Most of the independent variables are computed on the basis of publicly provided data. The author is grateful to Martina Flick for making her data on the proportion of Catholics available.

The used unemployment rate is the annual mean share of the unemployed in the working population (‘Anteil der Arbeitslosen an den zivilen Erwerbspersonen’).

The used measure of state debt per capita is based on an extensive definition of state department ‘Kreditmarktschulden im weiteren Sinne’.

I. Reichart-Dreyer, ‘Das Parteiensystem Berlins’, in Jun et al. (eds.), Parteien und Parteiensysteme in den deutschen Ländern, p.162.

M. Eilfort, ‘Landes-Parteien: Anders, nicht verschieden’, in Herbert Schneider and Hans-Georg Wehling (eds.), Landespolitik in Deutschland: Grundlagen-Strukturen-Arbeitsfelder (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006), p.220.

T. Plümper and V.E. Troeger, ‘Fortschritte in der Paneldatenanalyse: Alternativen zum de facto Beck-Katz-Standard’, in Susanne Pickel, Gert Pickel, Hans-Joachim Lauth and Detlef Jahn (eds.), Methoden der vergleichenden Politik- und Sozialwissenschaft. Neue Entwicklungen und Anwendungen (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009), p.264.

For example, OLS ‘will still be consistent, but it will not be fully efficient and the reported standard errors will be inaccurate’ (N. Beck, ‘Time-Series Cross-Section Methods’, in Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady and David Collier (eds.), Political Methodology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p.478).

N. Beck, ‘Time-Series-Cross-Section Data: What Have We Learned in the Past Few Years?’, Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001), pp.271–93; Beck, ‘Time-Series Cross-Section Methods’; N. Beck and J.N. Katz, ‘What to do (and not to do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data’, American Political Science Review 89/3 (1995), pp.634–47; T. Plümper, V.E. Troeger and P. Manow, ‘Panel Data Analysis in Comparative Politics: Linking Method to Theory’, European Journal of Political Research 44/2 (2005), pp.328ff.

T. Plümper and V.E. Troeger, ‘Efficient Estimation of Time-Invariant and Rarely Changing Variables in Finite Sample Panel Analyses with Unit Fixed Effects’, Political Analysis 15/2 (2007), pp.124–39.

Tables produced by the estout package for Strata (B. Jann, ‘Making Regression Tables Simplified’, The Stata Journal 7/2 (2007), pp.227–44; B. Jann, ‘Making Regression Tables from Stored Estimates’, The Stata Journal 5/3 (2005), pp.388–308).