Constraints on Party Policy Change

Political scientists are quite good at predicting 'optimal' policy positions that - under the given circumstances - allow parties to get maximal payoffs in terms of policy, office or votes. What we do not know is whether parties are actually able to take these positions or whether they are constrained to do so.

This book attempts to narrow this gap. The major argument is that parties do not choose policy positions from scratch and that they cannot freely change their policy platforms. Rather, voters' lacking perception of changing party platforms and intra-party factors constrain parties when shifting their policy positions. An empirical analysis of party policy shifts in ten Western European democracies shows that these constraints differ across parties and thus affect the parties' position-taking differently. Considering this variation is important to derive more precise predictions for parties' policy platforms and for our understanding of party behaviour in general.

Thomas M. Meyer is a researcher at the Department of Government, University of Vienna, and a member of the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES) research team. Previously, he was a PhD student at the Center for Doctoral Studies in Social and Behavioral Sciences (CDSS) at the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences (GESS), University of Mannheim, and received his PhD in Political Science in 2010. His research focuses on political parties, party competition, voting behaviour and coalition governance and has been published or is accepted for publication by Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Party Politics and West European Politics.