Fleeing the Mainstream: Party Positions and Voter Perceptions in Contemporary Liberal Democracies

这项研究探索了传统主流政党的意识形态定位与欧盟内外自由民主国家挑战者政党的选举命运之间的关系。它运用了广泛的实证技术来证明，当主流政党趋同时，选民更有可能转向挑战者政党。实证分析的重点是使用宣言数据的政党意识形态和使用调查数据的选民认知。这些发现被组织成两篇论文。第一篇论文使用回归和匹配方法考察了欧洲一体化对实际和感知的主流政党趋同的影响。第二篇论文测试了政党融合对挑战者政党选举表现的影响。

This research explores the relationship between the ideological positioning of traditional mainstream parties and the electoral fortunes of challenger parties across liberal democracies in and outside the European Union. It applies a wide range of empirical techniques to demonstrate that when the mainstream parties converge, voters are more likely to switch to challenger parties. The empirical analyses focus on both party ideology using manifesto data and voter perceptions using survey data. The findings are organized into two papers. A first paper examines the effects of European integration on actual and perceived mainstream party convergence using regressions and matching methods. A second paper tests the effects of party convergence on the electoral performance of challenger parties.