The Center Does Not Hold: The Death of the Catchall Party?

• In Event: European Parties: Changes and Transitions

Abstract

A fundamental shift has occurred in western party politics. Since the 1950’s research regarding voting and party politics has assumed the classic Downsian normal distribution of voters. Under this assumption parties should attempt to appeal to the median voter in order to increase the likelihood of electoral success. This has been a bedrock of the literature on parties and party systems development, leading scholars, beginning with Kirchheimer, to note the dominance of the “catch all party” in western politics. Conversely, under an assumption of a normal voter distribution, a party positioning itself on the extremes was seen as a “losing strategy,” and extremist parties were at best marginal to the political process, exercising influence only indirectly. In this paper, however, we argue that there has been a fundamental shift in the latter decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century, deriving from two developments: 1) declining voter turnout and greater voter disengagement, and 2) policy convergence among extremists, particularly regarding a disdain for globalization and liberal economic policies. Declining voter turnout and greater voter disengagement has led to situation in which a party no longer needs to appeal to the center to win elections, but rather, can increase the likelihood of electoral success by mobilizing its base. This effect has been exacerbated in some systems by a lack of minimum thresholds for elections and/or the use of primary elections for candidate selection. Thus, parties have less incentive to employ catchall strategies. The convergence of extremist antipathy to globalization and liberal economic policies has led to far-right and far-left parties acting against the middle rather than each other, and thus, pushing the catchall parties to be less catchall. From this theory, we derive two hypotheses, 1) parties that employ catchall strategies have become progressively less successful over the last 30 years, and 2) mainstream parties that previously have employed catchall strategies have reduced the number of issues they discuss in favor of focusing on a small set of issues that are particularly salient to their base. To test these hypotheses, we use data derived from Eurobarometer public opinion survey, the Comparative Manifestos Project, the Euromanifestos Project, and Parlgov. The findings of this study have important implications for understandings of party position taking, electoral strategies, and the linkage between the public and political parties.

Authors

• John Ishiyama, University of North Texas

• Christopher J. Williams, University of Arkansas at Little Rock