{"title":"Navigating new realities: Explaining programmatic transitions of mainstream and niche parties","authors":"Jasmien Luypaert","doi":"10.1177/01925121241237524","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Electoral competition is determined by the issues that parties choose to compete on and the stances they adopt on these issues. However, little research has examined the trade-off between expanding a party’s programmatic stances to secondary issues while maintaining ideological continuity on primary issues. This article seeks to address this gap by examining programmatic transitions among mainstream and niche parties and in which contexts these transitions are more frequent. The study analyses 47 parties in 10 established democracies between 1986 and 2020 using multiple regression techniques. The results show that niche parties are more likely to focus on secondary issues, and when they make such transitions, they tend to be larger. The analysis also reveals that the length of niche competition influences mainstream parties’ programmatic transitions, while niche parties’ transitions are driven by their continuity in programmatic transitions and governmental experience.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Political Science Review","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121241237524","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Electoral competition is determined by the issues that parties choose to compete on and the stances they adopt on these issues. However, little research has examined the trade-off between expanding a party’s programmatic stances to secondary issues while maintaining ideological continuity on primary issues. This article seeks to address this gap by examining programmatic transitions among mainstream and niche parties and in which contexts these transitions are more frequent. The study analyses 47 parties in 10 established democracies between 1986 and 2020 using multiple regression techniques. The results show that niche parties are more likely to focus on secondary issues, and when they make such transitions, they tend to be larger. The analysis also reveals that the length of niche competition influences mainstream parties’ programmatic transitions, while niche parties’ transitions are driven by their continuity in programmatic transitions and governmental experience.
期刊介绍:
IPSR is committed to publishing material that makes a significant contribution to international political science. It seeks to meet the needs of political scientists throughout the world who are interested in studying political phenomena in the contemporary context of increasing international interdependence and global change. IPSR reflects the aims and intellectual tradition of its parent body, the International Political Science Association: to foster the creation and dissemination of rigorous political inquiry free of subdisciplinary or other orthodoxy.