Issues on Offer in Elections: Reconsidering the Role of Institutional Structure in Diversifying Party Positions

Prior research into the choice of party positions on offer to voters typically focuses on only one aspect of party positions - party preferences. However, the diversity of issue priorities and offers are equally, if not more significant, components of party diversity and voter choice. If two parties prioritize a narrow range of issues and differ on the treatment of these issues to a particular degree, the choice offered to voters is less than it would be than in a case where those same parties differ on all issues to a similar degree but put more issues on their agendas. In this paper I argue that this prior research has possibly underestimated the role that multi-party consensual systems have in increasing the size of the choice space available to voters at election time. I use manifesto data form 15 democracies, and control for factors such as manifesto size, in order to develop estimates of the diversity of issue priorities on offer during an election. This paper is the first step in a longer project that aims to understand the manner in which new issues are integrated into party positions in different institutional systems.