The Dynamics of Competitor Party Behaviour
| Author | Martin Bækgaard,Carsten Jensen |
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00898.x |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 2 VO L 6 0 , 1 3 1 – 1 4 6
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00898.x
The Dynamics of Competitor Party Behaviourpost_898131..146
Martin Bækgaard and Carsten Jensen
Aarhus University
We present an argument concerning the temporal dynamics of the policy positions of the main opposition parties in
a legislative body; what we label competitor parties. In the article we ask how competitor parties react when losing
an election, and what happens if they continue to lose election upon election. It is argued that competitor parties from
the outset are trying to maximise both policy- and office-seeking preferences. We posit that this is best achieved by
moving away from the median towards the party base. Yet in the event that electoral success continues to elude the
competitor party, a process of self-reflection, or learning, will set in within the party because the policy position of the
competitor party is clearly unacceptable to pivotal voter groups. In this event, the competitor party will move strongly
towards the policy position of the incumbent party, thereby neutralising any advantage the incumbent party may
previously have had in terms of policy position. By giving up on its policy preferences, the competitor party maximises
total utility because then, if nothing else, it becomes more likely to win office. If the competitor party continues to
lose, a new cycle of divergence and convergence will set in, generating a wave-like pattern. The argument is
illuminated using two well-known examples from the United States and the United Kingdom and tested employing
a unique large-N data set from Danish municipalities.We show that the temporal dynamics of competitor parties are
as expected.
Keywords: policy positions; competitor party; learning; office seeking; policy seeking
In the study of party behaviour, one of the core findings in the past couple of decades has
been the non-convergence of the policy positions of political parties. A series of theories
has been presented in order to make sense of this interesting finding, generating a lively
debate on the sources of party divergence. The literature has so far been preoccupied with
understanding why divergence seems to be a universal phenomenon across different
polities, including two- and multiparty systems (Adams et al., 2004; 2005; Iversen, 1994;
MacDonald and Rabinowitz, 1998; Poole and Rosenthal, 1984; Rabinowitz and
MacDonald, 1989; Schofield and Sened, 2005).
A lacuna in the existing literature is the study of how electoral defeats influence the
policy positions of opposition parties. We are interested in understanding how a party
responds to such defeats. More precisely, we are interested in the temporal dynamics of such
party response. What does a party do if it loses an election? And what does it do if it
continues to lose election upon election? Clearly, a situation with recurring defeats is not
identical to the situation where the opposition party has only lost once or perhaps twice.
Intuitively we expect that parties will behave differently depending on whether success
seems close at hand, or whether victory has eluded the party for a number of times in a row.
But how, precisely, will the strategically-oriented leadership of the opposition party behave
in the two situations in order to change defeats to victory?
The article presents a theory and empirical test of the dynamic behaviour of the
competitor party; that is, the main opposition party in the legislature. It follows James
Adams et al. (2010) by positing that such competitor parties are motivated both by policy
and office preferences. Having lost only once or twice, a competitor party will move further
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
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M A RT I N B Æ K G A A R D A N D C A R S T E N J E N S E N
away from the incumbent in order to activate its party base and thereby increase turnout
among its own voters, thus enhancing the chance of winning office. This way, the
competitor party is able to maximise both its policy- and office-seeking preferences. The
article also draws on the literature on adaptive parties (Kollman et al., 1992; 1998; Laver,
2005; Somer-Topcu, 2009). Combining these approaches, the article presents a novel
argument for the dynamic behaviour of competitor parties: in the event that the competitor
party keeps losing a radical change in strategy will occur because the competitor party
continues to stay out of office and remains marginalised in policy terms. In this situation,
the competitor party will adapt by moving towards the incumbent party.When undertaking
such a shift towards the policy position of the incumbent party, a competitor minimises the
policy distance between itself and the segment of the electorate that has voted for the
incumbent party. By doing so, policy-related factors become less important for the voting
behaviour of the electorate, while other factors, including performance evaluations, the
general wear and tear of incumbent governments, and other personality issues, become
more important. If success continues to elude the competitor party after this process of
convergence, we expect competitor parties to initiate a new cycle of convergence and
divergence, generating a wave-like temporal dynamic.
To illustrate the argument we rely on two well-known examples from the United States
and the United Kingdom: namely, the response of the Democratic party to the success of
Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, and that of the Labour party to the success of
Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Second, we test the argument on a new data set that
allows us to use a large-N setting, providing us with a unique opportunity to study the
argument systematically. The data set is based on surveys of political parties in 214 Danish
municipalities. Compared to cross-national data, this has the advantage of holding all
national-level institutional factors constant, while simultaneously allowing for robust sta-
tistical controls for alternative causes of policy convergence. We show empirically how
competitor parties move in cycles of convergence and divergence over multiple electoral
losses.
Patterns of Party Behaviour: Convergence and Divergence
The literature on strategic party behaviour in both two- and multiparty settings is volu-
minous. Based on the seminal work of Anthony Downs (1957), the median voter theorem
argues that parties in two-party systems will converge towards the policy position of the
median voter in order to secure the maximum number of votes.While theoretically elegant,
the median voter theorem has been met with substantial critique, starting with Keith Poole
and Howard Rosenthal (1984), who used American data to show that non-convergence is
the norm. A large amount of important theoretical and empirical work has followed,
suggesting why policy divergence is in fact the rational strategy for parties to pursue in both
two- and multiparty systems. The basic reason for this is that voters favour distinct
alternatives either because they allow the voters to signal what policies should be pursued,
or because many voters are party identifiers who often turn out in greater numbers than the
median voters, especially when parties advocate more extreme policy positions (Adams,
1999; Adams et al., 2004; 2005; Dow, 2001; Iversen, 1994; Rabinowitz and MacDonald,
1989; Schofield and Sened, 2005).
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
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DY N A M I C S O F C O M P E T I TO R PA RT I E S
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The literature has mainly been preoccupied with understanding why policy divergence
takes place. A lacuna exists, however, concerning how parties respond to continuing
electoral defeats. The underlying assumption of most of the existing literature is that the
main contending parties in a legislature will stand an equal chance of winning an election;
or that there is at least no systematic bias in favour of a single party. Evidently many
legislatures are characterised by a situation where no single party is able to dominate for a
prolonged period of time, implying that power rotates between the main parties over a
certain period. Yet sometimes this assumption is violated. There are a number of examples
of how a single party (or a coherent coalition) has been victorious for several elections in
a row: the Conservative party dominated in the United Kingdom for eighteen years
between 1979 and 1997; the CDU/FDP dominated in Germany for sixteen years between
1982 and 1998; and in Sweden, the Social Democratic party remained uncontested for
decades beginning in 1932.
In other words, the lacuna concerns the temporal dynamics of competitor party behav-
iour. As noted by Kaare Strom (1990, p. 569),‘models of party behavior are generally static.
Each election and each process of government formation is analyzed separately, as if parties
have no history and no future’. Yet intuition suggests that competitor parties do in fact
change as a consequence of continuing electoral defeats – the alternative, that competitor
parties remain at their initial position, would be strange indeed.
While the issue of temporal dynamics in competitor party behaviour has not been
researched systematically in the existing literature, some work has been done on related
aspects which may provide a stepping stone for such research. First, Ken Kollman et al.
(1992; 1998), Michael Laver (2005) and Zeynep Somer-Topcu (2009) rely on the notion of
‘adaptive...
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