Avoidance, ambiguity, alternation: Position blurring strategies in multidimensional party competition
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Jelle Koedam |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211027472 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Avoidance, ambiguity,
alternation: Position
blurring strategies in
multidimensional party
competition
Jelle Koedam
Department of Political Science, University of Zurich,
Switzerland
Abstract
In a multidimensional environment, parties may have compelling incentives to obscure
their preferences on select issues. This study contributes to a growing literature on posi-
tion blurring by demonstrating how party leaders purposively create uncertainty about
where their party stands on the issue of European integration. By doing so, it theoreti-
cally and empirically disentangles the cause of position blurring—parties’strategic
behavior—from its intended political outcome. The analysis of survey and manifesto
data across 14 Western European countries (1999–2019) confirms that three distinct
strategies—avoidance, ambiguity, and alternation—all increase expert uncertainty
about a party’s position. This finding is then unpacked by examining for whom avoidance
is particularly effective. This study has important implications for our understanding of
party strategy, democratic representation, and political accountability.
Keywords
Dimensionality, European integration, party strategy, position blurring, uncertainty
Citizens choose. They vote. […] Politicians also choose. […] They choose sometimes to
highlight their acts by seeking publicity for them. At other times, they obscure them by
acting quietly, perhaps by taking positions that are contradictory or confusing.
Erikson et al. (2002: 9)
Corresponding author:
Jelle Koedam, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, 8050 Zurich,
Switzerland.
Email: koedam@ipz.uzh.ch
Article
European Union Politics
2021, Vol. 22(4) 655–675
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211027472
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
In 1997, the British Conservative Party devoted roughly 1 in every 15 lines in its
manifesto to the European Union and its relationship with the United Kingdom
(UK). The party’s position on European integration was by no means unambiguous,
however. On the one hand, the party called for a “flexible Europe”and supported the
aspirations of Central and Eastern European countries to join the European Union.
At the same time, it argued that “anation’s common heritage, culture, values and
outlook are a precious source of stability,”so it would therefore “retain Britain’s
veto and oppose further extension of qualified majority voting in order to […]
prevent policies that would be harmful to the national interest.”This mixed message
was perhaps best summarized by the party’s adage, “we want to be in Europe but
not run by Europe.”More recently, observers have called out the contradictory posi-
tions of the Labour Party on Europe in the wake of the Brexit referendum, as its then
leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed support for the customs union to preserve the free
movement of goods and the soft border within Ireland, but opposed the single
market on the basis of its neoliberal aspects (Kaldor, 2018).
Why would a political party adopt an equivocal position? Spatial models of elections
assume that party elites use, and continuously alter, policy appeals to maximize electoral
support (Adams, 2012; Adams et al., 2004; Downs, 1957). From this perspective, posi-
tion blurring is logically expected to be costly (Bartels, 1986; Shepsle, 1972). However, a
growing literature suggests that, at times, party leaders have an incentive to deliberately
eschew from clear position taking, especially on issues they are less invested in (Elias
et al., 2015; Han, 2020; Rovny, 2013; Rovny and Polk, 2020). For instance, a party
could opt to shun an issue on which its voters are divided (Rovny, 2012), or it might
try to broaden its support by reaching out to opposing ideological camps through other-
wise inconsistent policy statements (Somer-Topcu, 2015). For this reason, recent work
has started to probe the relative uncertainty surrounding parties’ideological positions
in a multidimensional environment, because it could be a product of their conscious
and strategic attempts to manipulate the structure of political competition (Rovny and
Edwards, 2012; Tavits and Potter, 2015).
It is unclear from these accounts, however, how a party might blur its position. This
study breaks new ground by identifying, and subsequently testing, three main strategies
by which a party may attempt to generate positional uncertainty: avoidance, ambiguity,
and alternation. It uses a party’s manifesto—a strategic document drafted by the party
itself to shape its electoral message—to measure whether it evades an issue, takes con-
flicting positions on it, or shifts its policy appeals, respectively. This study focuses on
the issue of European integration, which is a particularly appropriate domain for
testing its theory, as it offers a salient but relatively new political conflict in European
politics. The cross-sectional time-series analysis across 14 Western European democra-
cies (1999–2019) confirms that all three strategies increase disagreement among
country experts when asked to position a party on the European issue. Expert uncertainty
is employed as a proxy for voter uncertainty, which, if we assume that experts are the
most informed of observers, provides a conservative test of the above predictions. The
analysis then unpacks further the effect of avoidance, arguably the most drastic and
powerful strategy given its reliance on non-engagement. It finds that its potency is
656 European Union Politics 22(4)
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