Immediately after data collection in each country, a number of short, pre-electoral analyses aimed at the general public have been published on the CISE website. These have been later collected in a 210-page, freely available instant e-book featuring scholars from ICCP partner institutions in five different countries.
The data have then been analyzed in depth by multiple country teams involving top scholars from several countries, resulting in ten scientific articles collected in a special issue of West European Politics titled Conflict Mobilization or Problem-solving? Issue Competition in Western Europe .
Interest in this special issue has then led to its publication in book form with Routledge.
Please find below abstracts and direct links to all articles included in the WEP special issue and Routledge edited book.
The big picture
Issue competition in Western Europe: an introduction
Lorenzo De Sio & Romain Lachat
Published online: 30 Oct 2019
The special issue introduced in this article presents the results of the
Issue Competition Comparative Project (ICCP). The project uses issue
yield theory to provide a general, comprehensive perspective on issue
competition (party competition through issue strategy) that goes beyond
the extant focus on specific parties or specific issues. Relying on
voter surveys and Twitter data collected in the context of recent
elections in six West European countries, we address several key
research questions concerning issue competition: (a) whether the
strategies of different parties are loyal to classic 20th-century
ideological alignments or rather actively challenging them; (b) whether
different parties opt for conflict-mobilization or problem-solving issue
strategic approaches; (c) whether party adherence to the issue
opportunities identified by issue yield theory are rewarded by better
electoral performance.
Theoretical and comparative articles:
From issues to goals: a novel conceptualisation, measurement and research design for comprehensive analysis of electoral competition
Roberto D’Alimonte, Lorenzo De Sio & Mark N. Franklin
Published online: 26 Sep 2019
The analysis of issue politics has long suffered from a fragmentation between valence and positional conceptualisations, preventing the effective development of a general model of issue-based party competition. Building on an overview of the evolution of party competition in the Western world in recent decades, this article offers a theoretical development that builds on ‘issue yield’ theory to provide a conceptualisation of political goals that generalises across positional and valence issues. This in turn allows a common measurement strategy, offering the possibility to comparatively assess various characteristics (including the electoral potential) of both positional and valence issues. Finally, it describes the specific research design derived from this framework and its implementation in comparative perspective in six West European countries during 2017–2018.
Making sense of party strategy innovation: challenge to ideology and conflict-mobilisation as dimensions of party competition
Lorenzo De Sio & Romain Lachat
Published online: 30 Sep 2019
This article develops a pooled comparative analysis aimed at addressing two of the three overarching research questions of the special issue. It first discuss an ‘end of ideology’ research question: that is, whether party constituencies and party strategy show clear challenges to classic twentieth century ideological alignments. Second, it investigates the type of issue strategy that parties employ in this new ideological environment, expecting mainstream parties to stress a problem-solving approach, while challenger parties should favour a conflict-mobilisation strategy. Finally, the article combines these two fundamental dimensions (ideological consistency; reliance on problem-solving vs. conflict-mobilisation strategies) in order to identify party strategy innovations in current West European elections.
Issue yield, campaign communication, and electoral performance: a six-country comparative analysis
Lorenzo De Sio & Till Weber
Published online: 01 Oct 2019
This article develops and tests a model that explains election outcomes
on the basis of party strategy. It employs a new comparative dataset
linking representative mass surveys from six European countries with
Twitter analysis of campaign activity. The expectation is that parties
whose issue agendas exploit electoral opportunities while avoiding risks
will be rewarded at the polls. These risks and opportunities are
modelled using issue yield, a general framework summarising
public support, electoral alignments, and party credibility.
Empirically, the article traces a three-step process: (1) the
configuration of electoral risks and opportunities (which is captured
through public opinion surveys) guides party communication (measured
with Twitter data), and to the degree that (2) parties design their
campaigns strategically (identified through issue yield), this in turn
(3) improves their electoral performance (measured using official
statistics). The analysis explains some of the most salient election
outcomes of recent years.
Country analyses:
The times they are a-changin’: party campaign strategies in the 2018 Italian election
Vincenzo Emanuele, Nicola Maggini & Aldo Paparo
Published online: 30 Sep 2019
The 2018 Italian election produced striking results, with both a
historic success for the two challenger parties (League and M5S) and
massive defeats for the two mainstream parties (PD and FI). This article
analyses party campaign strategies and their consistency with the
opportunity structures provided by the configuration of Italian public
opinion. Relying on issue-yield theory, original survey data were
collected for both issue support and priority among Italian voters, and
party emphases on issues in the electoral campaign – through Twitter
data. The findings indicate a generalised ideological inconsistency of
the constituencies of the main parties, while campaign strategies appear
much more ideologically consistent. Moreover, it is found that parties
focused mostly on conflict-mobilisation strategies, rather than on
problem solving. Finally, the article shows that, in general, parties
acted strategically, by aligning their campaign to the available
opportunities, although with relevant variations across parties.
Parties’ issue strategies on the drawing board: the 2017 Austrian case
Carolina Plescia, Sylvia Kritzinger & Patricia Oberluggauer
Published online: 01 Oct 2019
Parties may rely on different issue agendas when tailoring their
electoral campaigns in an attempt to win elections. This paper compares
two key party issue strategies to examine which one the victorious
Austrian Peoples’ Party (ÖVP) relied on the most during the 2017
Austrian election campaign vis-à-vis its main competitors. These two key
party strategies are the ‘riding-the-wave’ model, which posits that
parties focus on issues that currently concern voters the most and the
recent ‘issue-yield model’, which instead suggests that parties adopt
strategic behaviour targeting all those issues with genuine
opportunities for electoral expansion. It is found that, compared to the
other main parties in the 2017 Austrian election campaign, the ÖVP was
the one most clearly relying on the issue-yield approach. These results
have important implications for our understanding of electoral
campaigns, party’s exploitation of issue strategies, and voter
representation beyond the Austrian case.
The United Kingdom 2017 election: polarisation in a split issue space
Cristian Vaccari, Kaat Smets & Oliver Heath
Published online: 01 Oct 2019
After decades in which party competition was fought in the centre ground, the 2017 UK General Election witnessed a return to more conflictual politics. This article assesses public support for the electoral strategies of the main parties and examines the extent to which the issues the parties campaigned on resonated with their own supporters, as well as with the wider public. Drawing on the issue-yield framework, the article shows that the Conservative campaign – generally considered to be badly run – did not focus on issues that would fully exploit the opportunities for expanding support that were open to the party. Labour, by contrast, played a much better hand. While taking a clear left-wing stance on many policies that were popular with its constituency, the party also skilfully emphasised valence issues that Labour is often seen as more credible on, such as healthcare and education.
Campaigning in an unprecedented election: issue competition in the French 2017 presidential election
Romain Lachat & Elie Michel
Published online: 14 Oct 2019
The 2017 French presidential elections featured an eventful campaign,
produced astonishing results, and presented important signs of party
system change. This paper analyses the main lines of divide of the
demand and the supply side of electoral competition. It analyses the
structure of citizens’ preferences, as well as the candidates’ strategic
issue opportunities, relying on issue yield theory. To that end, it
combines data from an original individual-level survey with information
about the candidates’ Twitter messages. It is found that the traditional
model of two-dimensional political space, characterised by an economic
(left–right) and socio-cultural (integration–demarcation) dimension is
largely challenged. On the supply-side, the analysis offers additional
evidence for the central role played by the integration–demarcation
divide, while showing that the traditional left–right conflict has not
fully disappeared.
Small winners and big losers: strategic party behaviour in the 2017 Dutch general election
Mathilde M. van Ditmars, Nicola Maggini & Joost van Spanje
Published online: 17 Oct 2019
This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.
It’s no longer the economy, stupid! Issue yield at the 2017 German federal election
Simon T. Franzmann, Heiko Giebler & Thomas Poguntke
Published online: 30 Oct 2019
This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey covering 17 positional issues and 10 valence issues as well as an analysis of Twitter accounts, the article shows that contemporary Germany is characterised by a centrifugal competition on the socio-cultural dimension. At the same time, an asymmetric ideological confrontation persists on the socio-economic dimension, because the Left and the SPD still refer to their traditional welfare issues while the bourgeois parties no longer counter this with a contrasting free-market ideology. Thus, the economy is currently not the decisive issue in German politics. Migration, integration, and other socio-cultural issues are rather driving electoral competition.
that strategically exploit available issue opportunities in a context where voters are available across ideological boundaries. This brings a new perspective for reading the recent, disruptive electoral changes that have invested many countries, allowing to understand the success of new parties, as well as providing suggestions about the strategic opportunities available to mainstream parties.
