Does ideology matter in local politics? Analyzing local party manifestos in Belgium

One of the key functions of political parties is the articulation of interests, values, and policy options. Parties take up this role by, amongst other things, formulating manifestos in times of elections. In these texts parties outline their pledges on a wide range of issues. Therefore, extracting positions from election manifestos occupies many party politics scholars. Party programs used in national and regional elections are extensively researched in political science, but so far little is known about the ideological competition in local politics. Except for some rather isolated papers the manifestos and policy preferences of local parties have been neglected. This is odd, because the local level is the closest political unit for citizens and highly relevant for their everyday life. Moreover, there is considerable academic debate about the role of ideology in local politics and more specifically, whether the local political conflict can be structured along a left-right dimension. Can we discern the same left-right divide at the local level as at the national level or does local politics revolve around different discussions? A growing battery of empirical research seems to support the relevance of left and right, but these studies are often conducted in the American context, in larger cities and from the perspective of the voters. The angle of the European political systems, small and medium-sized municipalities and the local parties is not sufficiently addressed up to now. In order to help closing these gaps in the literature I will conduct an automatic quantitative content analysis of local party manifestos in 34 municipalities in Flanders (Belgium). With the aid of Wordscores I will estimate local parties’ positions on the general, economic and cultural (galtan) left-right dimensions to assess whether the local party competition can be conceived in national left-right terms. Does the left-right order of parties in municipalities bear close resemblance to the order of the Flemish party system? Or is the local political conflict not structured along these dimensions? In the paper I will not only compare the local level with the central level, but I will also study differences between municipalities. More specifically, I will assess the impact of municipal size, as local manifestos from both small and large municipalities are included. I hypothesize the left-right order of parties in the latter will be more aligned with the order on the Flemish level. As such, this paper will provide essential and novel insights into local party competition and the relevance of ideology at the municipal level. Therefore, it perfectly fits with the Workshop description.