Analysing Party Competition with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)

Abstract

High-order interaction effects are pervasive in research on party competition. For example, it has been theorized in research on the determinants of ideological change that the effect of changes in the election result depends on (a) the previous ideological shift, (b) the time that has elapsed since the last election, (c) membership of the party in office and opposition, (d) and niche and mainstream party status. Regression analysis cannot model such high-order interactions and hence faces problems in the assessment of party theory. Even if one confines the regression model to three-way interaction effects, one may confront limited diversity rendering it protracted to estimate marginal effects. For example, it is difficult to estimate effects for niche parties that are a government member because their number is quite small. QCA, in contrast, can handle high-order interaction effects and limited diversity. In light of the fit between theory and QCA methodology and the minor role QCA has played in party research so far, the panel invites proposals that use QCA for a better understanding of party competition. Possible topics are papers that deal with the following issues in the context of party competition: - Ideological change - Political communication - Voting & voter-party relations - Party organizations - Government formation and termination - Public policy making. The panel encourages submissions that use QCA in an innovative way, for example with respect to the modeling of multilevel structures, temporality, or the temporal and spatial dependence of observations. Papers on party competition that compare QCA with alternative techniques like Boolean probit are equally invited.

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