Ambiguity as a strategy or as the result of bargaining? The effect of party's heterogeneity on ambiguity.

Is ambiguity a rewarding electoral strategy? Unfortunately, the literature has not reached a consensus on this debate. While some authors argue that ambiguous parties can broaden their appeal and gain votes, other contributions have shown that ambiguity might be a costly strategy. However, two aspects are common among these contributions. On the one hand, they assumed the unitary nature of parties; on the other hand, they describe ambiguity as a strategy that aims to attract voters. Therefore, according to these views, parties are seen as monolithic entities that are entirely free to modulate their level of ambiguity to appeal and obtain the vote from an audience with divergent preferences. However, going beyond the unitary actor assumption, the literature on intra-party politics has shown that factionalism is present across political systems and how internal dynamics affect party change, legislative behaviour, and party platforms. Therefore, before addressing the effectiveness of this strategy, we should investigate the origins of party ambiguity. The argument presented in this paper is that parties' degree of ambiguity is not the direct result of strategic actions aimed to broaden their appeal but the consequence of the intra-party conflict. Thus, the ambiguous stance on a particular dimension might emerge from the bargaining among factions within the party when ideological heterogeneity is particularly high. As a matter of fact, finding an ambiguous agreement among factions, instead of opting for a stance that potentially can displease some groups within the party, might lessen the visible conflict within the party while also maintaining an image of unity in the eyes of voters. This paper aims to test these arguments first by exploring how party heterogeneity influences parties' level of ambiguity and secondly by examining if parties' ambiguity can lead voters to underestimate internal party division. The study focuses on 8 Western European counties. Concerning the first hypothesis, ambiguity is operationalised by analysing party manifestos using a refined version of Wordfish that allows extracting both party position and the ideological clarity in three macro issues: economic issue, social issue and Europen Integration issue. The choice of these three dimensions is justified by the fact that they still represent the main dimensions of party competition in Europe and because the phenomenon of ambiguity can be better understood considering multidimensionality. To capture internal party division on these issues, we use elite survey data to measure party heterogeneity in different dimensions. The second hypothesis is tested by estimating the effect that ambiguity has on voters' perception of party unity and using experts' assessment of party divisiveness as a proxy. This paper, being positioned at the crossroad between the fields of obfuscation strategies, intra-party politics, and party competition, contributes to the literature by exploring the origin and employment of party's ambiguity in the light of intra-party dynamics.