Through Thick and Thin: Bridging Innovative Conceptual and Methodological Approaches in Studying Programmatic and Discursive Party Competition

A copious literature deals with how mainstream actors – parties, movements, individuals – respond to their opponents, with a particular focus on radical right and green challenger parties (Abou-Chadi et al. 2020, Schumacher and van Kersbergen 2016, Spoon et al. 2014, Abou-Chadi 2016). Most prominently, this research has sought to explain when and where radical ideological elements move from the fringes of the political spectrum into the mainstream (de Vries and Hobolt 2012). In addition to full-fledged, thick ideologies, previous research has also proclaimed a populist zeitgeist (Hameleers and Vliegenthart 2020; Rooduijn et al. 2014; Mudde 2004), i.e. the mainstreaming of populism in the politics of western democracies. Notwithstanding important methodological and technological advances in this field of study, such as the use of machine learning in the area of big data, quantitative textual, and visual data analyses (Breyer 2022, Gessler and Hunger 2022, Klüver and Sagarzazu 2016, Müller 2016), this research has reached an impasse in recent years. While innovative methods provide powerful tools, new behavioural phenomena still defy our conventional spatial-theoretical approaches. Thus, we seek to contribute to the literature on party strategies particularly in the following three areas. First, while differentiating between thin and thick ideologies has become firmly established in the field (Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017, Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017, Rooduijn 2019), scholars rarely distinguish between substantive and more discursive forms of engagement, especially in the case of populism and the so-called populist zeitgeist (Hunger and Paxton 2020) but also nativism (Habersack and Werner 2022). However, it is crucial to consider both strategies and how they mutually condition one another, because the specificities of how political actors engage with an idea give us insight into their commitment to ideological and strategic goals. How, when, and where actors adopt or transform the political claims of their rivals is a function of their prioritisation of ideological commitment versus strategic signalling of responsiveness. Second, the study of strategic party behaviour requires us to broaden the scope empirically beyond single policy positions (e.g. migration and asylum policy) so as to do justice to the multidimensionality of political competition (Rovny and Edwards 2012). Moreover, while current research focuses strongly on populist radical-right parties as one of the most successful party families in Western Europe, political competition stretches far beyond this particular type of challenger party and their ideological impact. Third, despite the current state of scholarship providing us with an increasing abundance of models of mainstream party strategies, these models’ power to predict behavioural phenomena in party competition does not necessarily increase proportionally. This is not least due to the fact that existent research virtually ignores the demand side; that is, how parties’ approaches in dealing with competition – and their justifications thereof – are perceived by voters.