The Growing Importance of Issue Competition: The Changing Nature of Party Competition in Western Europe
| Author | Christoffer Green-Pedersen |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00686.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Growing Importance of Issue
Competition: The Changing Nature of Party
Competition in Western Europe
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
University of Aarhus
Changes in Western European political parties in general have attracted considerable scholarly interest,
whereas changes in party competition have been almost overlooked in an otherwise extensive literature.
Using the party manifesto data set, this article documents that party competition in Western Europe is
increasingly characterised by issue competition, i.e. competition for the content of the party political
agenda.What should be the most salient issues for voters: unemployment,the environment, refugees and
immigrants, law and order, the welfare state or foreign policy? This change is crucial because it raises a
question about the factors determining the outcome of issue competition. Is it the structure of party
competition itself or more unpredictable factors, such as media attention, focusing events or skilful
political communication? The two answers to this question have very different implications for the
understanding of the role of political parties in today’s Western European democracies.
Recent years have seen the emergence of an extensive literature on how political
parties in Western Europe are responding to changes in society, not least changes
in the electorate.1This literature carefully analyses changes such as the decline in
party membership and the professionalisation of the staff of political parties in
Western Europe. However, it pays surprisingly little attention to how societal
changes have affected the way political parties compete with each other for
electoral support. This article argues that party competition in Western European
countries increasingly focuses on what Edward Carmines and James Stimson
(1993) describe as ‘issue competition’, i.e. party competition on which issues
should dominate the party political agenda. Thus where party competition used
to be almost entirely about positional competition in relation to mainly socio-
economic issues, it is today characterised by a combination of positional and issue
competition. This increased importance of issue competition is sometimes briefly
discussed in the literature (e.g. Mair et al., 2004, pp. 6–7) but has not received
enough attention, either theoretically or empirically.
Therefore, the main aim of this article is to show that party competition in
Western Europe has, in fact, been increasingly characterised by issue competition.
Further, the article will discuss the challenges raised by this development to
scholarship on political parties in Western Europe and thus to the understanding
of political parties in modern democracies. Due to its limited attention to changes
in party competition, the existing literature only partially covers such questions.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00686.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007 VOL 55, 607–628
© 2007The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
Most importantly,the existing literature has little to say about the central question
emerging from the growing importance of issue competition: what determines
which issues actually come to dominate the party political agenda? Is this the
result of factors outside the political system, such as mass media attention,or the
result of factors inside the political system, for instance the structure of party
competition?
The empirical demonstration of the growing importance of issue competition
is conducted by analysing the party manifesto data set (Budge et al., 2001) in a
different way from how this data set is typically analysed. The analysis shows that,
as a consequence of increasing issue competition, the party political agenda is
characterised by greater capacity and complexity, i.e. it potentially involves a
greater number of political issues with a more equal distribution of political
attention. It also shows that even though they emphasise different political issues,
issue competition means that political parties are forced to pay attention to issues
that have come on to the party political agenda.
Before the empirical analysis, two introductory steps are necessary. First is a very
brief review of the extensive literature on changes in the Western European
electorate,which points to the need for what this article does, namely analysis of the
electoral issues put before the electorate by the political parties. Second is a
theoretical discussion of what issue competition implies and how it can be studied.
This discussion also involves showing how issue competition both differs from but
is also related to positional party competition. To date, the latter perspective –
implying that parties compete by taking different positions on a pre-given policy
dimension resulting in a party political agenda fixed on a few connected issues – has
beenafairlyaccurate description of party competition inWesternEurope.It hasbeen
dominated by positional competition on mainly economic left–right issues.2The
increasing importance of issue competition thus implies less dominance, but
certainly not the disappearance, of positional competition.
The Changing Western European Electorate
The clearest finding on the Western European electorate in the literature is the
decline of social-structural voting, especially class voting (Dalton, 2002; Knutsen,
2004; Thomassen,2005). In countries like Denmark and Norway, class voting has
declined dramatically to the point of almost disappearing (Aardal, 2003;Andersen
and Bor re,2003). In other countries, e.g. the Netherlands, where social-structural
voting has also been religiously based, it has declined significantly as well
(compare Oskarson, 2005).Another clear finding is of an increase in electoral
volatility. Voters are thus increasingly inclined to change their vote (Mair, 2002).
The literature offers less clear-cut conclusions in terms of what has replaced
social-structural voting.Analyses of recent elections in Western European coun-
tries (Aardal, 2003; Andersen and Bor re,2003; van Holsteyn et al., 2003) point to
608 CHRISTOFFER GREEN-PEDERSEN
© 2007The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007, 55(3)
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