Spatial Competition in Europe after the Great Recession. An Analysis of Ideal and Real Ideological Positions in Italy, Spain, and France

  1. García Sanz, María Dolores 1
  2. Llamazares, Iván 1
  3. Manrique García, María Aurora 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca
    info

    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

Journal:
Revista internacional de sociología

ISSN: 0034-9712

Year of publication: 2018

Issue Title: Variedades del populismo en Europa tras la Gran Recesión

Volume: 76

Issue: 4

Pages: 2

Type: Article

DOI: 10.3989/RIS.2018.76.4.18.002 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Revista internacional de sociología

Abstract

European party systems have experienced crucial changes over the last few decades. Key among these changes have been the electoral punishment of incumbent parties, the political activation of populist attitudes, and the emergence of new parties. These phenomena have been strongly conditioned by the intensity of the economic crisis experienced by European countries. The analyses we present here constitute a first attempt to comparatively examine the main characteristics of spatial and ideological party competition in Spain, France, and Italy after the Great Recession. Our analysis compares actual ideological positions (as perceived by all voters) to the ideal or optimal ideological party positions predicted by spatial competition models based on proximity and directional voting, always on the assumption that parties will choose those positions that allow them to maximize their vote shares. Our analysis aims at assessing the degree to which public attitudes connected to the Great Recession, in particular, government evaluations and populist attitudes, have affected ideological locations. Our results show that there are appreciable differences between the estimates inferred from models using crisis-related variables and those derived from models that did not include such variables. The analysis also shows that the estimates based on models using governmental performance evaluations and populist attitudes are slightly closer to the real positions of political parties. Finally, we also observe that differences in ideal estimates are larger in Spain and Italy, that is, in the two countries that suffered the most during the Great Recession.

€ View funding

Funding information

The authors acknowledge financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Innovation Project CSO2013-47667-P.

Funders

Bibliographic References

  • Adams, J.F., S. Merrill III and B. Grofman. 2005. A Unified Theory of Party Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Akkerman, A., C. Mudde, C. and A. Zaslove. 2014. “How Populist are the People? Measuring Populist Attitudes in Voters”. Comparative Political Studies 47:1324- 1353.
  • Andreadis, I., K. A. Hawkins, I. Llamazares and M. Singer. 2018. “Conditional Populist voting in Chile, Greece, Spain, and Bolivia”, in The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Method, edited by K. A. Hawkins, R. E. Carlin, L. Littvay, and C. Rovira Kaltwasser. London: Routledge.
  • Beramendi, P., S. Häusermann, H. Kitschelt and H. Kriesi. 2015. “Introduction: The Politics of Advanced Capitalism” in The Politics of Advanced Capitalism, edited by P. Beramendi, S. Häusermann, H. Kitschelt and H. Kriesi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Berge, B. von dem and T. Poguntke. 2017. “Varieties of Intra-Party Democracy: Conceptualization and Index Construction”, in Organizing Political Parties: Representation, Participation, and Power, edited by S.E. Scarrow, P.D. Webb, and Th. Poguntke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Blais, A, R. Nadeau, E. Gidengil and N. Nevitte. 2001. “The Formation of Party Preferences: Testing the Proximity and Directional Models”. European Journal of Political Research 40:81-91.
  • Bolin, N., N. Aylott, B, von dem Berge and T. Poguntke. 2017. “Patterns of Intra-Party Democracy across the World”. In Organizing Political Parties: Representation, Participation, and Power, edited by S.E. Scarrow, P.D. Webb, and Th. Poguntke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bosch, A. and I. M. Durán. 2017. How does economic crisis impel emerging parties on the road to elections? The case of the Spanish Podemos and Ciudadanos. Party Politics. Online first.
  • Bozio, A., C. Emmerson, A. Peichl and G. Tetlow. 2015. “European Public Finances and the Great Recession: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom Compared”. Fiscal Studies 36(4):405-430.
  • Calvo, E. and T. Hellwig, 2011. “Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives under Different Electoral Systems”. American Journal of Political Science 55:27-41.
  • Cho, S. and J.W. Endersby. 2003. Issues, the Spatial Theory of Voting, and British General Elections: A Comparison of Proximity and Directional Models”. Public Choice 114(3- 4):275-293.
  • Curini, L. 2015. “Explaining Party Ideological Stances”. Public Choice 162:79–96.
  • Curini, L. and S. Iacus. 2017. “Nash Optimal Party Positions: The nopp R Package”. Journal of Statistical Software 81(11).
  • Downs, A. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.
  • Fraile, M. and M. Lewis-Beck. 2014. “Economic Vote Instability: Endogeneity or Restricted Variance? Spanish Panel Evidence from 2008 and 2011”. European Journal of Political Research 53:160-179.
  • Hauwaert, S.M. van and S. van Kessel. 2017. “Beyond Protest and Discontent: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effect of Populist Attitudes and Issue Positions on Populist Party Support”. European Journal of Political Research 57(1):68-92.
  • Hawkins, K. A. and C. Rovira Kaltwasser. 2018. “Concept, Theory, and Method”. In The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Method, edited by K. A. Hawkins, R. Carlin, L. Littvay, and C. Rovira Kaltwasser. London: Routledge.
  • Hernández, E. and H. Kriesi. 2016. “The Electoral Consequences of the Financial and Economic Crisis in Europe”. European Journal of Political Research 55(2):203-224.
  • Henning, C.H.C.A., M. Hinich and S. Shikano 2015. “Proximity versus Directional Models of Voting: Different Concepts but One Theory”. In Topics in Analytical Political Economy (International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics, Vol. 17), edited by M.J. Hinich and W.A. Barnett. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  • Hobolt, S. and J. Tilley. 2016.“Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis”. West European Politics 39(5):971–991.
  • Hooghe, L., G. Marks and C. J. Wilson. 2002. “Does Left/Right Structure Party Positions on European Integration”. Comparative Political Studies, 35(8):965-989.
  • Kitschelt, H. 1994. The Transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kitschelt, H. with A. McGann. 1995. The Radical Right in Western Europe. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
  • Kitschelt, H. and P. Rehm. 2015. “Party Alignments. Change and Continuity” in The Politics of Advanced Capitalism, edited by P. Beramendi, S. Häusermann, H. Kitschelt and H. Kriesi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kriesi, H., E. Grande, E., R. Lachat, M. Dolezal and S. Bornschier. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kropko, J. and K. K. Banda. 2018. “Issue Scales, Information Cues, and the Proximity and Directional Models of Voter Choice”. Political Research Quarterly, 71(4):772- 787.
  • Kurella, A.-S. and F. U. Pappi. 2014. “Combining Ideological and Political Distances with Valence for a Model of Party Competition in Germany 2009”. Journal of Theoretical Politics 27(1):86-107.
  • Kurella, A.-S. and J. Rosset. 2017. “Blind Spots in the Party System: Spatial Voting and Issue Salience if Voters Face Scarce Choices”. Electoral Studies 49:1-16.
  • Lacy, D. and P. Paolino. 2010. “Testing Proximity versus Directional Voting Using Experiments”. Electoral Studies 29:460- 471.
  • Lavezzolo, S. and L. Ramiro. 2018. “Stealth Democracy and the Support for New and Challenger Parties”. European Political Science 10:267-289.
  • Lewis, J.B. and G. King. 1999. “No Evidence on Directional vs. Proximity Voting”. Political Analysis 8:21-33.
  • Macdonald, S., E. G. Rabinowitz and O. Listhaug. 1998. “On Attempting to Rehabilitate the Proximity Model: Sometimes the Patient Just Can’t Be Helped”. The Journal of Politics 63(2):653-690.
  • Maddens, B. and I. Hajnal. 2001. “Alternative Models of Issue Voting. The case of the 1991 and 1995 Elections in Belgium”. European Journal of Political Research 39:319-346.
  • Merrill, S. and J. F. Adams. 2001. “Computing Nash Equilibria in Probabilistic, Multiparty Spatial Models with Nonpolicy Components”. Political Analysis 9:347–361.
  • Merrill, S. and B. Grofman. 1997. “Directional and Proximity Models of Voter Utility and Choice: A New Synthesis and an Illustrative Test of Competing Models”. Journal of Theoretical Politics 9:25–48.
  • Meyer, T. M. and W. C. Müller. 2014. “Testing Theories of Spatial Competition. The Austrian Case”. Party Politics 20(5):802–813.
  • Polk, J., J. Rovny, R. Bakker, E. Edwards, L. Hooghe, S. Jolly, J. Koedam, F. Kostelka, G. Marks, G. Schumacher, M. Steenbergen, M. Vachudova and M. Zilovic. 2017. “Explaining the Salience of Anti-elitism and Reducing Political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data”. Research & Politics 4(1):1-9.
  • Queralt, D. 2012. “Spatial Voting in Spain”. South European Society and Politics 17(3):375-392.
  • Rabinowitz G. and S. E. Macdonald 1989. “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting”. American Political Science Review 83:93-121.
  • Rico, G., M. Guinjoan, and E. Anduiza. 2017. The Emotional Underpinnings of Populism: How Anger and Fear Affect Populist Attitudes. Swiss Political Science Review 23:444-461.
  • Schofield, N. 2006. “Equilibria in the Spatial Stochastic Model of Voting with Party Activists”. Review of Economic Design 10(3):183-203.
  • Schofield, N. 2007. “The Mean Voter Theorem: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Convergent Equilibrium”. Review of Economic Studies 74:965-980.
  • Shikano, S. 2008. “The own dynamics to one dimensionality of party competitions: a simulation study”. Politische Vierteljahresschrift 49(2):229-250.
  • Spruyt, B., G. Keppens, and F. Van Droogenbroeck. 2016. Who Supports Populism and What Attracts People to It? Political Research Quarterly 69(2):335-346.
  • Vries, C., Hakhverdian, A., & Lancee, B. 2013. “The Dynamics of Voters’ Left/Right Identification: The Role of Economic and Cultural Attitudes”. Political Science Research and Methods 1(2):223-238.
Data source: Dialnet