Similar or Different? Issue Overlap Between Mainstream Parties

• In Event: Political Parties in Europe

Abstract

In most of Western Europe, mainstream parties like CDU and SPD in Germany or the Social Democrats and the Conservatives in Sweden continue to define the major political alternatives that citizens face, especially when it comes to government alternatives. But do mainstream parties really offer citizens distinct political alternatives? This question has been studied intensively in terms of left-right or positional convergence, but party competition is more than positional competition. This paper addresses the question of mainstream party convergence from an issue competition perspective by focusing on the issue overlap between the, typically two, mainstream parties that continue to constitute the major political alternatives in Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and the UK. To what extent do they focus on similar or different political issues and which factors determine the degree of issue overlap? Answering this question not only offers important empirical information on the development of the major government alternatives that voters face, but also provides important new insight into the dynamics of issue competition and its link with positional competition. Are ideological and issue convergence, for instance parallel or opposite trends? The paper is based on coding of party manifestos according to the CAP coding scheme from 1980 and on.

Authors

• Christoffer Green-Pedersen, University of Aarhus

• Henrik Bech Seeberg, University of Aarhus