The nature of party-voter linkages and party change in Central and Eastern Europe

A large body of literature deals with the question under which circumstances political parties change their policy positions. These studies rely on the assumption that programmatic appeals are at the core of all parties’ strategies, and that they are one of the main reasons why voters support a given party. However, this assumption does not hold true for many parties in Europe, as some rely on clientelist strategies that trade benefits for political support. This raises the question to what extent our theories of party position change in established, programmatic settings can explain the positional shifts of parties in a more clientelist context. We argue that their applicability is limited, as the risks and benefits of party change vary with the degree of clientelism. Rather, we expect that the explanatory power of the known predictors of position shifts is weaker for parties that rely more on non-programmatic appeals. To test this, we compile a data set that combines expert survey estimates of key party characteristics with party manifesto data for the period 1999-2019. Our study shows that the nature of party-voter linkages is crucial for understanding party position and strategic change in European democracies.