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Lost in Space Pairwise Comparisons of Parties As an Alternative to Left-Right Measures of Political Difference

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Lost in Space Pairwise Comparisons of Parties As an Alternative to Left-Right Measures of Political Difference Lost in Space Pairwise Comparisons of Parties as an Alternative to Left-Right Measures of Political Difference by Martin M¨older Submitted to Central European University Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Dr. Zsolt Enyedi CEU eTD Collection Word count: ∼ 73,000 Budapest, Hungary 2017 I, the undersigned [Martin M¨older],candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Central European University Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations, declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person's or institution's copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 27 April 2017 ||||||||||||||||| Signature CEU eTD Collection © by Martin M¨older,2017 All Rights Reserved. i Lost in Space Pairwise Comparisons of Parties as an Alternative to Left-Right Measures of Political Difference by Martin M¨older 2017 CEU eTD Collection Am I following all of the right leads? Or am I about to get lost in space? When my time comes, they'll write my destiny Will you take this ride? Will you take this ride with me? { \Lost In Space", The Misfits (Album: Famous Monsters, 1999) ii Acknowledgments The idea explored in this thesis { that it makes more sense to compare parties to each other than to an assumed dimension { came from a simple intuition while I was working with the manifesto data set and still mostly oblivious to the jungle of spatial analysis of party politics. Now that this work, but not the agenda as a whole, is finished, it is clear that this intuition held out rather well. The initial idea simply concerned the pairwise comparison of party manifestos for descriptive purposes and all that grew around this core was very much an evolutionary process, where numerous people in my academic environment over these years nudged and shaped what we can finally see here. I am grateful to Simon Franzmann who also came across the idea of comparing party manifestos to each other in pairs, but who, for better or for worse, did not by far exhaust the initial questions surrounding this intuitively appealing as well as fundamentally justified method of approaching the question party politics. This left the ground open for me to fill the gap. In later stages of this work, when I had become aware that this idea had been set forth before, Simon Franzmann's suggestions during my stay at the Institute of German and International Party Law and Party Research at the Heinrich-Heine University of D¨usseldorf were crucial to shaping some aspects of this work. But above all I am grateful to my supervisor, Zsolt Enyedi, who, at times when I was perhaps bewildered by the jungle I had ventured into, ensured me that what I was doing was important and meaningful. I marvel at his ability to see at the same time the depth as well as the big picture, to keep an encouraging and positive outlook. And I also owe my gratitude to the other two members of my supervisory panel { Levi Littvay and G´abor T´oka { who made sure that I would be on the edge when I myself had already stated to come off; who gave me ideas that eventually became core parts of this thesis. It is hard to imagine a better trinity to keep an eye on what you are doing. And of course this work has benefited immensely from the ideas of friends and colleagues that I have met along the way { Fede, Juraj, Manu, Johannes, and many others. I am glad that I met Andr´e Krouwel, through whom I was able to collect some of the data that is used here. And special thanks goes to all the members of the Political Behaviour Research Group (PolBeRG) at CEU who were witness to many presentations that I made on topics related to this dissertation. I am also grateful for the chance I got to present parts of this work at the Cologne Centre for Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne (Andr´eKaiser) and at the Doctoral Colloquium at the Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen (Achim Goerres). And thank you, Jenna, for unintentionally reminding me in the end how useful it is to read on paper. CEU eTD Collection Thank you all for making this a wonderful and exciting journey! iii Abstract It is ordinary and perhaps even fundamental to think about the differences between objects as distances in a space. In political science the left-right space, where the difference between parties is the distance between them on that one continuous dimension, is the most common way to think about political space and measures based on this space dominate empirical research. The left- right metaphor has a long cultural history and therefore it makes sense to assume that a left-right dimension captures the relevant differences among parties. In contrast, there is a range of research, which argues that political spaces are multidimensional and changing across countries and time. The left-right measure is used, most likely because of its simplicity, but it is also contested. The space of party differences is a perceptual space { it is about how people see and understand those differences. There are no party differences that are separable form people's judgement about them. According to the theory of conceptual spaces, the preferred way to analyse such spaces is pairwise comparison. The difference between objects can be evaluated in pairs and these can either be used as measures in themselves or analysed further. Such measurement gives an estimate of difference that covers all possible dimensions in political space and thus allows us to uncover the dimensions that people { voters or politicians { use to differentiate between parties without influencing such judgements with pre-given benchmarks. Furthermore, pairwise comparisons can also be used on their own as many applications of measures of party politics { in coalition formation, polarisation research and analysis of party change { do not require an estimate of party position as such, just the distance between them. The current work shows how pairwise comparisons of parties can be used as a way to uncover people's perceptions of political space on the individual level and how pairwise comparisons of party manifestos through the index of similarity can be used as a direct measure of political difference in models that would otherwise rely on differences measured through the left-right dimension. The individual level analysis is based on survey data obtained from Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. The index of similarity based on the manifesto data set is compared to measures of party position on left-right dimensions derived form the same data in models for predicting coalition formation, party CEU eTD Collection system polarisation, and change in the political profiles of parties. The individual level analyses show us aspects of political space that other similar research has not uncovered and those based on the manifesto data set indicate that the pairwise index of similarity outperforms the left-right measures in these contexts. A pairwise comparison of the political profiles of parties is thus a promising way to analyse party politics. iv Contents Acknowledgments iii Abstract iv Contents iv 1 Introduction: Confusions of Space 1 2 Conceptual Space and Political Space 13 2.1 Theory of Conceptual Spaces . 14 2.1.1 Constitution of Conceptual Spaces . 15 2.1.2 Representing and Analysing Conceptual Spaces . 20 2.1.3 Conceptual Spaces and Party Politics: Two Ideal Types for Analyses . 21 2.2 The Left and Right in Politics and Political Science . 22 2.2.1 Origins of Politics as Space . 23 2.2.2 The Spatial Models of Politics . 25 2.2.3 Dilemmas of Political Space . 27 2.3 Thinking through Space about Spaces . 30 3 Empirical Knowledge of Political Space 32 3.1 A Plethora of Sources . 33 3.2 Measuring Political Space through Party Manifestos . 36 3.2.1 Shortcomings of Manifesto Data . 37 3.3 Manifesto Data and Left-Right Positions . 39 3.3.1 The RILE Index . 40 3.3.2 Proposed Alternatives to the RILE Index . 42 3.4 Pairwise Comparisons and Political Space . 46 CEU eTD Collection 3.4.1 Applications in Political Science . 48 3.4.2 Manifesto Data and the Index of Similarity (SIM) . 50 3.5 Making a Case for the Pairwise Approach . 53 3.5.1 Question of Validities . 54 3.5.2 Logic of the Analyses . 58 v 4 Direct Pairwise Comparisons as a Means to Understand Political Space 60 4.1 Multidimensional Scaling and Direct Pairwise Comparison . 62 4.1.1 MDS on the Aggregate Level . 63 4.1.2 Individual Level MDS . 64 4.2 Direct Data on Perceived Pairwise Differences Between Parties . 65 4.3 The Perceptual Structure of Political Space . 67 4.3.1 Pairwise Comparisons and Intended Voting Behaviour . 67 4.3.2 Perceived Political Space on the Aggregate Level . 68 4.3.3 Perceived Political Space on the Individual Level . 71 4.3.4 Variation Across Individuals . 71 4.4 Party Space According to Manifestos . 74 4.5 Results in the Context of European Political Spaces . 77 4.6 Conclusions .
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