Competing with the Neophyte: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Rising Party Success (2001)
BibTeX
@MISC{Meguid01competingwith,
author = {Bonnie M. Meguid},
title = {Competing with the Neophyte: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Rising Party Success},
year = {2001}
}
Share
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
OpenURL
Abstract
This paper examines the variation in the electoral success of rising parties over the past thirty years. While institutional and sociological explanations for the electoral trajectories of these single-issue parties have been dominant, they tend to remove parties from party analysis. In this paper, I argue that the strategic behavior of mainstream parties shapes the competitiveness and electoral success of these new parties. However, in contrast to spatial theories, party tactics are no longer restricted to programmatic appeals within a fixed policy space; parties also have the ability to alter the salience of issue dimensions and the perceived ownership of those issues. I test the implications of this salience-based model of strategies in a cross-sectional, time-series analysis of rising party (green, radical right and ethnoterritorial) electoral support in eighteen Western European countries from 1970-2000. The regression results confirm that the strategic behavior of mainstream parties better accounts for intertemporal variations in support across rising parties than the dominant institutional and sociological explanations. Moreover, this reconceptualized view of strategies also outperforms spatial models of party interaction, better capturing how and why mainstream parties undermine and even bolster rising party electoral performance.
Keyphrases
mainstream party mainstream party strategy rising party success strategic behavior electoral success sociological explanation fixed policy space new party single-issue party electoral support electoral trajectory perceived ownership eighteen western european country past thirty year regression result party electoral performance intertemporal variation time-series analysis party tactic issue dimension party interaction programmatic appeal spatial model reconceptualized view party analysis salience-based model spatial theory radical right
