Journal Articles

Policy-seeking parties in multiparty systems: Influence or purity?

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According to the standard policy-seeking model of party behaviour, a party should always want to join a coalition if its inclusion would decrease the policy distance between the party and the winning coalition. However, in multiparty systems where no party has a majority, policy influence always comes at a cost to the party’s preferred policy. A party has to moderate its own policy principles in order to join winning coalitions and influence public policy. Based on data from 14 Danish parties from 1971 to 2005, this article shows that the policy-seeking behaviour of political parties is affected by the organizational constraints a party poses on its representatives in parliament. Parties strongly constrained by the party organization tend to ask more questions and raise more interpellations in parliament than parties with weaker organizational constraints. These latter parties, on the other hand, tend to participate more frequently in winning legislative coalitions.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Party Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2012

Collation

p. 297-314

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

1354-0688

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 18, Number 3, May 2012 p. 297-314

Subject(s)

Denmark
Policy Goals
Measurement
intraparty democracy
leadership composition

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