Cross-pressured Parties: Position-blurring in Two-dimensional Welfare Politics

• In Event: The Economy as a New Issue? A New Look at the Economic Policy Dimension

Abstract

Recent findings from the party competition literature have shown that position-blurring on an issue can be a promising electoral strategy if this issue divides a party’s electorate. In this article we show that in the field of social policy, realignment has resulted in most parties facing a divided electorate on one of the two main conflicts of contemporary welfare politics: While the populist right’s potential electorate is divided regarding the preferred size of the welfare state, potential social democratic voters, for example, disagree over whether to prioritize social investment or consumption. Therefore, the question arises as to how parties react to this dilemma. Do they side with one part of their electorate or do they engage in blurring? Using data from an original survey to map voters’ preferences and a new and fine-grained coding of social policy positions in party manifestos in 8 Western European countries to assess party strategies, we show that while parties take clear stances where their potential voters are unified, they engage in position blurring on the dimension where their electorate is divided, in order not to alienate potential voters. Furthermore, we distinguish two types of position-blurring: If social policy is a party’s prime issue, it offers a broad appeal by making contrasting statements whereas parties with other prime issues blur by de-emphasizing social policy. Our findings have extensive implications both for the literature on party competition as well as partisan welfare politics.

Authors

• Michael Pinggera, University of Zurich

• Matthias Enggist, University of Zurich