Jordan Bankhead
Doctor Guo
Comparative Parties & Elections
Bibliography Re: Ideology of Political Parties
Aspinwall, Mark, “Preferring Europe: Ideology and National Preferences on European
Integration.” European Union Politics, 2002, 3, 1, Mar. 81-111.
This article examines state preference formation during the process of European
integration. The article tests the hypothesis that Left-Right ideology is better at
predicting party views on integration than nationality. The relationship between
government positions on several dozen proposals considered during the
intergovernmental conference leading up to the signing of the Amsterdam Treaty
in 1997 and ideology is used to test this relationship. No significant relationship
between nationality and preferences on integration is found, thus posing a
challenge to liberal, functional, and historical theories of state preference
formation. Nevertheless, a significant relationship between party ideology and
preferences regarding integration does seem to exist based on the article’s
findings.
Beyme, Klaus Von. Political Parties in Western Democracies. Aldershot:Gower. 1985.
Compares party types in several Western European political systems. Party types
are compared ideologically, occupying a continuum from Left to Right. This
continuum is based on the particular ideology of the party. One major ideological
distinction Von Beyme makes is between Liberalism and Radicalism, both of
which arose from nineteenth century politics. Liberals wanted to protect trade
and commerce from the landed classes but were not interested in extending the
franchise beyond “stakeholders” in the society. Radicals in contrast were
interested in expanding power to women and the poor who they felt should be
brought into the political process. Von Beyme does a good job focusing on social
cleavages and the role of party attachment in guiding voting behavior. While
covering the field broadly and providing an effective survey of the literature on
parties, the book may lack parsimony. The focus on ideology as the major
determinant of party character, however, is a major achievement and provides a
valuable reference for scholars interested in party ideology.
Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper, 1957.
This book attempts to take the Adam Smith idea of laissez-faire in economics and
apply in to politics in a democracy, whereby all actors pursue their own interests
yet the entire community benefits. Downs’ two basic hypotheses are that
politicians in political parties in democratic legislatures will pursue their own
interests and so will voters but in the end social utility will be maximized. The
ideological implications of this for parties are that political parties should
facilitate the ability of politicians to gain office and once there, remain in office.
In this way, the “market” (using the metaphor from economics and applying it to
the political process) will function most effectively and social welfare will be
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maximized. Downs’ model is parsimonious and theoretically attractive and
explains the emphasis politicians put on vote seeking. However, the model makes
the important assumption that elections are competitive and that they are regular.
Either or both of these assumptions, in comparative politics, may not hold.
Dalton, Russell. 1996. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced
Political Democracies. 2nd Ed. Chatham, NJ. Chatham House.
This book offers a word of caution regarding the recent spread of democracy
around the world. The book generally introduces readers to political behavior in the
United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France in order to highlight the strengths of
the democratic process, but also the problems to be confronted if democracy is to meet
the obstacles of the future.
Fishel, Jeff. “Party, Ideology, and the Congressional Challenger”. The American
Political Science Review, Vol. 63, No. 4. (Dec., 1969), pp. 1213-1232.
In this article the author examines party ideology from the unique perspective of
those who lose political elections. He finds that the high level of losers that
challenge incumbents in the US House of Representatives is indicative of a level
of stability in that institution after the 1930s that is useful to comparative politics.
Explaining why challengers lose is a novel theoretical approach and may shed
light on things that rational models of successful politicians cannot. In addition to
rationality, there may be an incumbent advantage at work and this may result in
more ideological stability among various political parties. This hypothesis
drawing a relationship between incumbent advantage and stable party ideology is
a subject that seems relevant for comparative studies.
Huber, John and Ronald Inglehart. 1995. “Expert Interpretation of Party Space and Party
Location in 42 Societies.” Party Politics 1: 73-111.
This article examines party positions on the Left-Right dimension in 42 societies.
The breadth of the work is ambitious and parties in countries such as Italy are
examined in order to demonstrate the differences and similarities between the
Right and Left in different societies. What the study offers is a large N sample of
societies and their parties for comparison and in this way advances the literature
substantially. The drawback of a study like this, however, is that any theoretical
argument is somewhat muddled because of the inherent differences in different
party systems across countries. Nevertheless, this article should be seen as a
significant advancement of the comparative parties literature emphasizing party
ideology.
Imbeau, Louis M., Francois Petry, Moktar Lamari. “Left-Right Party Ideology and
Government Policies: A Meta-Analysis”. European Journal of Political Research, 2001,
40, 1, Aug, 1-29.
A summary of how the partisan influence literature assesses the relationship
between the left-right party composition of government & policy formation
through a meta-analysis of 693 estimates of the party-policy relationship
published in 43 empirical studies. Using a simplified "combined tests" meta-
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analytic technique, the authors demonstrate that the average correlation between
party composition of government and policy outputs is not significant. Using a
mutivariate regression analysis is used to demonstrate how support for partisan
theory is affected by a subset of intervening factors. The analysis shows that there
are conditions where the probability of support for partisan theory can be
substantially increased. The authors therefore conclude that further research is
needed on institutional and socioeconomic determinants of public policy.
Overall, the article does a good job empirically testing the party-policy
relationship based on the left-right party dichotomy.
Lijphart, Arend. 1997. “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma.”
American Political Science Review. 91(1):1-14.
In this article Lijphart argues that unequal participation by democratic citizens in
voting turnout leads to undemocratic elections and a greater likelihood that the
candidate the majority of the people do not favor will be elected. The electoral
system, as a result according to the author, favors the upper classes who can
afford the time to take interest in an election and take time off to vote. The
working class, in contrast, is often unable to get time off to vote, lacks the
incentives to gain interest in the election, and as a result is underrepresented. This
lack of representation leads to parties that are ideologically more Right of center
than would otherwise be the case if the whole population truly voted. Remedies
to this problem of unequal participation are proposed by the author and include:
voter-friendly registration rules, proportional voting, infrequent voting, weekend
voting, and holding less salient elections at the same time as important national
elections. The other alternative, according to the author, is mandatory voter
registration laws. While Lijphart’s approach is laudable, whether the
hypothesized change in political ideology would occur if participation was more
“equal” is debatable. It is not clear that the working class is not already
sufficiently represented in elections.
Tivey, L., A. Wright. Party Ideology in Britain. 1989. London.
The role of ideology in the British political process is described in this work. It
presents a novel approach, focusing on political ideas rather than on conventional
topics such as the organizational basis of party politics. This is done by
investigating what the major political traditions of Britain stand for. The book’s
contributors examine the character of political ideology in Britain after 1945, as
revealed by the British party system, and discuss how ideological positions have
related to policy. Each of the major national party traditions is looked at,
highlighting the role contemporary party thinkers have had and how they have
determined to apply historic principles of their parties given social change,
economic difficulties and international developments. Putting ideology in
partisan terms, the book looks at party conflicts and their ideas in an entirely new
light.
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