Making Space. A Cross-country Comparison of Parties and Interest Groups Positioning in Multiple Policy Dimensions

Party politics in European democracies is increasingly multidimensional. Although the left-right ‘super dimension’ continues to structure central aspects of party competition, the extent to which the most important issues of the day map onto left-right varies substantially across countries and over time. Recently, the interest group literature has taken a similar multidimensional turn. In this paper, we propose further connecting the research on parties, interest groups, and multidimensional policy spaces. Prior work on the relationship between interest groups and political parties has focused overwhelmingly on agreement on the left-right dimension. We build on this by examining the compatibility of party and group positions on the socio-cultural or so-called “Gal-Tan” dimension. Empirically we make use of an original cross-national survey of interest groups, which includes questions on the self-placement of groups on the left-right and gal-tan dimensions. The configuration of groups on these dimensions are matched and compared with Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) data on parties. Our findings have important ramifications for the representativeness of political parties and interest groups as the two main aggregators of citizen and organisational policy preferences.