Talking to the Party: A Cross-Country Collection of Intra-Party Debates

Abstract

Talking to the Party: A Cross-Country Collection of Intra-Party Debates ECPR Research Sessions Application 2014 Scholars have long been concerned with the effects of intra-party politics on electoral competition, individual behavior and policy outcomes (e.g. Michels 1911, Duverger 1963). For example, intra-party politics influence election outcomes, coalition formation and termination (Laver and Shepsle 1996), party positioning (Schumacher, de Vries and Vis 2013) and parliamentary behavior (Ceron 2013). Increasingly, researchers acknowledge that parties do not always act as if they are unitary actors and that these divisions hold implications for parties’ behavior. However, researchers often lack the empirical tools to take intra-party politics seriously. We propose to collect cross-national data on intra-party actors’ policy goals, develop tools to analyze this data and apply the data to test theories of party politics. To this purpose, we propose to host a group at the ECPR Research Sessions (July 8-11, 2014) dedicated to organizing this project. Our primary innovation lies in our interest in speeches and documents oriented towards an intra-party audience. In particular, we will coordinate a cross-national research group to collect and analyze data on intra-party debates at parties’ national meetings. The goal of our proposed meeting is to take the first steps towards establishing and coordinating this group. To our knowledge, this will be the first research group to directly study the preferences of intra-party actors in a truly comparative framework. In this proposal, we first discuss several hypotheses that we could investigate treating intra-party preferences as both the dependent and independent variable. We then discuss our general methodology and intended approach. We elaborate on our data and methods by outlining the group’s future Research Steps, Milestone achievements, and Publication Plan. Intra-Party Preferences as Dependent Variable By mapping intra-party preferences, we will provide a dependent variable to scholars interested in party unity/cohesion and organization. This data has substantial promise for the study of intra-party politics. How unified or cohesive are parties? Scholars often measure unity using roll call vote records. However, the appearance of unity in parliament does not mean that parties are internally cohesive (Loewenberg 2008). Parliamentary rules and intra-party structures provide party leaders with tools to encourage unity (see for example Cox and McCubbins 1993; Huber 1996; Döring 2003; Ceron 2013). Furthermore, party members often disagree with their leadership; party conferences provide opportunities for members to express discontent with their leaders (Huber 1996; Hug and Schulz 2007; Rosas and Shomer 2008; O’Brien and Shomer 2013). Following advances in the study of election platforms (e.g. Slapin and Proksch 2008), we intend to study intra-party disagreement using automated text analysis at party conferences. Broadly, disagreement expressed in speeches and formal motions at conferences can supplement and validate indicators of party unity derived from parliamentary behavior. In contrast to formal assumptions in theories of political behavior, studies often highlight variation within parties’ organizations finding that parties often contain factions (see for example Meguid 2008; McElwain 2008; Ceron 2012 and 2013; Greene and Haber working paper). Theories of intra-party politics (Harmel and Janda 1994) explain that party behavior depends on the internal distribution of factions. This dataset will help researchers map factions and their development over time. Moreover, with a measure for the diversity of intra-party preferences we can evaluate how party organizations constrain party leaders, or conversely, to what extent leaders dominate parties. On the one hand, intra-party decision-making bodies with veto power over party change limit the number and degree of these changes (Tsebelis 2002). Ceron’s (2013) work exemplifies this point. Using motions presented at party congress to measure the relative location of intra-party actors’ preferences, he finds that factions constrain party leaders’ preferences. On the other hand, leaders’ control over candidate selection and intra-party promotion allows them to limit the diversity of preferences at party congresses. Leaders therefore reduce criticisms of and competition for their own position. Variation in organizations should explain differences in intra-party diversity. Our data gives researchers the tools to address these questions. Our data also allows us to study the impact of organizational change as parties adapt to new circumstances. For example, parties lowered membership requirements and empowered members by allowing them to vote in leadership elections as a reaction to decreasing memberships (Tan 1997; Kenig, Philippov and Rahat 2013). The implications of changes have not been systematically assessed. Does organizational change encourage or inhibit intra-party diversity of opinions (Katz and Mair 1995)? How does party performance interact with organization to influence intra-party preferences? Do parties show more or less unity when they are electoral losers? Does party unity depend on leaders’ control of the agenda? Electoral conditions should impact party activists’ policy approach (Kitschelt 1989) and major changes likely upsets the balance of intra-party factions (Harmel and Janda 1994). However, these claims have not been systematically evaluated. We plan to develop the technical expertise and data necessary to address these questions. Intra-Party Preferences as an Explanatory Variable Intra-party preferences also impact party competition, coalition formation and termination, and the electorate’s perception of the party. Our project will provide indispensable data to scholars interested in these topics. Parties’ campaign messages influence their electoral success (Adams 1999; Adams and Somer-Topcu 2009; Somer-Topcu 2009). However, does a unified campaign message help or hurt a party? On the one hand, parties with diverse campaign messages could attract a wide range of voters. Parties purposefully ‘blur’ or make vague statements in their campaigns to attract ideologically distant voters (Shepsle 1972; Somer-Topcu working paper). On the other hand, disunity may handicap parties if it leads voters to perceive them as incompetent (Green and Jennings 2011; Ceron 2012; Greene and Haber working paper). Using intra-party debates, we can predict the effect of disunity on parties’ electoral results. This will explain whether party disunity is an electoral drama or a vote-winner. When do parties emphasize new issues? Some argue that parties adopt issues in the opposition (Riker 1982), while others find that parties are more likely to change in government (Schumacher, van de Wardt, Vis en Klitgaard 2013) or that challengers address new issues mostly on a non-economic dimension of conflict (Rovny 2012; De Vries and Hobolt 2012). These studies only evaluate parties at election time, making it difficult to track precisely when parties innovate or change. Using Topic Models (such as the Grimmer model), we can evaluate which topics a text addresses. Many parties have annual conferences (and sometimes more frequently) that will allow us to track parties’ debates between elections. This data would allow us to test hypotheses about how intra-party mechanisms explain party innovation. In addition, studies of government behavior argue that intra-party preferences influence coalition formation and termination (Laver and Shepsle 1996). By measuring party disunity, we can predict coalition outcomes such as when coalitions run into disputes over policy, how portfolios will be distributed among parties (Back, Debus and Dumont 2011) and the probability of coalition termination from intra-party politics. Combing topics models and data from the Comparative Agendas Project, we can also link internal debates to the broader policy agenda such as executive speeches and public policy. In conclusion, measures of intra-party politics will be useful for a host of questions. Preliminary analyses indicate that this approach is valid and reliable (Ceron 2012; 2013; Greene and Haber working paper). In the following section, we describe the research group’s broader contribution to political research. Contribution Our project will make a number of contributions to political science research. First, we aim to deepen theories by unpacking the black box of intra-party politics. By developing and testing hypotheses on the role of intra-party preferences and rules for parties’ behavior, we hope to advance our understanding of democratic representation. Second, new data on internal party actors’ preferences will allow us to test hypotheses on the congruence of parties’ preferences with voters and policy outcomes as well as the comparability of parties’ preferences exhibited at national meetings versus parliamentary debates. Third, we intend to publically distribute a cross-national data base of computer assisted and human coded data online. This data will provide means to evaluate the validity of traditional measures while simultaneously expanding our analytical toolset. It will be of interest to a large and diverse group of scholars. By making available a large set of political text, our project also facilitates qualitative and multi-method research. Scholars can access documents on intra-party politics from a central and easy to access online location. Methodology and Data We envision decentralized data collection that efficiently uses resources to maximize the internal and external validity of the project’s findings. Initial studies established the validity of national congresses as a means to examine theories of intra-party politics (Ceron 2012; Ceron 2013; Greene and Haber working paper). Our research design increases our confidence in the validity of our inferences by examining our results through detailed case studies, comparing alternate coding methods, and expanding the range of countries. Our first goal will be to demonstrate our method’s internal validity through detailed case studies. This will lead to our first collaborative book (or special issue in a journal). This project will involve both a broad description of our initial data collection as well as substantive analysis at the country level. As a secondary step, we will analyze preliminary data from France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands using automated text analysis (e.g. WORDFISH and Topics Models). Through a series of papers focused on measurement choices, we will propose a set of best practices for analyzing intra-party documents. These papers will include directed comparisons with other measures of preferences (such as party platforms, parliamentary speech data, and expert surveys) to demonstrate the comparability and improvement offered by our approach. As we complete our second wave of data collection, we will examine the external validity of our approach across the democratic world. Our initial data collection has loosely followed a most-different systems research design: varying party and institutional systems. This stage of our research will expand the network of researchers and focus data collection on both similar and different systems including countries with proportional electoral rules from Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland as well as evidence from plurality electoral systems such as Canada and the UK. Teams in Germany, Italy and Denmark have independently begun data collection. These projects collected speeches from major parties in four countries. We will include papers presenting initial analyses of this data. Other papers will have a practical methodological focus, demonstrating the “do’s and don’ts” of collecting and analyzing the data. New projects from Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden will prepare initial reports of data collection and outlines for their project’s completion. Research Steps In the first stage of the project, researchers will clean and analyze preliminary data for a collaborative book effort. A second group of collaborators will prepare for this stage of the research where we present our data and provide country and party level validity checks. The ECPR Research Sessions in Essex provides the ideal scenario for arranging preliminary collaboration and negotiating the details required to create a consistent and comparable approach to data collection. By the research sessions, we intend sufficient data collection to be completed such that we can compare and discuss basic outcomes from preliminary case discussions. Following the research sessions, a manuscript proposal will be circulated amongst collaborators and will be presented to publishers at this year’s annual meeting. Following the book’s successful publication, we will collaborate across country teams to maximize country specific expertise while testing broader hypotheses on intra-party politics. At this point, we will expand our research group to include scholars from a range of countries and apply for grant funding from national research foundations and large international funding agencies (e.g. the European Research Council). Finally, we will reconvene for the first meeting of the Comparative Party Congress Research Group conference in 2015. At this meeting, scholars will present ongoing thematic work and arrange future collaborations. The organizers will negotiate which contributions to include in an edited volume using the new data source and consider the plans for a second meeting in 2016. The edited volume will include brief presentations of data availability and project successes as well as state of the art research. Following the publication of this second book, we will expand the reach of our project to additional country research teams. The central organizers will continue to maintain the data and update its online availability. Milestones: • July 2014 -Research Sessions • July 2014 - *first wave of data collection completed (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands) • Summer 2014 – Draft Manuscript to be circulated in prior to the annual meeting in Glasgow • March 2015- First round of grant applications due • January 2015 –journal publication of first comparative analyses using France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Collection of data from Austria, Canada, and Sweden reaches its final stages and begins preliminary analyses • July 2015 - journal publication of methodological comparisons and best practices. • January 2016 – publication of the first book and online publication of comparative dataset. • 2016 – 17- expand research network to include new teams, complete substantive analyses of data. • Summer 2016- Comparative Party Congress Research Group conference • January 2018 - publication of the second book and online publication of expanded comparative data. • March 2019 - application for continued funding to manage ongoing data collection and maintenance. Publication Plan: • Individual country studies for each country project • First book project – Edited Volume - Politics through the lens of party congress debates o Website launch – data sharing • Methodological analyses o Comparing automated techniques to human coders o Comparing data to other measures of preference • Second book project - Thematic Edited Volume – Dimensions of Intra-Party Politics • Thematic articles testing theories of intra-party politics Members: Our membership includes diverse nationalities and training thus maximizing our capacity to include as many countries as possible in our dataset. Also, we include a number of people familiar with automated text analyses as well as experts on intra-party politics and party competition. Andrea Ceron (Italian Data) Università degli Studi di Milano andrea.ceron@unimi.it Gijs Schumacher (Dutch and Danish Data) University of Southern Denmark gijs@sam.sdu.dk Jonathan Polk (Swedish Data) University of Gothenburg Wolfgang Müller (Austrian Data) University of Vienna Zachary Greene (German, French and Swiss Data) University of Mannheim zgreene@mail.uni-mannheim.de Zoltán Fazekas (Hungarian and Romanian Data) University of Southern Denmark zfa@sam.sdu.dk   Works Cited Bӓck, Hanna, Marc Debus and Patrick Dumont. 2011. “Who Gets What in Coalition Governments.” European Journal of Political Research 50: 441-478. Ceron, Andrea. 2012. Bounded Oligarchy: How and When Factions Constrain Leaders in Party Position-Taking. Electoral Studies 31 (4): 689-701. Ceron, Andrea. 2013. Brave Rebels Stay Home: Assessing the Effect of Intra-Party Ideological Heterogeneity and Party Whip on Roll-Call Votes. Party Politics (Published online January 24): 1-13. Cox, Gary and Matthew McCubbins. 1993. 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