Intra-Party Politics and European Multiparty Governments

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Alejandro Ecker
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418728321

While a few selected theoretical and empirical contributions highlight the key role of intra-party politics for multiparty governments, the vast majority of scholarly research conceptualizes political parties as unitary actors. As a result, intra-party politics remain in a comparative and systematic fashion largely understudied. The proposed research project analyses the dynamics of intra-party politics in a comparative framework. The key objective is to understand how divergent policy positions within political parties emerge and how they affect multiparty governments in Europe. Building upon recent methodological advancements in the ideal point estimation of political actors, the project exploits social network sites, i.e. Twitter, to generate a comparative data set of intra-party preference heterogeneity. Social network site data are available on large-scale and generally comprise direct and unsolicited public statements of key political actors. As such, they are particularly well suited to retrieve comparative data on preference heterogeneity. Based on this comparative data set, the project explores three sets of interrelated research questions. The first set of questions is concerned with the effects of intra-party politics on multiparty governments. Specifically, it investigates how divergent policy positions within parties affect coalition governments throughout their democratic life cycle. The second set of questions analyses the structural determinants of intra-party preference heterogeneity. It explores which organizational structures and party characteristics effectively shield parties from factionalization. Thirdly and beyond this substantial interest in the causes and consequences of intra-party politics, the project adds to extant research on the validity of different measures of intra-party preference heterogeneity. Specifically, it cross-validates estimates retrieved from social network site data with alternative measures based on speeches, roll call votes, and elite surveys. By exploring these research questions, the project contributes innovatively to the literature on party competition and coalition politics. It is among the first to test existing theoretical propositions on the consequences of intra-party politics in a comparative framework. Beyond testing established propositions, the project formulates new theoretical expectations on the effect of intra-party politics on European multiparty governments. Additionally, the project enhances our understanding of the determinants of party preference heterogeneity by providing a fine-grained dynamic picture that allows studying preference heterogeneity as a function of exogenous political and economic events. Finally, the project provides a comparative data set of intra-party preference heterogeneity, which can be linked with existing external data on party competition and multiparty governments. This should further stimulate comparative research on intra-party politics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants