The electoral appeal of party strategies in postindustrial societies

Autor(en)

Tarik Abou-Chadi, Markus Wagner

Abstrakt

Recent elections have revived the debate about the decline of social democracy, often attributed to the numerical decline in the working class and its alienation due to the mainstream left’s economically centrist and socially liberal policy stances. To explain changes in these parties’ fortunes, we instead argue that researchers need to analyze the preferences of key electoral groups on the main axes of political competition and the role of information-transmitting intermediaries in shaping these preferences. Specifically, we suggest that (1) mainstream left parties can win votes by taking up more investment-oriented positions if they (2) also take up liberal sociocultural positions and (3) do not face opposition from influential unions. We find support for these expectations using aggregate-level election results and individual-level survey responses. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of party success in advanced democracies and for empirical models of party competition more generally.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Zürich (UZH)

Journal

Journal of Politics

Band

81

Seiten

1405-1419

Anzahl der Seiten

15

ISSN

0022-3816

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/704436

Publikationsdatum

10-2019

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Sociology and Political Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/6dcd540e-9ff7-455b-96bd-2b53a3a775ec