Comparing Party Strategies in Advanced Democracies

Abstract

The panel focuses on party strategies and party competition in advanced democracies in contexts that are characterised by increasing levels of electoral volatility. We welcome papers that comparatively analyse factors that drive inter-party competition across electoral systems, over time and across governmental levels. Core issues are how parties adapt their ideological positions, which rationales drive the selection of candidates and how they respond to the saliency of issues and events. We are also interested in how parties adapt intra-organisationally, and thus in papers that attempt to open the black box of intra-party relations and how their complexity shapes strategic choices. For example, how do levels of organisational centralisation/ decentralisation affect the capacity of parties to run national elections effectively? More generally, how do intra-party relations shape the coordination of the (partially) conflicting goals of vote maximisation, office and the formulation of policies? In methodological terms, we invite qualitative as well as quantitative cross-national research but would be particularly interested in papers that combine different types of methods to explore the above issues and thereby deal with the challenge to integrate the study of institutions, party properties and electoral behaviour.

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