The Life of the Party: An Analysis of Electoral Systems, Electoral Context and Party Responsiveness in Europe

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine a series of research questions regarding the relationship between elections and representation which lead to three hypotheses: that parties respond to changes in voter preferences, that party responsiveness varies by type of election, and that party responsiveness will be more prevalent in countries conducted with systems of proportional representation (PR). The methodology employed is a combination of qualitative methods (to establish the theoretical foundations for the hypotheses), and quantitative methods (OLS regression analysis of a combined dataset). The geographic scope of the time series data includes observations recorded in 17 European Union Member States from 1986 to 2011. The combined dataset contains responses to the “most important problem” (MIP) question in national and European surveys as well as party manifesto data for the same period. The evidentiary analysis resulted in three main conclusions—that parties respond to changes in voter preferences (and voters do not respond to changes in party preferences), that party responsiveness is evident in first-order (national) elections and not in second-order (European Parliamentary) elections, and that PR systems lead to more responsive political parties. These results correspond with the three research hypotheses and suggest that electoral reform is necessary to improve issue saliency in European elections. Further, there is preliminary evidence that PR systems should be considered “better” at facilitating party responsiveness, but there is not sufficient electoral diversity in this study to warrant a recommendation for reform of majoritarian systems.