the use of heresthetics on the electoral contexts: do ... · ... is the political strategy with...

The use of heresthetics on the electoral contexts: do parties

change the dimensionality of their offer for strategic reasons?

Berta Barbet Porta

Paper presented at the ECPR Conference- Working Progress Comments Welcome

Glasgow 2014

As Riker’s concept of heresthetics shows, no good understanding of the electoral dynamics can

be reached without understanding the processes by which new issues appear in the agenda and

the role parties and their strategic considerations have in determining them. However, no big

effort has been made to understand in a comprehensive and dynamic way the process by which

parties change the issues they discuss and the strategic considerations behind them. This paper

does so. First it presents an empirical strategy to measure changes in the issues parties’ discuss

and describes how common are they. Second, it proves that, at least for big western European

parties, being a loser does indeed increase the chances of a party changing the dimensionality of

its offer as Riker’s theory predicted.

In his study about parties’ strategies, Riker (1986) defined a kind of heresthetic move which

consisted in breaking majorities by introducing a new issue that cuts across the existing

alignments, dividing the social support of the electoral winner and, consequently, improving the

situation of the electoral losers. Although other strategies were identified too, change of

dimensionality, as Carmines and Stimson (1989, 7) say, is the political strategy with most

permanent and radical results, as it is the only strategy that can radically reshape the situation.

However, none of the existing theories have successfully incorporated changes of issues in its

study (Barbet-Porta 2013). They have whether ignored the problem and taken issues as

exogenously determined, as spatial or sociological theories (Downs 1957; Adams, Merrill, and

Grofman 2005) have; or have taken too simplistic conceptions of how issues work which do not

consider how voters and parties make sense of the issues neither the role of context on defining

such strategic considerations, as directional or ownership theories (Rabinowitz and MacDonald

1989; Petrocik 1996).

The study of heresthetic strategies should help to shed light on the understanding of electoral

behaviour and can work as a complement for the existing theories of party competition.

Nonetheless, in the electoral context, the study of heresthetics has been limited to the study of

the alteration of rules of the game such as electoral law (Kaminski 2002; Stoll 2011), or, when

focused on the manipulation of dimensions, on the analysis of case studies in which changes in

the dimensions of competition are studied separately and without considering counterfactual

cases that would help to understand which was the actual role that parties have in shaping the

situations (McLean 2001; Nagel 1993; Tzelgov 2012; Dellepiane-Avellaneda 2012; Heppell

2013; Edwards 2004). There has not been, to the extent of my knowledge, any attempt to study

heresthetic moves in a comparative and extensive way. Hence we do not much about them yet.

This paper is a first step in the study of change of dimensionality as heresthetic devices in the

electoral context. It starts with a brief description of heresthetics’ theory and the hypothesis that

can be derived from it. Then it moves to the measurement strategy and a description of the main

figures of the dependent variable. Finally, it proves that strategic reasons do indeed play a role

in explaining those changes, at least for the cases studied here.

1. Heresthetic moves and electoral strategies

Riker described heresthetics as an art not a science. Opportunities to reshape situations in a way

that improves chances to win can arise from different sources and in different ways, so

heresthetic moves can be very varied and unexpected. However, in order to develop a theory

about heresthetics, we need to define a concrete concept of the heresthetic manoeuvre that

allows for empirical analysis. Here, a heresthetic move will be defined as an increase of the

saliency attached to a new issue or conflict in the electoral arena made by one party. Or more

specifically, the decision by one party to change the importance attached to a conflict, giving it

enough saliency to make it relevant for the vote (Netjes and Binnema 2007, 40).

There is nothing in Riker’s definition of heresthetics that implies that herestheticians are

introducing the issue out of the nothing without taking into consideration public’s concerns. For

example, it would be really hard to assume that Lincoln himself brought about public concern

with slavery (Riker 1986, 1–10). However, we do need to differentiate active, strategic,

heresthetic moves made by parties from their responses to external pressures. Showing that

parties change the issues they discuss is not enough proof of heresthetic moves existing, as they

might do so just because the context changes and they need to adapt to it, without any further

intention than that. In order to prove that parties do indeed attempt to perform heresthetic moves

we need to prove that strategic reasons play a role in explaining those changes.

In that line and according to Riker there are two strategic actions in terms of manipulating the

dimensions of the election. If the politician or heresthetician expects to win with the existing

dimensions, he has to fix the dimensionality avoiding a new dimension to appear and divide

his/her existing majority (Riker 1986, 66–76). Alternatively, if the heresthetician expects to lose

under the existing dimensions of the election, he has to try to increase dimensionality (Riker

1986, 1–9). That is, he has to try to include a new dimension, or issue, and link it to the

decision.

Hence, we can predict parties that are losers on the existing dimension of conflict to be the ones

more inclined to reshape the arena. According to spatial models (Downs 1957), in order to win

parties need to be close to the mean voter on the dimension. Consequently, parties further away

from the mean voter on the main dimension of conflict should be losers on the election, giving

them an incentive to reshape the situation and introduce new issues that could break the

dimensions in order to win. Consequently we can predict that:

H1: The further away a party is from the mean position on the dominant dimension the party

is, the more likely it will be to introduce new issues on the debate.

That effect will probably vary depending on the parties’ situation. For example, if the goal of

parties is to win votes to win votes, it seems likely that those that are losing votes will be more

inclined to engage in electoral strategies to improve their situation (Janda et al. 1995).

Consequently, Hypothesis’ one effect will be moderated by the electoral performance of the

party at the election.

H2: the bigger the lost in share of vote a party suffers, the more likely it will be to introduce

new issues on the debate.

Furthermore we can expect the two measures to complement each other. In a way that, the more

the two are present the more clear it would be for the party leaders that they are cannot win in

the existing scenario and, hence, that they should try to redefine it. At the end, the more

radically negative the situation is for a party, the more likely it will have big incentives to

change it. Hence, as Amat (2013) predicted

H3: The bigger the lost in share of vote a party suffers, the bigger the impact of the distance

to the mean voter.

Finally, we know from previous research that not all parties care about being close to the mean

voter (T. M. Meyer and Wagner 2013; Adams et al. 2006). Small and niche parties do not

incentives to seek for the mean voter in their strategies. As small parties’ appeals are usually not

directed to the overall population but to a small public. That would mean that, for those parties

being far away from the mean voters should not have the same impact as for mainstream ones.

H4: hypothesis 1 to 3 only apply to mainstream and big parties but not to traditionally small

and niche ones.

2. Measuring the dimensionality of parties’ offer

2.1. Sources of party’s strategies

As Benoit and Laver say, we cannot directly observe parties’ strategies which means that we

need to focus on its manifestations or second-hand sources (2006, 89). From all the possibilities

the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) data has been chosen as the best data to measure

parties’ strategies. The CMP is a project that attempts to code the policy preferences of every

relevant party in the countries of study (Werner, Lacewell, and Volkens 2011). In order to do so,

they focus on the content of the different party manifestos or “text issued by political actors on

the occasion of elections in order to raise internal and/or external support” (Werner, Lacewell,

and Volkens 2011). As their focus of party preferences is based on issue saliency theories, the

codification of the content is based on the number of quasi-sentences that the manifestos place

dedicate to a set of predefined categories(Werner, Lacewell, and Volkens 2011). The data

source provides estimates for about 50 countries over the last 60 years (Thomas M. Meyer 2013,

29), hence is an extraordinary source in terms of temporal and cross-sectional coverage.

That approach to the study of manifestos makes it particularly suitable for the study of changes

in saliency of this project. The data source has been consistently coded in an extensive number

of countries and during a long period of time which allows for good and reliable comparative

work. As Geminis claims “The CMP is a unique and potentially valuable source of data on

political parties” (2013, 18). Not only that, the fact that coding scheme is constant across time

and space implies that the measure can be confidently assumed to be comparable (Thomas M.

Meyer 2013, 33) and that the meanings of the measure are clear and constant across all

observations (Budge 2000 cited in Stoll 2004, 36). Besides, despite the limitations, they have

been proved to be a valid measure of parties’ issues’ saliency as they correlate quite well with

voters’ perceptions, and more importantly, it seems to come from the same construct as other

related measures (Netjes and Binnema 2007, 42–47). Furthermore, they are a good measure in

terms of strategic saliency, at least in terms of face-validity. As Marks and his colleagues said,

“Manifestos are strategic documents designed to put a party in a positive light during an

electoral campaign. Manifestos are therefore unlikely to provide information that is tactically

unimportant or an electoral liability” (Marks et al. 2007, 26–27).

Beyond those already identified (Gemenis 2013), parties’ manifestos present another important

limitation very relevant for the study of heresthetics: they are only released when the election

comes, hence they do not provide information about what happens between elections. They are

then, not useful to understand the moment when the party started to emphasize the issue and

whether or not it might have been a response to an external event. That characteristic implies

that only moves that are successfully sustained until an election will be analysed. Hence the

most unsuccessful moves, those parties quickly dismiss because they are not catching voters’

attention, will be missed. The purpose of a heresthetic move is to reshape the electoral scenario;

hence, it makes sense to focus, at least for now, on the electoral context. However, that focus on

heresthetics moves that are sustained until election moves might be problematic when analysing

the impact of those moves on voters’ behaviour, as its likely that moves that are sustain by until

election are different than those that are not sustained, and hence problems of selection bias

might arise (Heckman 1979). That is, is probable that by analysing only those moves that are

performed at election we are only focusing on moves that are more likely to succeed and hence

our estimators will be biased. However, for purpose of space, scope and data, that is a limitation

that can only be acknowledge but not solved in this project.

From all the cases available at the CMP data source, the selection of cases is limited to Western

Europe for several reasons. Europe presents the opportunity to study cases that are

geographically, economically and institutionally close which means that external shocks should

be usually similar, while, at the same time, have very different internal dynamics and clearly

differentiated political systems. Besides, West-Europe presents a nice combination of a stable

and durable context with competitive democracies which means comparatively stable political

parties with enough stability at the system (Litton 2013) to be able to distinguish stability from

change.

From those, Malta and Cyprus have been discarded due to the small temporal duration of their

data period for the CMP. Also Italy has been dropped as previous studies have shown that CMP

data does not capture Italian political dynamics properly (Pelizzo 2003 cited in Thomas M.

Meyer 2013, 136).

Furthermore, as the analysis here is on how issues of the electoral offer change, we need to take

into account that in some of these countries, not all citizens are offered the same political offer.

First, Belgium has a clearly separated political system in the two regions; political parties in the

Flemish and Walloon part have independent manifestos and hence might be presenting a

different offer to their citizens. For that reason Belgian parties have been divided into two party

systems: Flemish Wallonia1 and French Flanders

2 (Deschouwer 2009). Parties that run in the

two constituencies3, back on the early years have been added to both party systems.

Also Great Britain and Spain have regionally specific parties that can only be voted by citizens

of some regions. The problem is that in those cases, parties have not been systematically

1 FDF Francophone Democratic Front, PSC Christian Social Party, RW Walloon Rally , PLP Party of

Liberty and Progress, PL Liberal Party, PLDP Liberal Democratic and Pluralist Party, PRLW

Francophone Liberals, ECOLO Francophone Ecologists, PS Francophone Socialist Party, PRL

Francophone Liberals, PRL-FDF Liberals - Francophone Democratic Front, PRL-FDF-MCC Liberals -

Democratic Front - Citizens' Movement , cdH Humanist Democratic Centre 2 Flemish Christian People's Union, CVP Christian People's Party, PVV Party of Liberty and Progress ,

PL Liberal Party, BSP Flemish Socialist Party, VB Flemish Bloc, AGALEV Live Differently, SP Flemish

Socialist Party VU People's Union, VLD Flemish Liberals and Democrats, VU-ID21 People's Union-

ID21, N-VA New Flemish Alliance, Green!, Socialist Party Different – Spirit, Social, Progressive,

International, Regionalist, Integrally Democratic and Forward-Looking , Open Flemish Liberals and

Democrats ,List Dedecker, Flemish Interest. 3 BSP/PSB Socialist Party, LP/PL Liberal Party , PSC/CVP Christian Social/Christian People's Party ,

BSP/PSB Socialist Party, LP/PL Liberal Party, PVV/PLP Party of Liberty and Progress, PLDP Liberal

Democratic and Pluralist Party

included on the data; hence it is hard know whether changes observed are due to real changes in

the strategies or to changes on the decision to include or exclude parties by the researchers.

Considering all these limitation is better not to consider those regional systems.

Summing up, countries included on the analysis are Sweden, Denmark, Belgium-Wallonia,

Belgium-Flanders, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Germany,

Austria, Great Britain, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Finland

2.2. The Specification of issues

As it has been said, a heresthetic move is the introduction of a new conflict that cross-cuts the

existing alliances. The problem is that, as Stoll says:

“individuals can be divided by criteria ranging from their favourite colour to their shoe

size to their taste in alcohol to their desire to engage in trade with other countries, ad

nauseam”. (Stoll 2004, 40)

In other words, conflicts might arise from very different places, and listing all possible conflicts

that might be used, is a controversial process as the number of ways in which a population can

be divided is almost infinite. Even the most limited characteristic of an issue might be used to

perform a heresthetic move (Tzelgov 2012) . As Stoll says, listing dimensions of conflict before

starting the analysis means incorrectly seeing conflicts as exogenous to the political system.

However, in order to analyse in a quantitative and systematic way if conflicts of the electoral

decision change, it is necessary to establish a list of possible conflict that may appear. As Stoll

herself recognizes later, this is the only possible option, as endogenizing them is very

problematic (Stoll 2004, 56)..

Consequently, if we want to proceed we need to define issues in a way that not only allows us to

analyse heresthetic moves but also that can be done using CMP data, (Stoll 2004, 91). That

does not mean, nonetheless, that only the issues identified can be used as heresthetic tools.

Luckily, several attempts have already been made to group CMP categories into dimensions of

conflict (Bäck, Debus, and Dumont 2011; Stoll 2011; Stoll 2010). From all the proposed

frameworks those with detailed issue specifications have been preferred because, as happens

with Stoll’s study (2004, 94–104), if the dimensions are too broad, some of the categories might

have to be changed depending on the time period, something that should be avoided as those

changes could also be interpreted as heresthetics. In that sense, both König Marbach and

Mortiz’s (2013) and Lowe and his colleagues (2011, 136) focus precisely on how the meaning

of the dimension might change by using very detailed issues specification. Their specifications

will be used as a basis from the analysis here.

Categories included in both articles4 will be included. From the others, those that have a clear

meaning have been included too5. In the cases when the specification of categories was

different, the specification that had greater measurement validity has been chosen6

(see

appendix section 1 for validity test results). That leaves in total 16 categories that are

summarized in table 1.

Two variables are defined by each category, one relating to the space dedicated to the issue

capturing the overall emphasis put on it in the manifesto; the second one capturing the position

taken by the party on the issue and calculated using the difference between sentences in the

categories at the defined two ends of the dimensions. Previous research has shown that the

CMP data are not good at capturing positions (Dinas and Gemenis 2009; Laver, Benoit, and

Garry 2003; Benoit and Laver 2007; Gabel and Huber 2000). However, that literature usually

refers to the ability of the CMP data to capture the overall left-right dimension. One of the

causes of that difficulty arises from the fact that the meaning of left-right dimension might

change across countries and time (König, Marbach, and Osnabrügge 2013). Hence, the fact that

the categories here are limited to specific conflicts instead of overall dimensions should make it

easier to capture position validly. Position variables will be divided by the overall attention the

issue receives (or emphasis’ measure). As Meyer proposes (2013, 40) that step is a good way to

deal with the problem arisen due to the fact that if an issues occupies a lot of sentences of the

manifesto, a difference in the number of sentences gives less information, than if the issue does

not occupy a lot of space (Lowe et al. 2011). As some of the issues might have an emphasis

lower than 1, the value in the denominator (emphasis) has been transformed by adding 1. That

way none of the denominators is lower than 1 and hence, the operations can be done without

problems.

4 European Integration (Per108-Per110), Protectionism (per406-per407), Macro-Economics (per409-

per414 named Keynesian policy in Lowe et alt’s document but containing the same categories),

Traditional Morality (per603-per604), Multiculturalism (per607-per608), Nationalism (per601-per602

national way of life in König et al’s articles), Internationalism (per107-per109) and Militarism (per104-

per105). 5 Education spending, decentralization, constitutionalism, labour groups, freedom and quality of have

been added too. The categories special foreign alliances and administration have no clear meaning, at

least from a comparative point of view, so they have been discarded. Also Target Groups has not been

included. The reason for this is that, using Rae and Taylor’s categorization of conflicts, target groups,

would be an ascriptive or trait based cleavage, concretely based on socioeconomic status, while the rest of

the cleavages are attitudinal or opinion cleavages (cited in Maor 1997, 20). Although the relationship

between the two types of cleavage might be relevant, is better not to confound them and for that reason it

has been decided to leave it outside. 6 In the case of market and enterprise dimensions, the categories are clearly closely related to whether or

not the market should be regulated hence it makes no sense to differentiate them as the difference

between the two would be very small, so they have been added up to a category named market and

enterprise. The category social justice will be added to the measurement of the welfare dimension, as

Lowe and his colleagues did, because validity tests have shown this is a better measure. Also for reasons

of validity, the category democracy (per202) has been removed from the dimension freedom.

Table 1: Issue Specification List

Category Name CMP Categories

1- European

Integration

Emphasis Measure: per108 European community/union positive, per110

European community/union negative

Position Measure: per108-per110

2-Education

Spending

Emphasis Measure: per506 education expansion, per507 education

limitation


3-Welfare State

Emphasis Measure: per503 social justice, per504 welfare state expansion,

per505 welfare state limitation,

Position Measure: per503+per504 -per505

4-Protectionism

Emphasis Measure: per406 protectionism positive, per407 protectionism

negative

Position Measure: per406- per407

5-Macro

Economics

Emphasis Measure: per409 Keynesian demand management, per414

economic orthodoxy

Position Measure: per409 -per414

6-Market and

enterprise

Emphasis Measure: per401 free enterprise, per412 controlled economy,

per413 nationalisation, per402 incentives, per403 market regulation

Position Measure: per413+per412+per403-per401- per402

7-Labour groups

Emphasis Measure: per701 labour groups positive, per702 labour groups

negative


8-Freedom

Emphasis Measure: per605 law and order, per201 freedom and human

rights

Position Measure: per201 -per605

9-Traditional

morality

Emphasis Measure: per603 traditional morality positive, per604 traditional

morality negative


10-

Multiculturalism

Emphasis Measure: per607 multiculturalism positive , per608

multiculturalism negative

Position Measure: per607 - per608

11-National way

of life

Emphasis Measure: per601 national way of life positive per602 national

way of life negative


12-

Internationalism

Emphasis Measure: per107 internationalism positive, per109

internationalism negative


13-Military

Emphasis Measure: per104 military positive, per105 military negative,

per106 peace

Position Measure: per105+ per106- per104

14-Quality of life

Emphasis Measure: per416 anti-growth economy, per410 Productivity,

per501 environmental protection

Position Measure: per416+ per501- per410

15-

Decentralization

Emphasis Measure: per301 Decentralization, per302 centralization


16-

Constitutionalism

Emphasis Measure: per203 constitutionalism positive per204

constitutionalism negative


2.3. The measure of conflict saliency

Netjes and Binnema say, define saliency “as the extent to which the party leadership considers

an issue as vital for its electoral appeal” (2007, 40). In this sense, the first thing that needs to be

considered when trying to measure the saliency attached to an issue is the space dedicated to it.

As Stoll says,

“The more space in its manifesto that a party devotes to discussing issues related to an

ideological cleavage, the more salient the cleavage to the party. Similarly, the more

space devoted by all parties in their manifestos for a given election to an ideological

cleavage, the more salient the cleavage in the polity at that period in time” (Stoll 2004,

94).

Hence the number of claims dedicated to an issue compared to the overall number of claims

made by the party will be used as the basis of the measure. As the CMP data is already coded in

relative terms, no transformation of the saliency measure is needed and the emphasis that the

party attaches to an issue will be measured using the sum of all the sentences dedicated to it in

comparison with the total number of sentences, which is equivalent to the emphasis measure on

the previous section. The emphasis an issue receives in a manifesto will be expressed as .

However, the overall emphasis an issue receives is an incomplete measure of saliency. In order

for an issue to be salient and determine the voting decision, we should not only be concerned

with emphasis, but also “with the extent to which it creates (potential) conflict” (Netjes and

Binnema 2007, 40). Hence, the level of polarization that a party creates, , should be also seen

as a necessary for a party to give more importance to that issue (Ginsberg 1972, 611–614).

The level of conflict is measured as the distance between the party’s position on the conflict and

the position of other parties. Hence, the measure of other parties’ position will be similar to that

used by de Vries and Hobolt (2012) in their study about issue entrepreneurship which basically

computes the distance between the parties’ position and the weighted mean position of all the

other parties in the system. It is important to notice that with this measure a party could be

perceived to have made a movement to create conflict on a dimension even if the party has

stayed at the same place but the weighted mean position has moved. That would not be a big

problem if the weighted mean had move because the rest of the parties had move and the party

of study had not, it is also a way of create conflict not to move when everyone else seems to be

moving probably due to external causes. The measure is standardized to its absolute value as the

direction of the difference is not relevant for the measure. Summing up, the level of polarization

a party is creating around an issue is defined by:

Where, is the position defended by party j and is an adjusted weighted mean that does not

include party j. That is, is the mean position of all the parties in the system but the one

considered in that particular time, also expressed as:

∑

Where, , is the weight given to party measured by its electoral share or percentage of vote in

the previous two elections. Weighting the mean position by the electoral strength of the party

takes account of the fact that not all the parties of the system have the same importance and that

taking a different position from the small parties does not have the same effect as taking a

different position from the big ones. Taking the vote share at the previous elections is justified

based on the idea that the previous election is actually the one that set the scenario where the

parties are interacting when the election approach. The decision of taking two electoral periods

instead of just one avoids very contextual specific swings of votes to have an effect. The

weights are adjusted so that the sum of weights of the first part of the equation is always equal

to 1.

To calculate the overall saliency an issue receives in a particular election, de Vries and Hobolt

(2012) use the result of the interaction between saliency and polarization. This measure has the

problem that if an issue has very low polarization, because most of the parties are mainly

ignoring it, the saliency is very low. In a multiplication, if one of the measures is zero or close

to zero, the result of the interaction will be zero or close to this. That seems unfortunate as

probably the party will be trying to give a lot of saliency to the issue and will be probably be

giving visibility to the conflict, even if not that much with the other parties’ position at least in

terms of priorities (Egan 2013).7 For that reason it has been assumed that it is better to combine

the two measures by simply adding them, instead of multiplying them. In that way, creating

conflict is just another way to increase the attention an issue receives. Furthermore, validity

measures seem to show that the additive measure might indeed work slightly better than the

multiplicative one (see appendix).

Summing up, the overall measure of dimension’s saliency of the system will be equal to:

3. Do parties change the dimensionality of their electoral offer?

3.1. Defining dimensionality’s change

7 Thanks to Ignacio Jurado for pointing to that issue

Once we have developed a good measure of how much salience parties give to the different

conflicts we can develop a measure of when this saliency changes and a heresthetic move is

potentially made.

Here it will be considered that a party has changed the emphasis on a particular conflict if there

is a change in the rank order it has. A change in rank might take place for two reasons. First, and

most obvious, an issue that was receiving some attention at previous elections becomes more

relevant at the current one, surpassing the saliency other issues had and changing its rank order.

However, a second type of change of rank could be conceived which deals with the entrance of

issues that were not on the agenda at the previous election and that are introduce in it. In order

to take that into consideration we need to have a definition of what it means for an issue to be

on the agenda. Of course we could think that any issue mentioned on the manifesto is on the

parties’ agenda and hence assume that only not mentioned issues are not on it. However that

conception would not take into account that the capacity of the agenda is limited and that not all

issues that are mentioned can be considered to be on it. Only those that receive enough attention

to reach people’s attention should be.

Determining how many dimensions are relevant is not easy though. Several approaches have

been developed, most of them based on Laakso and Taagepera’s measure of relevant parties

(1979). The problem of those measures is that they try to capture an overall number that

describes the system in a condensed way. However, the intention here is not so much to

describe the system as to determine whether or not the different issues or conflicts are

emphasized enough to be able to have an impact. For that reason, the number of conflicts will

be defined with a formula inspired in Stoll’s adaptation of Lijphart’s measure (Stoll 2004, 106–

107). They define the impact of a dimension based on the ratio of salience as compared with the

most emphasized conflict.

Where is, once again, the salience of issue s in a particular manifesto and is the salience

that the most salient, or dominant, conflict of the manifesto receives (Stoll 2004, 107). This

approach has the advantage that if one issue is overwhelmingly emphasized and hence receives

a lot of attention, then very few issues will also be able to be relevant on the agenda as the

debate will probably focus massively on the most emphasized issue. By contrast, in cases where

none of the issues clearly stand out, secondary conflicts have the opportunity of having an

impact and more issues can be considered. Stoll’s definition of the measure defines two

thresholds. First, for conflicts with a ratio of salience between 2/3 and 1, the value is 1. Second,

those whose ratio falls between 1/3 and 2/3 the value is 0.5, leaving those whose ratio falls

below 1/3 are equal to 0. Here, however, a two-step definition is problematic, as we need a

clearer conception distinguishing whether or not an issues has been introduced at the agenda. As

we are looking for issues that are salient enough to reshape the situation and it makes sense to

set a high threshold, so only issues with ratios equal or bigger to ⁄ will be considered to

receive attention by the party.

In order to avoid confounding noise typical of any data source with real changes of rank some

margin of error needs to be defined. Otherwise very small changes in variables very close to the

threshold or to another variable may make it look as though there has been a radical change in

the dimensionality when actually they are only responding to normal variation with little or no

substantive meaning. Hence, in order to consider that a variable has changed its ranked

effectively, it will be necessary, in addition to the observed change of rank, that it has increased

its saliency at least more than 0.5 points, or that the threshold has drop at least 0.5 points,

ensuring that the change is big enough to be meaningful.

3.2. How common are changes of dimensionality?

Once the measurement is clear, the first question that needs to be answered is whether parties’

offer changes in terms of the conflicts to which they give saliency. And the answer is a clear

yes. The data show up to 1250 cases of changes in the saliency parties attach to conflicts from

one election to the other. Even taking into account only the number of manifestos that include

changes of saliency (some manifestos include more than one change of saliency) we find 810

cases. So changes on the issues parties discuss are very common among western European

parties.

The percentage of manifestos that include changes varies depending on the country. For

example as graph 1 shows countries like Norway, Denmark and Great Britain have the highest

rates of moves by manifesto, with more than 60% per of the manifestos containing at least some

change in the relevant issues. While in Wallonia and the Netherlands we observe changes in less

than 50% of the manifestos (44,2% and 48,94% respectively). There does not seem to be a clear

pattern that explains those differences at first glance.

In terms of the issues entered, graph 2 shows that traditional economic conflicts around market

regulation and welfare state development have a very high number of changes in their

importance. This is probably due to the fact that they are almost always on the agenda, but do

not always have the same importance which means that their rank changes very often, while

other issues might just see their rank changed in the rare occasions when they are included on

the agenda. Issues linked to what Inglehart (1971) called the postmaterialist conflict, such as

Quality of life or freedom, are among the most commonly susceptible to being introduced on

the agenda too. Less numerous, but also relatively common are changes in the importance of

other economic conflicts such as education spending, macro-economy or labour groups, and

around conflicts related to international relations such as militarism, internationalism and the

European Integration process. On the other hand, the importance of protectionism,

constitutionalism or national way of life does change very often. It is important to notice here,

that changes are only counted when the dimension is gaining saliency not when losing it. So

whether or not the change is punctual or relatively permanent is not considered.

0,2

,4,6

,8

me

an

of

he

resth

eticsu

m

Swed

en

Nor

way

Den

mar

k

Finland

Icelan

d

Net

herla

nds

Luxe

mbo

urg

Franc

e

Spa

in

Gre

ece

Por

tuga

l

Ger

man

y

Aus

tria

Switz

erland

Gre

at B

ritain

Ireland

Belgium

-Fland

ers

Belgium

-Wallonia

Graph 1: Average number of moves by country

3.3. The strength of the changes

Considering the high number of moves observed it could be interesting to analyse the strength

of the changes as they might vary greatly in terms of their size and impact.

0

100

200

300

Graph 2: Number of moves by issue

European Union Education Spending Welfare State

Protectionism Macro Economics Market and enterprise

Labour groups Freedom Traditional morality

Multiculturalism National way of life Internationalism

Military Quality of life Decentralization

Constitutionalism

02

04

06

08

01

00

perc

en

t

Eur

opea

n Union

Edu

catio

n Spe

nding

Welfa

re S

tate

Pro

tectionism

Mac

ro E

cono

mics

Mar

ket a

nd e

nter

prise

Labo

ur g

roup

s

Freed

om

Traditio

nal m

orality

Multic

ultu

ralis

m

Nat

iona

l way

of life

Inte

rnat

iona

lism

Milit

ary

Qua

lity of

life

Dec

entra

lizat

ion

Con

stitu

tiona

lism

Graph 3: Previous Status of the issues used

Issue was not included on the agenda at the previous election

Issue had some space on the agenda at the previous election but not enough to be relevant

Issue was already relevant at the previous election

For example, as mentioned before there are two types of changes analysed here: those that

imply a change in rank among already relevant issues, and those that imply the introduction of a

brand new issue in the agenda. As the graph 3 shows, radical changes from issues moving from

not even mentioned in the manifesto to being relevant are not common hence most of the

change takes place between already mentioned issues.

As expectable, there is a set of issues that very often just change their rank among relevant but

almost never fall below the threshold of relevance, like market and enterprise, welfare state,

quality of life or freedom. On the other hand, issues like protectionism and constitutionalism,

have an important percentage of cases where a drastic change happens and the conflict goes

from not even being mentioned to being relevant from one election to the other (it is important

to remember, however, that number of observations in that case is very low). Also conflicts

related to identity or moral conflicts such as the multiculturalism and national way of life have a

higher percentage of drastic changes than the rest. However,

If we check the distributions of the magnitude of the changes, at graph 4, we can see again how

the distribution of the magnitude of the changes is not equal for all the issues. While Welfare

State and Market and Enterprise have a considerable amount of changes superior to the 10

points, we barely see any of these changes for Education, Decentralization or National way of

life.

European Union

Education Spending

Welfare State

Macro Economics

Market and enterprise

Labour groups

Freedom

Traditional morality

Multiculturalism

National way of life

Internationalism

Military

Quality of life

Decentralization

issue

-10 0 10 20 30changerelevance

Graph 4: Magnitude of the changes by issue (identified moves only)

Some of the changes on dimensionality observed imply actually very small changes on the

overall attention that the issue receives, negative even. That is due to the fact that in some cases

the change might be due to a considerable lowering of the threshold of attention which leaves

space for new issues to appear even without any increase on the saliency they receives.

A final measure of how strong the moves are would be the extent to which once the issues are

introduced on the agenda they remain there at the next election or if they usually lose the rank

they have won quickly after. In that way we can see how many elections pass until the issue

loses the rank order it had won and goes back to a rank it had before the moves or below.

As graph 5 shows, most of the times changes on the issues disappear quickly, and go back to the

rank they had before after just one election. That could be seen as proof of two things: it could

be that parties change the issues all the time and only keep on the agenda those that clearly

capture voters’ attention. But it could also be that some of those changes respond to noise

typical of the source used to measure saliency, party manifestos, and the fact that the saliency

issues have depends on things such as who is writing the section. It is hard to distinguish

between the two phenomena but is important to keep in mind that even considering all the

conditions that have been imposed the noise might still be present.

In terms of the issues and their sustainability, moves around different issues are maintained with

different intensities: Increases in the saliency of issues such as quality of life or welfare state are

most of the time maintained at least for two elections and in some cases even five or more.

02

04

06

08

01

00

perc

en

t

Eur

opea

n Union

Edu

catio

n Spe

nding

Welfa

re S

tate

Pro

tectionism

Mac

ro E

cono

mics

Mar

ket a

nd e

nter

prise

Labo

ur g

roup

s

Freed

om

Traditio

nal m

orality

Multic

ultu

ralis

m

Nat

iona

l way

of life

Inte

rnat

iona

lism

Milit

ary

Qua

lity of

life

Dec

entra

lizat

ion

Con

stitu

tiona

lism

Graph 5: Number of elections the moves is sustained by issue

only one election move sustained 1 period more

sustained 2 periods more sustained 3 periods more

sustained 4 periods more sustained 5 or more periods

Contrary, issues like European Integration or the constitution usually disappear after one

election, two at the most.

4. The strategic component of the changes

In order to test whether those changes are explained by strategic reasons, all the changes

observed in the previous section have been collapsed into a dummy variable that measures

whether or not there has been a change in the issues discussed by the party in that election.

Collapsing the issues in one single measure is necessary, in order to avoid confounding the

decision by a party to introduce another issue, from the 15 possible, to the agenda, with a lack of

changes on the parties’ offer and hence a lack of responsiveness of the party to its strategic

incentives. The dummy variable will be the dependent variable to be explained by the model.

As the dependent is constructed using the difference between issues discussed at two different

elections, which means that captures the difference between one period and the previous. Hence

a first-differences logistic model has been chosen. Those models regress changes on the panel

data instead of absolute values avoiding, in that way, the problems typical of regular estimators

on panel data (Wooldridge 2008, 445–70). In order to do so, the independent variable of

distance to the mean and electoral performances must also be recoded into the difference

between one year and the previous.

The electoral performance has been calculated by the difference in percentage of vote that the

party had at the previous election as provided by the CMP data. Hence, the difference between

the percentage of vote at the previous election and the percentage of vote two elections before

has been computed. The measures are lagged, that is the measure taken is the one from the

previous election, because the expectation is that the results that will affect parties’ strategies

are those from the previous election and not from the one that has not yet happened when the

parties define its strategy. Furthermore that also helps to avoid endogeneity and prove causality,

as is very unlikely that the issues that manifesto dimensionality at the previous election affects

the electoral performance of the party several years before or that there is anything affecting the

two elements.

Measuring the distance between the mean voter and the party at the previous elections’ main

dimension of conflict is less straightforward. First a measure of dominant dimension of conflict

on the previous election has to be defined. Here, it will be assumed that the structure of the

debate is structured by the parties and that the debate at the political arena is nothing more than

the sum of parties’ behaviours. In that way and following the logic applied to the measurement

of parties’ saliencies, the saliency a conflict has at an election will be the result of the

multiplication of the emphasis and the polarization parties give to it. Here the two indicators

will indeed be multiplied as, at the system level, it makes sense to assume that, without conflict

between parties, it is impossible for the issue to be a dimension of conflict as voters would not

be able to base their vote on parties’ position on it.

The saliency an issue receives will be measured by adding up the pondered emphasis attached to

the issue by all parties:

∑

Where is the emphasis place on the conflict by the parties at the election, J is the number of

parties running at a particular election, the emphasis put by parties on the issue at that

election, and the electoral weight parties had, as calculated by the percentage of vote

received in an index that runs from o to 1. The formula is comparable to Stoll’s measure of

saliency (2004, 104) with the only change that weights are included to avoid giving all the

parties the same weight. The level of polarization around the issue will be computed using the

formula used by Lachat (2008) which basically computes the sum of the squared weighted

distances between each parties’ position and the weighted mean of all the parties in the system

∑

Where is the level of polarization of the system in that election and is the weighted mean

of the position of the parties at the election calculated with the formula,

∑

The decision to weight parties by their weight can easily be justified if we take into account that

not all parties will have the power to shape the agenda of the political system. Firstly because

some parties receive more attention than others by the media (Lefevere and Dandoy 2011), but

also because voters usually rely on the most visible parties to structure their vote (Popkin 1991,

91–93).

Once the main dimension of conflict at the previous election has been defined, the extent to

which a party is a loser on that dimension will be computed by calculating the difference

between party’s position on it and the weighted mean position of all the parties in that

dimension, which theoretically should capture the mean voters’ position. The parties’ position is

measured as defined in section 2.3 and the weighted mean position on that dimension computed

by averaging the position taken by the parties that run at that election weighted by their share of

vote on it. Obviously, that definition of distance to the mean implies a lot of assumptions about

the ways party competition is structured that might not be true, however, and without good

information about voters’ perceptions and behaviours it seems a good proxy.

With the four measures of interest, several logistic models have been constructed with the

dummy measuring whether or not there has been a changed as dependent variable. In order to

test hypothesis 1 and 2, the lagged distance with the mean voter and the lagged electoral

performance have been used as explicative measures.

To test hypothesis 3, the same model is run with an interaction between distance to the mean

and lost vote has been included in a second model.

Finally, in order to test whether or not there are important differences between different parties,

the two models have been run twice: first for the whole sample of parties, and then only parties

that had a mean share of vote higher than 10% were small. As it has been assumed that for those

parties, the ones that usually have a high share of vote, it will be more important to be close

from the mean voter.

To avoid problems of heteroskedasticity, the model has been estimated using the Eicker-Huber-

White standard errors (White 1980). Results of the models are shown below.

Table 2: Summary of the models

Model 1

(all parties)

Model 2

(all parties)

Model 3

(big parties)

Model 4

(big parties)

Lagged distance to

the mean voter

0,198

(0,293)

0,201

(0,293)

0,929*

(0,501)

0,982*

(0,507)

Lagged electoral

performance

-0,033

(0,021)

-0,034

(0,021)

-0,027

(0,024)

-0,027

(0,024)

Interaction 0,061

(0,073)

0,173*

(0,103)

Constant 0,341***

(0,095)

0,349***

(0,096)

0,519***

(0,132)

0,561***

(0,136)

N 464 464 257 257

Pseudo R2 0,0051 0,0063 0,0169 0,0259

As the table 2 shows, hypothesis 1, 3 and 4 are mainly confirmed while hypothesis 2 is clearly

not. That is, the model works considerably better for big parties than for small ones. Both, the

pseudo R2 and the coefficients are higher in models 3 and 4 than models 1 and 2, where small

parties have been included too which indicates that the strategic hypothesis tested here apply

mainly to big mainstream parties.

If we consider only models 3 and 4, the distance to the mean and the interaction between

distance to the mean and electoral performance have the expected coefficients. The further away

from the mean position on the main dimension a party is, the more likely it is that a party will

change the issues discussed. Also that effect is increased the higher the lost in vote suffered by

the party in the previous election is. Furthermore the two coefficients are significant at the 10%

level. However, changes on electoral performance do not seem to have any impact on

explaining whether or not a party changes the issues it discusses. Consequently, electoral

performance only pushes parties to change the issues they discuss if it’s accompanied by

distance from the mean voter on the main dimension of conflict, not on its own. That is in a

way, not surprising.

Table 3: Changes in probabilities for a change of dimensionality- model 4

min->max 0->1 -+1/2 -+sd/2 Marginal

Effects

Lagged distance to

the mean voter 0,3570 0,1899 0,2264 0,0634 0,2300

Lagged electoral

performance -0,2398 -0,0063 -0,0063 -0,0344 -0,0063

Interaction 0,4017 0,0390 0,0404 0,0547 0,0405

In terms of the sizes of the effects, table 3 shows that the impact in terms of changes of

probabilities is not big for any of the variables. Neither is the amount of variation explained by

the model. That is, to some extent expectable, as there are many other elements that can effect

whether or not party changes the issues it discusses beyond its electoral incentives. External

pressures coming from other political and social actors should also push parties to change the

issues they discuss. Nonetheless, the model proves that strategic factors also help to explain

those changes to some extent and hence that they should be regarded as a tool of party

competition too.

5. Effective versus Real change of the dimensionality and further directions

of research

Summing up it is clear that parties do indeed change the issues they discuss, and that they do it,

at least to some extent, for strategic reasons. However, more needs to be researched in order to

be sure that heresthetics do indeed exist and explore the specific ways in which they work.

First the results presented here leave much variation unexplained which means that further

research should consider other elements that might trigger those changes. Things like the

electoral system, the party structure, the party position on the arena, levels of polarization and

division between issues or the economic and social developments can easily be hypothesized to

have an effect on whether or not parties engage in the risk of changing the issues they are

discussing. Also the role of the different political actors in shaping each other’s’ agendas clearly

has an impact on determining our dependent variable. Further research is necessary in order to

improve our understanding of the phenomena.

But maybe more importantly, further research should be conducted taking into account the

extent to which those changes are indeed able to reshape the situation. Change on the

dimensions of conflicts that appear on the parties offer is, as it has been shown, common in all

countries. Nonetheless, the measure defined here is not enough as in order for a change of

dimensionality to work as a strategic device, a third condition is necessary: alliances around the

new issue should differ from those of the previously dominant one. Even if the issues most

discussed changed it could be that they all follow the same logic, and hence, they cannot be

used as heresthetics devices.

Introducing an issue that just extends the agenda without altering the alliances might be easier

for parties, as they do not risk internal divisions (Odmalm and Super 2013a; Odmalm and Super

2013b). Issues that follow a different logic, those necessary in order to alter the competition,

might be harder to introduce as they might come with some high costs. Hence we could expect

that a great deal of the variability we have observed in the previous section will disappear when

we consider the difference between raw and effective changes of dimensionality (Nyblade

2004). Good measures considering this characteristic should be developed and included in the

analysis.

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Appendix

In order to test the validity of the measure data from the Chapel Hill expert survey of the years

2006 and 2010 will be used (Bakker et al. 2010).

Table A1: Party list

Party name CMP

Code

CH

Code Party name CMP

Code

CH

Code Party name CMP

Code

CH

Code Unity Red List-

Green alliance

(DK)

13229 213 Socialist’s People’s Party (DK)

13230 206 Social Democrats (DK)

13320 201

Radical Left- Social Liberal

Party (DK)

13410 202 Venstre, Liberal

Party of Denmark 13420 211

Conservative

People’s Party (DK) 13620 203

Danish People’s Party (DK)

13720 215 Ecolo (BE) 21111 104 Agalev, Green (BE) 21112 105

Different- Spirit

(BE) 21221 103 Socialist Party (BE) 21322 102

Flemish Liberal and

Democrats (BE) 21421 107

Liberal Reformist Party- (BE)

21426 106 Christian People’s Party (BE)

21521 109 Christian Social Party- (BE)

21522 108

Flemish Bloc-

Flemish Interest

(BE)

21914 112

People’s Union-

New Flemish

Alliance (BE)

21916 110 Gren Party (FR) 31110 605

French Communist

Party (FR) 31220 601 Socialist Party (FR) 31320 602

Union for French

Democracy (FR) 31624 613

Rally for the

Republic- (FR) 31626 609 National Front (FR) 31720 610 United Left (ESP) 33220 504

Spanish Socialist 33320 501 People’s Party (ESP) 33610 502 Convergence and 33611 505

Workers’ Party (ESP)

Unity (ESP)

Basque Nationalist

Party (ESP) 33902 506

Basque Solidarity

(ESP) 33903 507

Republican Left of

Catalonia (ESP) 33905 511

Coalition Canarias (ESP)

33907 517 Galician Nationalist Bloc (ESP)

33908 513 Aragoneses Council (ESP)

33909 520

Left Bloc (POR) 35211 1208

Unitarian

Democratic Coalition (POR)

35229 1201 Socialist Party

(POR) 35311 1205

Social Democratic

Party (POR) 35313 1206

Democratic and

Social Centre-

People’s Party (POR)

35520 1202 Labour Party (UK) 51320 1102

Liberal Democratic

Party (UK) 51421 1104

Conservative Party

(UK) 51620 1101

Scottish National

Party (UK) 51902 1105

United Kingdom

Independence

Party (UK)

51951 1108 Alliance 90- The Greens (GE)

41113 304

Party Democratic

Socialism- Left

Party (GE)

41222 306

Social Democratic

Party (GE) 41320 302

Free Democratic

Party (GE) 41420 303

Christian Democratic Union

(GE)

41521 301

Green Party (IRL) 53110 705 Labour (IRL) 53320 703 Progressive

Democrats (IRL) 53420 706

Fine Gael (IRL) 53520 702 Fianna Fail (IRL) 53620 701 Sinn Fein (IRL) 53951 707

Green Left (NL) 22110 1005 Socialist Party (NL) 22220 1014 Labour Party (NL) 22320 1002

Democrats 66 (NL) 22330 1004

People’s Party for

Freedom and Democracy (NL)

22420 1003

Christian

Democratic Appeal (NL)

22521 1001

Christian Union

(NL) 22526 1016

Party for Freedom

(NL) 22722 1017

The Austrian Green

Party (AUS) 42110 1304

Social Democratic Party (AUS)

42320 1301 Freedom Party of Austria (AUS)

42420 1303 Liberal Forum(AUS)

42421 1306

Austrian People’s

Party (AUS) 42520 1302

Alliance for the

Future (AUS) 42710 1307 Green League (FIN) 14110 1408

Left Alliance

(AUS) 14223 1404

Social Democratic Party of Finland

(FIN)

14320 1401 Finish Christian League- Christian

Democrats (FIN)

14520 1409

National Coalition Party (AUS)

14620 1402 Finnish Center Party (FIN)

14810 1403 True Finns (FIN) 14820 1405

Swedish People’s

Party 14901 1406

Environmental Party

the Greens (SV) 11110 1607 Left Party (SV) 11220 1601

Worker’s Party-

Social Democrats

(SV)

11320 1602 Liberal People’s

Party (SV) 11420 1604

Christian-

Democrats (SV) 11520 1606

Moderate Party (SV)

11620 1605 Liberal People’s Party (SV)

11810 1603

Table A2: List of years

Country CH-2006 CH2010 Country CH-2006 CH2010

Sweden 2006-09 2010-09 Denmark 2007-11 2011-09

Finland 2007-03 2011-04 Belgium 2007-06 2010-07

Netherlands 2006-11 2010-06 France 2007-06 No data

Spain 2004-03 2008-03 Portugal 2005-02 2009-09

Germany 2005-09 2009-09 Austria 2006-10 2008-09

Great Britain 2005-05 2010-05 Ireland 2007-05 2011-02

Additive versus Multiplicative measure

Table A3: List of issues compared

CMP Defined

Category Chapel Hill Question

CMP Defined

Category Chapel Hill Question

Issue1- European union

European integration overall:

salience2 (06)- eu_salience(10) Issue3- Welfare State

Public Spending: pubserv_sal (06)-

spendvtax_salience (10)

Issue 6- Market and

enterprise

Deregulation: dereg_sal (6)-

dereg_salience (10) Issue8- Freedom

Civic liberties vs law and order:

civlib_sal (6)- civlib_salience (10)

Issue9- Social Style issues: lifestyle_sal Issue 10- Integration of immigrants and

Traditional

morality

(06)- social_salience (10) Multiculturalism asylum seekers: multicult_sal (06)-

immigrant_asylum (10)

Issue 13-

Militarism

International security and

peacekeeping

missions: international_salience

(10)

Issue 14-

Quality of life

Environment: enviro_salience (10)

not asked in 2006

Issue 15- Decentralization

Political decentralization to

regions/localities: decentral_sal

(06)- region_salience (10)

Table A4: Correlation between different measures by issue

Correlati

ons

Issue1

EU

Issue3

Public

Spending

Issue6

Market Regulation

Issue8

Civic

Liberties

Issue9

Life

Style

Issue10

Multicul

turalism

Issue 13

Militarism Issue14 Quality

of life

Issue15

Decentr

alization

Simple

Emphasis

Measure

0,2618 0,1681 0,1907 0,3961 0,2179 0,4157 -0,1717 0,5914 0,2071

Interactive

version 0,2437 0,2787 0,0846 0,3902 0,2823 0,4565 -0,1287 0,5110 0,1775

Additive

version 0,2680 0,1721 0,1946 0,4172 0,2448 0,4317 -0,1699 0,5949 0,2133

Issue specifications: testing the optimal specification

Table A5: List of specifications compared

Name Simplified Alternative

Welfare per504 +per505 per503+per504 +per505

Multiculturalism per607 + per608 per607 +per608+per705

Market and Enterprise per403+per402 per413+per412+per403+per401+per402

Freedom per201 +per605 per201 +per605+per202

Militarism per105+ per104 per105+ per106+ per104

Quality of Life per501+per410 per416+ per501+per410

Table A6: Pearson’s Correlations

Simplified (2 categories)

Alternative (more than two

categories)

Welfare: Simple emphasis 0,0774 0,1681

New salience measure 0,0870 0,1721

Multiculturalism Simple emphasis 0,4157 0,3682


Market Simple emphasis 0,1785 0,1907


Freedom Simple emphasis 0,3961 0,3701


Quality of life Simple emphasis 0,5130 0,5257


Militarism Simple emphasis -0,1586 -0,1717

New salience measure -0,1593 -0,1699

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