Strategic Ambiguity of Party Positions in Multi-Party Competition
Strategic Ambiguity of Party Positions in Multi-Party Competition
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DOI：
10.1017/psrm.2016.18
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发表时间：
2018-07-01
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Giger, Nathalie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Braeuninger, Thomas;Giger, Nathalie
政党竞争主要是向选民做出政策承诺。我们认为，明确的政策立场可能同样重要。如果对不同受众的模糊信息和因此而产生的模糊立场能够吸引不同群体的选票，那么政党就有动机提出模糊而不是明确的政策平台。我们提出了一个正式的多党竞争与随机投票的政党领导人作出战略选择的立场和他们的平台的模糊程度的模型。领导人对两个主要方面的要求作出回应，即公众和党的核心选民。我们得出两个假设的位置和模糊性的政党平台，并提供这些假设的初步测试在14个西欧民主国家的比较设置收集数据的选民和政党的左，右的立场，从欧洲晴雨表调查和选举宣言。模糊的政党概况估计使用一个新建立的数据集的选举宣言Wordscores的变体。我们发现，平台变得更加模糊的两个校长的喜好分歧。我们的研究结果意味着，模糊性可能是政党的制胜策略，特别是在党派界限很强的情况下。
Party competition is largely about making policy promises to voters. We argue that the clarity of the expressed policy position may be equally important. If blurred messages toward different audiences and therefore ambiguous positions can attract votes from different groups, parties have incentives to present ambiguous rather than clear-cut policy platforms. We present a formal model of multi-party competition with stochastic voting where party leaders make strategic choices on both the position and the level of ambiguity of their platforms. Leaders respond to the demands of two principals, the general public and party core constituencies. We derive two hypothesis on the location and ambiguity of party platforms and provide initial tests of these hypotheses in a comparative setting in 14 Western European democracies gathering data on voter and party left-right positions from Eurobarometer surveys and electoral manifestos. Ambiguity of party profiles is estimated using a variant of Wordscores on a newly established data set of electoral manifestos. We find that platforms become more ambiguous as the preferences of the two principals diverge. Our findings imply that ambiguity can be a winning strategy for parties, especially in settings with strong partisan lines.