Party Strategies and Voting Behaviour in Multi-level States Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln 2017 vorgelegt von Laura Cabeza Pérez aus Barcelona Referent: Prof. Dr. André Kaiser Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Ingo Rohlfing Tag der Promotion: 22 September 2017 Acknowledgements I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the board members of the Research Training Group SOCLIFE for the financial support during these three years of scholarship. Among them, I am most grateful to André Kaiser for his thoughtful supervision. He made the complicated simple. I also convey my gratitude to Ingo Rohlfing for being my second supervisor and to Karsten Hank for his commitment to the PhD students. Régis Dandoy deserves special thanks for the very valuable comments and recommendations he gave me acting as my guest-discussant in the SOCLIFE Research Seminar. I am particularly grateful to Ravena Penning for the administrative support and to my fellows, especially to Sabina Haveric for being a great office mate that welcomed me every morning with an unconditional smile and to Stefano Ronchi for reading my work and helping me constantly. This dissertation does not only represent my work; it is the effort of many years of research conducted within the Regional Manifestos Project together with two extraordinary mentors. Sonia Alonso helped and taught me immensely, and without her generosity, this dissertation would not exist. Braulio Gómez has been my major advisor, and an endless source of ideas and inspiration. I will never be able to thank him enough for giving me not only the example of what a good researcher should be, but also the tools to start building things with my own materials. Gracias, equipo. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my friends and family. Thanks to Stefano (again) and Ana for making good times better and hard times easier in Cologne. To Eleonora for bringing smiles and joy to the silent corridor of Patrizia-Tower. To Laura, Úrsula, Anna, my sisters, Jordi and my nephews for their visits and for being always on the other side of the phone/screen. I would like to definitely dedicate my achievements to my parents, who did not have the opportunity to attend school but decided that I would be whatever I wanted to be. A mis padres, mi gratitud infinita, porque mis logros son fruto de vuestra vida de dedicación y trabajo. Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1-18 1.1 The territorial political animal ................................................................................. 2 1.2 Methodological nationalism: mind the (black-hole) gap .......................................... 4 1.3 Relevance: the problem of accountability in multi-level countries ........................... 5 1.4 The overlooked role of political parties .................................................................... 7 1.5 Breaking through the individual’s side ..................................................................... 8 1.6 Overview of the thesis .............................................................................................. 8 1.7 Methodology: The Regional Manifestos Project .................................................... 11 1.8 A note on the contribution of the doctoral candidate to the co-authored articles ... 13 1.9 References ............................................................................................................... 15 Chapter 2: Parties’ Electoral Strategies in a Two-Dimensional Political Space: Evidence from Spain and Great Britain (with Sonia Alonso and Braulio Gómez) ........................... 19-50 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 20 2.2 The repertoire of party strategies in a two-dimensional political space .................. 22 2.2.1 The economic and the territorial dimensions ................................................... 22 2.2.2 The repertoire of party strategies ..................................................................... 23 2.3 Data and cases ......................................................................................................... 25 2.4 Operationalizing saliency, position and blurring .................................................... 27 2.5 Mapping the preferences of political parties ........................................................... 31 2.5.1 Saliency ............................................................................................................ 31 2.5.2 Position ............................................................................................................ 33 2.5.3 Blurring ............................................................................................................ 35 2.6 Explaining parties’ strategies in a two-dimensional space ..................................... 36 2.6.1 Operationalizing party strategies ..................................................................... 36 2.6.2 An exploratory analysis ................................................................................... 37 2.7 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 42 2.8 References ............................................................................................................... 45 2.9 Annex ...................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 3: How National Parties Nationalize Regional Elections: The Case of Spain (with Sonia Alonso and Braulio Gómez) ........................................................................................ 51-78 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 52 3.2 Theoretical Argument and Hypotheses ................................................................... 53 3.3 Cases and Data: Nationalizing Regional Elections in Spain ................................... 58 3.3.1 Case Selection .................................................................................................. 58 3.3.2 Opposite Electoral Contexts and Preliminary Qualitative Evidence ............... 60 3.3.3 A Quantitative Indicator of the Strategy of Nationalization Based on Election Manifestos ................................................................................................................. 61 3.4 Results ..................................................................................................................... 64 3.5 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 73 3.6 References ............................................................................................................... 75 Chapter 4: ‘First-Order Thinking’ in Second-Order Contests: A Comparison of Local, Regional and European Elections in Spain ............................................................................ 79-114 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 80 4.2 The second-order election model, here and there .................................................... 82 4.2.1 European elections, or the origins of the second-order election model ............ 82 4.2.2 Regional elections as second-order elections, contradictory findings .............. 83 4.2.3 Local elections, between first and second-order .............................................. 83 4.3 Turning to the micro-level ....................................................................................... 84 4.3.1 Defining ‘issue contamination’ and ‘first-order thinking’ ............................... 85 4.4 The individual determinants of ‘first-order thinking’ ............................................. 87 4.4.1 Resource-based approach ................................................................................. 87 4.4.2 Motivation-based approach .............................................................................. 88 4.5 Data, case and methods ........................................................................................... 91 4.5.1 The Spanish case .............................................................................................. 92 4.5.2 Measuring ‘first-order thinking’ ....................................................................... 92 4.5.3 Multivariate analysis ........................................................................................ 94 4.6 Results ..................................................................................................................... 97 4.6.1 How many citizens report to vote on the basis of level-specific issues? .......... 97 4.6.2 When are individuals more likely to take into account level-specific issues? . 99 4.6.3 Does ‘first-order thinking’ matter? ................................................................. 105 4.7 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 106 4.8 References ............................................................................................................. 109 4.9 Appendix ..............................................................................................................