Why and How of Party Manifestos in New and in Established Democracies

Political party manifestos/platforms have long been treated as important primary documents within the literature on political parties in established democracies. In cross-national research involving established western democracies, manifestos are most often treated as though such documents have the same meaning and weight across the studied cases. However, it is risky to simply assume that all parties design manifestos for the same purpose, adopt them by the same process, or employ them with the same seriousness or vigor. And if there is important variance among parties of established western democracies on the “hows and whys” of party platforms, it is likely that the variance assumes a greater order of magnitude when parties of lesser developed or younger democracies are included in the mix. It is therefore important not to ignore the variance on on party manifestos' purpose and method, each of which is worthy of theoretically-driven, empirical study in its own right. While there has been considerable study involving the issue positions taken by parties in their manifestos, as well as the relative amounts of attention devoted to various issues, there has been very little serious, systematic, empirical scholarship on the purpose of manifestos and how they are developed. It is the purpose of this workshop to begin to fill that void, with discussion of both theoretical and empirical papers covering a range of settings (including established western as well as less-established non-western democracies) and with discussion leading ultimately to development of a new data base on how party manifestos are developed, adopted, and disseminated, and for what purpose(s).