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Party Politics at the Local Level

Parties and elections
Institutions
TOU016
Simon Otjes
Leiden University
Christina-Marie Juen
Technische Universität Darmstadt

Building: C, Floor: 2, Room: MC204

Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00 CEST (25/04/2023)

Wednesday 09:00 - 17:00 CEST (26/04/2023)

Thursday 09:00 - 17:00 CEST (27/04/2023)

Friday 09:00 - 17:00 CEST (28/04/2023)

Local governments have gained more autonomy (Ladner et al. 2019). They have become key government pillars dealing with complex policy problems that impact on people’s lives (Gendźwiłł et al. 2022). For parties, local government is a key arena in which to win elections, staff local executives, and influence policy. Nevertheless, party politics at the local level has not attracted abundant academic attention. At this level, we lack a comprehensive understanding on the structure of party competition, or of whether, and how local party politics differs from national-level party competition. The party system in each municipality differs from the national party system: each has its own mix of local branches of national parties and independent local lists (Copus et al. 2012; Otjes 2020). One of the largest challenges for the analytical study of party politics at the local level is a lack of data. Therefore, researchers have relied on surveys of local politicians (Bäck et al. 2006) or, more often, impressions rather than actual facts (Peters and Castenmiller 2018). We aim to move beyond the study of party politics based on impressions and perceptions to a systematic understanding of the interactions between parties at the local level. The increasing digitalization of local politics data, in combination with advances in web scraping and automated text analysis, opens exciting new avenues to understand local party politics. We can gain new insights by applying already existing theoretical approaches for the national level, and conceptualising specific characteristics of local politics. This Workshop aims to shed more light on the role of political parties in local politics. We focus on the interaction, competition and cooperation between them in the electoral and parliamentary spheres. The electoral arena Although parties are defined by their participation in elections, several aspects of local elections remain underdeveloped. Only recently, studies have started to examine the positions parties take in local manifestos (Gross and Jankowski 2020). Established theories of party competition, such as issue competition, do not yet play a role in the study of local party positioning. Local election campaigns have also attracted only marginal attention. Given that parties rely more strongly on volunteers at the local level, one might expect election campaigns to be less professionalized. However, fewer resources at the local level might also incentivize parties to use digital tools. The parliamentary arena Parties also structure work in local councils. The formation of local governments has received considerable attention in this regard (Serritzlew et al. 2010). However, policy-seeking strategies have not been systematically studied here (Debus and Gross 2016). Moreover, we still know very little about what happens once a local council is in session (Otjes et al. forthcoming). The most advanced literature here examines gender-related effects on local policymaking (Jung 2022). Studies have also linked the party composition of councils to policy outcomes, such as the budget (Maličká and Reis Mourao forthcoming). But the more nuanced measures of inter-party differences based on election manifestos have not yet been applied.

The goal of this Workshop is to advance knowledge of party competition in local politics by reviewing and consolidating the state of the art and engaging in theoretical, conceptual, and especially empirical innovation. The Workshop Directors seek Papers from scholars of political parties at the local level, as well as from scholars working on the interplay of party competition between different layers of multi-level political systems. We invite theoretical and empirical Papers that study party competition in municipalities. Independent of the methodology used, Papers should adopt a clear and strong analytical approach, outline a compelling research puzzle, and contribute to consolidation or innovation in the field. We seek a variety of analytic perspectives, theoretical and empirical, quantitative and qualitative, since this will generate important avenues for cross-fertilization, and theoretical and empirical accumulation. Papers could, for example:  Study candidate selection for local councils.  Study party programmes. We encourage in particular studies that do not simply describe party positions but also seek to explain choices or use party positions to explain further behaviour.  Focus on local election campaigns and the messages that parties send to voters.  Examine local coalition governance, formation outcomes and termination.  Examine the behaviour of parties in local councils, including voting, speech-making, the submission of questions, amendments and motions.  Study policy outcomes at the local level, when these are linked to parties’ behaviour.  Contribute to building comparative data sets on party competition in local politics.  Link the behaviour of parties in municipalities to other layers of multi-level political systems. We intend to accept a healthy mix of Papers from PhD students, postdocs, and junior scholars, as well as from senior scholars in Europe and beyond. We will spread the call for Papers through our various networks, including:  ECPR Standing Group on Local Government and Politics  ECPR Standing Group on Parliaments  ECPR Standing Group on Federalism and Regionalism  Workshop Directors’ various Dutch, Flemish, and German mailing lists  EPSA-Info mailing list

Title Details
The Rise of the Urban Left in Switzerland, 1980–2020 View Paper Details
Who gets the say in the coalition agreement? Local programs and municipal coalition agreements View Paper Details
Party Dynamics in (Mis)perceptions of public opinion by subnational representatives View Paper Details
Can Political Elites Avoid Affective Polarization? Evidence from Canadian Politicians View Paper Details
Hello? Is there anybody out there? The hurdles to policy responsiveness and congruence in Dutch municipal social welfare. View Paper Details
Does ideology matter in local politics? Analyzing local party manifestos in Belgium View Paper Details
“Not the way we do things around here”: explaining the limits on (radical) party politics in local government View Paper Details
The Party Branch and the Council Party Group: Who Governs? View Paper Details
“Your green vote matters!” …Doesn’t it? View Paper Details
Power or Ideology? What structures legislative voting behavior in Dutch municipal councils, ideology or coalition-opposition dynamics? View Paper Details
The two faces of Janus: National Brazilian party organizations and local politics View Paper Details
Voting Against Parties: Populist Attitudes, Party Supply, and Support for Non-Partisan Actors View Paper Details
Candidates from centres and peripheries and their focus on policies and services in amalgamated municipalities View Paper Details