Explaining the Party-Policy Link: Established Approaches and Theoretical Developments
Abstract
Scholarly work on the party-policy link has produced fundamentally different interpretations. The main theoretical division within this field is drawn between the view centred on the role of a party as vote maximizer and the view based on the role of a party as representative of social interests. This paper provides a step towards relaxing the standard dichotomy between these two separate schools of thought, apparently unable to communicate with each other. By drawing upon recent theoretical developments in the literature on party goals, party competition and party organization, this article places limitations upon the role of partisan and electoral politics in the making of party policies. Advances in the theory of party politics suggest that conceiving of parties as miniature political systems provides an altogether richer and more suggestive account of the party-policy link.
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I would like to thank Patrick Dunleavy, David Farrell, Brendan O'Leary and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1 For this reason transfer policies and redistributive policies will be used interchangeably throughout this article.
2 Vote-maximizing parties will not implement redistributive policies aimed at capturing the median voter if: (a) there are multiple issue dimensions; (b) there is a single dimension, but the frequency distribution of voters is double peaked and alienation/abstentions are significant; (c) there is a single dimension but differential alienation/abstention across two parties; (d) there are more than three parties and easy entry for new parties.
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