A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria Viewed Compartively and Temporally

A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria
Viewed Comparatively and Temporally

Author(s): Ian Budge
Source: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 443-467
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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B.J.Pol.S. 24, 443-467 Copyright? 1994 CambridgeUniversityPress
Printed in Great Britain
A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition:

Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria
Viewed Comparatively and Temporally
IAN BUDGE*
This article considers how partiescan decide on policy when there is no reliable informationabout
the effect of these decisions on voting. Where this is the case they must base their stands on a
priori assumptions about appropriatepriorities, namely on political ideologies. These indicate
the general policy area a party should occupy, but do not give detailed guidance on which position
to take within it. Five different ways of deciding on this, within ideological constraints, are
specified. The predictions derived from these models well anticipate the actual decisions made
by post-war parties in twenty democracies, as summarized in the unique spatial maps of policy
movements published by the Manifesto Research Group of the EuropeanConsortiumfor Political
Research.
I. INTRODUCTION
Uncertainty is a pervasive feature of political activity. Early spatial voting

theory, however, tended to assume that politicians would know electors'
preferences and electors would be informed about party policy.' This limited
its applicability to real-life voting and party competition.
Much recent work on spatial theory has accordingly been devoted to formal
analysis of party strategic choices under limited information.2 Most of it,
however, has continued (to a greater or lesser extent) to build on other
assumptions of the initial model. In particular, it has concentrated on
two-candidate elections, where it is possible for one side to gain a majority;
purely office-seeking vote-maximizing motives on the part of politicians and
leaderships, which free them to change policies quite radically in pursuit of
*Department of Government, University of Essex. This article draws on previous work by the
Manifesto Research Group of the ECPR. It was generously supported by the Nuffield Foundation
under their Small Grant Soc/100 (336). Andrea Volkens and Sarah Bayes provided indispensable
research help. I am indebted to Albert Weale for pertinent editorial and collegial advice.
i A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 114-41. Even
though Downs entitles Part II of his book 'The General Effects of Uncertainty', certainty about the
location of actors is an essential feature of his spatial model.
2
For an up to date review, see Peter J. Coughlin, Probabilistic Voting Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1-22: Coughlin himself analyses such situations throughout
his book. See also Randall Calvert, Models of Imperfect Information in Politics (Boston, Mass.:
Harwood Academic Publishers, 1986).

444 BUDGE
votes;3 feedback on electoral reactions to policy changes, which - although

limited - is reliable within its limits: and a relative absence of calculation costs,
which allows parties to make the best use of whatever feedback they have. They
are thus able to take calculated risks, in the sense of attaching probability
estimates about likely vote gains to the range of possible strategic choices that
they are free to make; and to maximize expected gains by taking the policy stand
most likely to increase their support among voters.
The retention of such assumptions has driven a concern on the part of formal
analysts to establish the possibility of parties converging on a stable (and usually
unique) equilibrium point, generally associated with the policy preferences of
the median voter or elector. Concern to establish the existence of such equilibria
or of approximations to them has been sharpened by setting party - elector
interactions in multidimensional policy spaces where no stable equilibrium is
likely to emerge under normal democratic processes.4
The approach adopted in this article differs from the ones just described in
that it postulates such severe constraints on information (and hence on the
possibility of basing probabilistic calculations of party advantage upon it) as to
rule out calculated risk-taking by parties in the conventional sense. As an
alternative it draws on older traditions in decision theory which emphasize a
priori, cognitively-based ways of coping with uncertainty. Herbert Simon's
discussion of satisficing is relevant here,5 though a more immediate inspiration
is Thomas Schelling's consideration of how even adversaries with conflicting
purposes may settle on stable solutions, not because of the balance of material
advantages these confer on them, but because they form such a dominating
3 A notable
exception here is provided by James M. Enelow and Melvin J. Hinich, The Spatial
Theory of Voting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 36-64 and passim, who
assume that candidates cannot change their ideologically-based policy positions in the course of a
single election campaign and indeed can change them only with difficulty over a long time period.
Policy movement is confined to changing electors' perceptions of how these general positions
translate into specific policies.
4 This is the well-known 'Condorcet' or 'Arrow'
problem: given a distributionof preferences over
three alternativesof the following type, each supportedby a thirdof electors -A > B > C, B > C > A,
C > A > B - no stable majority can be found as A is preferredto B, B to C, but C to A, all by two-
thirds of electors. The only way to decide is not by democratic voting processes but by arbitrary
imposition - a severe critique of democracy if the problem recurs often, as it seems it may.
The problem does not occur if all policies fit along one dimension (say a left-right one) with
single-peaked preferences, since then the median position is preferred by a stable majority. But it
is very likely to recurin a space of two dimensions and almost certain to occur in higher-dimensional
spaces.
On the problem of voting cycles, see Kenneth J. Arrow, 'Values and Collective Decision Making',
in P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds, Philosophy, Politics and Society, Third Series (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1969), pp. 215-32: R. D. McKelvey, 'General Conditions for Global Intransitives in
Formal Voting Models', Econometrica, 47 (1979), 1085-111.
5 Herbert Simon, Administrative Behaviour
(New York: Macmillan, 1947) first popularized the
idea of sub-optimal but perfectly rational strategies to be undertaken under conditions of
circumscribed knowledge and high calculating costs.

A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition 445
feature of the (naturalor conceptual) landscape.6 They thus impose themselves

on all sides as a common frame of reference. This suggests that policy equilibria
may emerge as much from cognitive as from motivational factors - an argument
which is developed below in regard to policy competition.
An importantpoint to consider here is why party politics should be dominated
by such radical uncertainty as to preclude precisely calculated risk taking and
vote securing. Are there not extensive public opinion polls to guide party
vote-maximizing strategies, or can lessons not be drawn from the results of
previous elections - two possibilities utilized by McKelvey and Ordeshook in
building risk-taking models of voting under limited information?7
The problem not considered in these models, is that polls do not provide
information on what actually influences voting. They may in general terms
identify certain issues as important to electors, but leave it open as to whether
these will necessarily affect their vote. For example, an overwhelming majority
of British electors in the 1980s and 1990s placed welfare among their top
priorities, at the same time as a plurality voted for a tax-cutting Conservative
government whose attitudes were hostile to welfare. How could Labour
strategists decide on a vote-maximizing move under these circumstances?
Should they increase the programmatic stress on welfare because it is popular?
Or decrease it because the Conservatives have more support? There is no real
guidance from polls nor from voting analysts in the absence of verified theory,
so the party may as well follow its own preferences and stress welfare.
With past election results, the messages for parties are also radically
ambiguous. Even if you are losing support, how do you interpret the message
this gives you? Much again depends on ideological assumptions about the nature
of the electorate. In any case, how far can election results from four or five years
before be extrapolated to a radically different contemporary political situation?
They say nothing about possible entry by new parties which may be more of
a threat than competition with surviving rivals. Uncertainty is compounded by
the failure of specialists to come up with an agreed explanation of voting
determinants or even with an agreed diagnosis of past or present elections.
Where there is no expert consensus, a natural reaction of practitioners is
precisely to abandon the attempt to tailor strategies to current circumstances.
They do need some basis for action, however. The naturalalternative to adopt
in the absence of well-attested theory and hard knowledge is ideology, often
defined as a body of normative and factual assumptions about the world,
relatively resistant to change, which produces plausible reasons for action of one
6
Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Boston, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960),
chap. 3.
7 R.
McKelvey and P. Ordeshook, 'Elections with Limited Information:A Fulfilled Expectations
Model Using Contemporaneous Poll and Endorsement Data as Information Sources', Journal of
Economic Theory, 35 (1985), 55-85; R. McKelvey and P. Ordeshook, 'Sequential Elections with
Limited Information', American Journal of Political Science, 29 (1985), 480-512.

446 BUDGE
sort or another.8 Quite apart from its role in maintaining the separate identity
of the party and promoting activist involvement in the first place,9 ideology also
provides politicians with a broad conceptual map of politics into which political
events, current problems, electors' preferences and other parties' policies can
all be fitted. As it often defines itself by contrast to other ideologies, it provides
a way of defining and partitioning policy space and of indicating the broad area
within which a particularparty should take its position. By suggesting the broad
principles on which policy should be based, it simplifies problems and reduces
costs of writing the policy statements which typically define the party position
for each election.
Ideology enters into the Schelling and Simon tradition by providing party
leaderships with a fairly assured sense of the policy boundaries to which they
and the other parties can advance; and thus of their relative position with respect
to each other - regardless of the specific circumstances of the particularelection
in which they are engaged.
Moreover, ideologies are sufficiently ambiguous to permit some movement
within the prescribed area, particularly if this simply involves the adjustment
of policy priorities within the ideology itself ratherthan abandoning previously
prescribed positions (see Section iv below for a development of this point). Thus
leaders may still be faced with the question of what position to take up within
their ideologically delimited space and so have to develop decision strategies
for circumscribed party movements. Given radical uncertainty about likely
electoral reactions to such movement, parties are, however, still likely to be
guided by invariant rules in deciding on this.
It is to the specification and empirical corroboration of these rules as well as
to the assessment of general ideological effects, that our later analysis is
directed. Section ii, however, first develops some theoretical ideas essential to
the discussion. Section in then specifies concrete models for party decision
making under uncertainty which - unusually in this field - have both a
postdictive and predictive potential. Section iv describes the data against
which such models can be checked, adding some general considerations on how
the dimensionality and metrics of party policy spaces should be conceived.
8 In line with most

discussion, Lyman Tower Sargent, Contemporary Political Ideologies: A
Comparative Analysis (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1972), pp. 1-2, defines political ideology as:
'a value or belief system that is accepted as fact or truth by some group. It is composed of sets of
attitudes towards the various institutions and processes of society. It provides the believer with a
picture of the world both as it is and as it should be, and in so doing, it organizes the tremendous
complexity of the world into something fairly simple and understandable'; '[Ideologies] provide a
cognitive structure through which to interpret and understand events' (R. M. Christenson et al.,
Ideologies and Modem Politics (London: Nelson, 1972), p. 8).
9 As stressed by the developmental model of party systems, which sees them as evolving from
the development of party ideologies emphasizing the outlook and interests of groups differentiated
by deep-rooted social cleavages in the society (class, religious, ethnic, agrarian,etc.), for which see
S. M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967),
1-64.

Section v then applies the theoretical models to actual 'maps' of party move-
ment in twenty democracies, demonstrating a surprising degree of fit. This
supports the consideration in Section vi of the wider implications of these
models for spatial voting theory as a whole.
II. IDEOLOGY, PARTIES AND THE NATURE OF ELECTORAL-

GOVERNMENTAL EQUILIBRIA
Surprisingly, given their common focus on party positions within a policy space,
the spatial theory of voting and the spatial theory of governments have
developed in almost total independence from each other.10 In particular,
assumptions about party behaviour at the governmental level have evolved from
pure office seeking to almost pure policy-pursuit, while office seeking and vote
gains have remained the sole motivation ascribed to politicians in most spatial
analyses of electoral competition.11The conceptual gulf between the two levels
is serious because in a majority of party systems the government that forms, and
the policy it adopts, are immediately determined by coalition negotiations which
do not necessarily respect election results. Thus, if any final policy equilibrium
is to be sought from the electoral process considered as a whole - from
campaigning to government formation - it is one determined by coalition
negotiations. We shall return to this point in discussing policy convergence
below.
The theoretical and empirical consensus is that coalition negotiations centre
around policy.12 A connection might even so be made between the two levels
of spatial theory along the old Downsian line - that even selfish office-seeking
parties, having promised a certain policy package to get elected, will then wish
to implement it in government to establish a reputation for trustworthiness
without which electors would not vote for them in the future.'3Thus electorally
office-seeking parties might well defend their policy position in coalition
negotiations and behave as if they were policy-pursuing.
The effect of introducing limitations on information into the models of
electoral competition is, however, to vitiate this link. As policies are technical
'0 For a development of this point see Ian Budge and Michael Laver, 'Office-Seeking and
Policy-Pursuit in Coalition Theory', Legislative Studies Quarterly, 11 (1986), 485-506. For a partial
exception see D. Austen-Smith and J. Banks, 'Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes',
American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 405-22.
" A major exception here must be made for Enelow and Hinich's The Spatial Theory of Voting,
which recognized the central place of ideology in defining party electoral positions and inhibiting
radical policy movement. In order to permit the possibility of some movement within their models,
they allow for electors' perceptions of how these general stances translate into specific policy terms
to be worked on by party propaganda.The approachadopted here (supportedby empirical evidence)
simplifies their argumentby placing party positions and tracing their constrained movements within
a single left-right dimension of contrasting policy priorities (see Section iv).
12 See the review of
contemporary theory in Michael Laver and Ian Budge, Party Policy and
Government Coalitions (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 2-9.
13Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 107-13.

448 BUDGE
and detailed, time periods between elections long, and relevant issues change
so radically between elections, voters are not going to be in a position to evaluate
their implementation. (Professional policy-analysts find this hard enough.) The
argument that 'we tried, but it was impossible' would have to be taken very
seriously, and would be exploited to the full by office-seeking parties, on whom
policy commitments would sit so lightly as not to support their centrality to
currenttheories of coalition behaviour. Only in a certain world could we assume
office seekers would be bound to policy commitments.
As argued in Section I, ideology comes into its own as a way of interpreting
and reacting to the world when it is uncertain. There is thus an argument for
introducing it into models of electoral competition in terms of their own
concerns with uncertainty. But there is an even stronger theoretical argument
for introducing it as a way of unifying models of electoral competition and
government formation within an overall theory of democratic decision
processes. We cannot arrive at a conception of the final equilibrium established
by electoral competition until we also take into account the contribution of
post-electoral, governmental negotiations.
This is particularly the case since most current coalition theory emphasizes
the extent to which governments will form around the party with the median
legislator. This will normally also be the party with the median elector. Thus,
even if a convergent equilibrium does not emerge from election competition,
it will be likely to do so in coalition negotiations, if a median position is to be
found. (This ties in to the discussion of dimensionality and the linked problem
of cycles in Section iv below.)
The major consequences of taking ideology seriously, as a major determinant
of party policy stands inside spatial reasoning, are, first, that the movement of
parties is limited because of ideological constraints.14 In particularleapfrogging
is largely ruled out. Parties cannot generally take over another party's ideology
and the policies associated with it.15As ideologies partly distinguish themselves
by opposition to each other, this may result in extreme cases in parties making
this a major reference point in deciding on policy positions. However, ideologies
are not in general clearly enough specified to inhibit movement within a
circumscribed area.
A second reason for taking ideologies into account in spatial theory is that
they encourage multi-partyism under conditions of limited information and
uncertainty. This is because the ideology typically identifies some existing or
potential group of supporters for its policy prescriptions. Such supporters could
consist of electors currently voting for existing parties (because of 'false
consciousness' to be dispelled by the new ideology) or electors currently not
voting at all because existing ideologies offer no 'real' alternatives.
As there are a wide variety of ideologies existing in the world, there will be
14Enelow and Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting, pp. 36-50; Coughlin, Probabilistic Voting
Theory, pp. 172 ff., review and extend various models which allow for restricted movement.
15
There may be slight qualifications to be made for closely contiguous parties, see Table 1 below.

a constant stream of political groups seeking to try them out in the electoral
arena. An electoral system such as proportional representation (PR), especially
one with low thresholds, will afford them some niche. With parliamentary
representatives they can participate in coalition formation and, in some systems,
in policy formation even from outside government.'6 Thus there is every
inducement for new ideological alternatives to be tried out in the electoral arena.
Given that the concern is to promote the ideology and policies associated with
it, potential supportersneed not be seen as a majority, however. Even quite small
pockets of supportcould enable a party to make a policy impact. The multi-party
system, which ideological thinking helps to create, increases opportunities for
policy influence in coalition and subsequent negotiations, so entries to the
system encourage other potential entrants.
The practical effect of new entry is to increase the uncertainty under which
existing parties labour. They cannot simply devise policy strategies with regard
to other existing parties (even if they knew what these would do exactly), as they
would also have to consider what the effects of new entrants on their existing
support might be. This will have the effect of anchoring their frame of reference
even more firmly in their own ideology and in considerations of keeping their
own supportershappy; and away from competing directly with their main rivals.
All this excludes policy convergence so far as their election positions are
concerned.
A further barrierto tailoring party moves to those of other existing parties is
that the exact moves they will make (or whether they will make any) are
unknown. As each party will be concentrating on its own internal imperatives,
this means that other parties will be unlikely to know exactly which location it
will take up in policy space. But they will know in what broad segment of the
policy space it will be located. As each party's segment is unattractive in
ideological terms to its rivals, they can all agree on where each party should
broadly be. It is in this mutual recognition of spatial boundaries, without direct
reference to immediate strategic advantage, that the formulation draws on
Schelling's arguments about the cognitive element in establishing stable
equilibria.17
Stability is reinforced by another feature of electoral processes which has
generally been ignored in theorizing about policy adjustments: that is, the
equilibrium position for the election is established by parties independently, on
a one-off basis, not by an extended process of incremental mutual adjustment.
This is because it is stated in a complex and lengthy document - the election
programme, manifesto or platform. Published at the outset of the campaign for
16 See H.-D. Klingemann, R. I. Hofferbert, Ian Budge et al., Parties, Policies and Democracy
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994) for evidence that this happens in all countries, in regard to
at least some government expenditure priorities.
17 Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict,
pp. 53-67, in particularpp. 62-3, where informal simulation
showed two armies stopping at a river, in spite of the fact that this outcome gave one side only a
third of the territory.

450 BUDGE
maximum media coverage, this sets themes to be emphasized by party

spokesmen, which are then taken up by the media. While these may be blurred
or shifted somewhat in the course of debate, reporters and discussants have an
interest in pinning spokesmen down to what has been written in the only
statement of policy issued authoritatively on behalf of the whole party.18
The normal significance given to a stable equilibrium in policy terms is of
a point from which no party has an incentive to move, and to which it would
tend to move back if it did move away. 'Incentive' in this context is usually
interpretedin terms of increasing votes for the party. Given our basic assumption
that no party knows how its moves will really affect voting, it seems acceptable
to substitute, as the forces producing and sustaining policy equilibria, the
internal and external pressures to ideological consistency with the party's
official statements of policy, channelled by the media. In this sense, the positions
initially staked out by the party election programmes do constitute a stable
equilibrium, for that election campaign.
This is buttressed by the fact that such statements are only issued once. This
could be regarded, from one point of view,19 as an institutional constraint on
policy making, producing an arbitrary and artificial equilibrium. However,
complex medium-term plans for society, even ones which simply set out
priorities, cannot be produced on other than a one-off basis for each election.
Great costs are incurred in writing programmes, so another document cannot
easily be put together immediately afterwards. Even if it were physically
possible, it would lack point and credibility. A party having authoritatively
endorsed a programme as the correct one for society, can hardly produce another
the week afterwards.20Thus the simultaneous production of one-off policy
stands by parties for an election seems a naturaloutcome of the way we organize
our political thinking and social decision processes, rather than an arbitrarily
imposed, external constraint. It follows that the electoral policy equilibrium
established by these statements must also be taken as a 'natural' outcome of
political processes.
18lan
Budge, David Robertson and D. J. Hearl, eds, Ideology, Strategy and Party Change in
19 Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 44-8.
19Kenneth Shepsle in particularhas seen arbitrarily-imposedinstitutionalconstraints and divisions
of labour as imposing unidimensionality in different areas of policy making and hence facilitating
the emergence of stable but artificial equilibria. See Kenneth J. Shepsle and B. Weingast, 'Structure
Induced Equilibriumand Legislative Choice', Public Choice, 37 (1981), 503-19. See also K. Shepsle,
Models of Multiparty Electoral Competition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1991). Enelow and
Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting, pp. 155-8 also follow through this line of argument.
20 Some
parties, particularly in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, do not put out a single
comprehensive statement of policy but a number of documents - for women, for youth, for the
economy, etc. - covering the areas which in Britain and United States are discussed as sections inside
the comprehensive manifesto platform. As they do not overlap in policy terms, these separate
documents are in no way competing party programmes in the sense used in the text.

III. SPECIFYING MODELS OF PARTY-POLICY MAKING UNDER
UNCERTAINTY AND IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS
Following from what has been said, all models derived below incorporate the
assumption thatparties occupy a particulararea within policy-space, markedout
by their ideology - often specified in the party name (Conservative, Liberal,
Christian, Socialist, etc.). Parties are assumed to stick to this area and not to
leapfrog. They are, moreover, restrictedto taking up one policy position for each
election, independently of other parties, and this forms the equilibrium point for
their campaign.
Within these shared assumptions, the models distinguish themselves from
each other by specifying different rules for how parties will decide on a position
within their ideologically delimited area of the space, given that they lack any
certain knowledge as to how electors will react to this movement.
A first spatial model, which illustrates the kind of reasoning applicable under
these constraints, has already been proposed by David Robertson.21Robertson
assumes that uncertainty precludes any exact knowledge of the distribution of
electors over the relevant policy continuum (which he takes as a unidimensional
left-right one). However, this does not matter since decisions about where to
locate depend not directly on where electors are located, but on what result party
leaders expect from the next election. If they think it will be competitive, with
a close result, they will seek extra votes at the centre regardless of how many
electors are located there. Even if these are few, they provide the votes crucial
to winning the election. Conversely, if the parties think that one of them is bound
to win and the other bound to lose, they will move their policy position away
from the centre to consolidate internal support regardless of how many electors
are located in the middle.
Leaders' expectations about the election result will obviously bear some
relationship to the underlying distribution of electors along the policy
continuum. To judge that the election is competitive, for example, is also to
assume that approximately equal numbers of electors are closer to each of the
parties and hence that they will, on Downsian-style assumptions, vote for them.
However, holistic expectations about the election result do not require leaders
to know the exact shape of the electoral distribution, nor the exact distance they
need to go towards the centre to win. Ideological constraints are built in to the
reasoning through the assumption that parties cannot move much beyond the
centre, nor change their relative positions to left or to right, because of the
confusing effect this would have on electors and the lack of credibility of a party
which repudiated its past commitments, not to mention the policy beliefs of
leaders themselves.
One advantage of this model is that it can be checked directly against evidence
on party movements. Having produced a data-based left-right continuum (see
Section Iv), party positions can be estimated and related to the next election
21 David Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1976).

452 BUDGE
outcome. Checks by Robertson and Budge and Farlie for the period 1922-74
inclusive show, in conformity with the hypothesis, that centrist movements by
the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain were associated with a close
outcome in subsequent elections (and moves to the extremes with big wins by
one party or another) in 66 per cent of the cases, with a weaker confirmation
in the United States.22
The use of subsequent election outcomes to operationalize leaders' prior
expectations does, however, undermine the operational clarity of Robertson's
model. It assumes a staggering element of certainty and accuracy in leaders'
expectations about the election outcome, which, given the arguments outlined
above, is probably absent in most cases. Moreover, the operational assumption
of certainty about the future undermines the conceptual assumptions about
uncertainty built into the theory itself. A further weakness is that the actual
election outcome is just as likely to be a consequence as a cause of party
movements: what leaders do in policy terms has a chance of affecting the
election result and making it marginal or overwhelming.
In seeking better accounts of party decision processes, it is more realistic to
assume that politicians in many cases operate with only very hazy, if any,
expectations about the election outcome. What we need to discover is what rules
they employ to decide on policy in this case. It is quite possible that different
parties follow different rules even in the same country, since obviously a variety
of satisficing strategies are possible under limited information and high
calculating costs, each as 'rational' as another.
Clearly in an uncertain world politicians, especially ideologically committed
politicians, could do worse than remain where they are in policy terms. They
would have the satisfaction associated with maintaining a 'pure' position and
the internal support that goes with it. The fact that electors voted for the position
last time buttresses ideological guarantees that some will do so again. There are
other ways of deciding on policy positions which are equally compatible with
ideology, but 'staying put' forms a perfectly rational rule for deciding on a
position under uncertainty and therefore constitutes one of the decision rules we
investigate below.
If all parties adopted this strategy, we would get total immobilisme. However,
even in multi-party systems some parties might adopt other decision rules for
moving within ideological constraints. These could discount the past election
result as a guide to future action, on the grounds that the circumstances and
issues are different, so that it would be just as logical to move ground somewhat
as to stay in the same place. Of course, movement is relative. Not even the most
mobile party in this set-up is going to leapfrog other parties, since besides not
attractingvotes this would threatenthe very identity of the party itself, enshrined
in the ideological commitments of activists and leaders. Within these limits,
however, the party can modify its priorities.
22Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition, chaps 4 and 6; Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie, Voting
and Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1977), pp. 424-33.

How can it decide where to go in the absence of reliable information on

electors' reactions? A simple a priori rule is to move in the opposite direction
to last time - to alternate policies. While this might seem arbitraryto analysts
examining party movement with hindsight and more certain knowledge, there
are in fact very good reasons for alternatingpolicies under uncertainty. If a party
has been in government, some of its policies will have been effected - even if
it is out of government - in some systems. Previous votes attractedon the basis
of these policies will shift as a result of them being satisfied, so it is rational to
change to another tack. In any case, as policy-instruments are crude and can
rarely be fine-tuned, spending more on an area like welfare tends to produce
budgetary or fiscal reactions, which make concrete action involving less
spending a perceived necessity. Parties which have re-emphasized party
orthodoxy last time may see a need to attract less committed voters this time,
while those which have diluted it need to move back to reassure the faithful,
particularly in the light of potential threats from new entrants. Thus there is an
in-built dynamic in terms of internal tensions between (marginal) vote seeking
and ideological purity, between outside and core votes, which pushes parties
towards alternating policies. Given that the electoral consequences of
alternation are uncertain, there is no strong external pressure to counteract the
strategic pressure for alternation within the party. Of course, if a party lost votes
in the last election, there may be a perceived need to change tack for the next
election, as the previous policy is assumed not to have worked.
With this last consideration, however, we are beginning to shift to another
policy-making rule under uncertainty. The two bits of information which party
decision makers have in these circumstances are (i) the nature of their own
policy movement for the last election and (ii) how their aggregate vote compared
with that in previous elections. On the basis of this they can evaluate the electoral
success of their previous policy shift, in terms of whether it was associated with
a rise or fall of votes.23This evaluation is simplistic, in that decision makers lack
any clear idea of what aspect of their policy produced the rise or fall in votes
or whether policy was really involved in the result at all.24In deciding on policy
in the light of the last election, they are also extrapolating from its results to what
may be a very different political situation in a way which the decision makers
of the 'alternating' model reject. Under uncertainty, when nobody really knows
whether the last result can be extrapolated or not, all these decisions are equally
rational. As uncertainty about the true situation continues after elections, there
is also no way of evaluating which rule works in practice, so it is also rational
to continue with the rule adopted initially.
So under the 'past election' model, a party remains at the same position or
provides more of the same: namely, it continues further in the same policy
23
McKelvey and Ordeshook explore such a rule with unconstrained two-party movement
('Sequential Elections with Limited Information').
24 As Enelow and Hinich
point out, votes may be attractedon the basis of candidate appeal or other
non-policy based characteristics of a party (A Spatial Theory of Voting, pp. 37 ff.).

454 BUDGE
direction as last time, if it gained votes in the last election; and changes its policy
direction from last time, if it lost votes. There is a certain parallelism with
Robertson's model but expectations about the next election are here substituted
(more realistically under conditions of uncertainty) by evaluations of the
previous result, which is known.
Three rules for decision making have been developed here: stay put or
alternate, whatever the circumstances; or evaluate the previous move in the light
of results. Robertson's model is a fourth alternative which assumes more
knowledge. Are there other possible rules of decision making within ideological
constraints which can be developed on the assumption of complete absence of
information about true electoral preferences?
One other possibility springs to mind, given the central role of ideology in
all the models. Parties could be concerned not so much about the absolute
position or direction they take, as where they move relative to some other
party(ies). This could be particularly relevant where two parties have been
competing for leadership of a particularideological tendance, but possibly also
for centre parties seeking to avoid confusion with the moderate right or leftist
parties around them. At any rate the criterion of always choosing positions so
that they could not possibly be confounded with those of a 'marker' party or
parties seems also to be one that a party could pursue under uncertainty, and
which fits well with strongly ideological motivations. Not knowing exactly what
position the other party(ies) would take could be compensated for by developing
stances on left, right or centre issues which those other parties would find it
impossible or extremely difficult to adopt, given ideological boundaries.
With this the possible rules for deciding on limited policy movements under
ideological constraints and radical uncertainty seem fairly well covered. The list
may not be exhaustive but the main alternatives have certainly been discussed.
We now leave a priori theorizing to operationalize the models against the actual
data available as a check, which are described in the next section.
IV. PROGRAMMATIC DATA, POLICY SPACES AND DIMENSIONALITY
It is clear that any serious check on the decision rules postulated as being used
under uncertainty must base itself on a long series of party policy changes,
preferably over a number of countries and under different kinds of party
systems. Otherwise it would not be clear whether the findings related only to
special cases and situations. Previous theorizing about party-policy making
under uncertainty has been largely confined to pure cases of two-party
competition where one party can win in an absolute sense. None of the rules
postulated above are confined to such a case, particularly as parties decide on
policy positions on their own without reference to those taken up by other parties
(though the 'marker' model provides a partial exception).
As all decision rules are equally rational in the absence of sure information,
some will be used by some parties and some by others. Mapping out which
parties use which rule is useful, as it may turn out empirically that certain rules

are associated with particular types of parties or party systems. To investigate

this possibility we also need information about large numbers of parties spread
over time and over space.
Such information, of an amplitude that would have been inconceivable ten
or fifteen years ago, has now been made available through the work of the
Manifesto Research Group.25This has involved collecting all post-war election
programmes for all significant parties in some twenty democracies (see the
countries listed in Table 1). These include almost all the democracies in Western
Europe, Israel and Japan, and all the overseas 'Anglosaxon' democracies like
the United States and Australia.
Election programmes (namely, British party manifestoes, US party platforms
and their equivalents in other countries) occupy a unique position as the only
fully authoritative statement of the party policy for an election. They constitute
the only medium-term plans for the whole of society regularly produced by any
organization. As such they have been shown to have an importantagenda-setting
role for governments.26 Their centrality for parties is shown by the extensive
debates, often fiercely fought in conferences and conventions, over what should
go into the document. In some countries the documents are delivered to every
household; in others they are presented in full through the press and television.
Even where less accessible to ordinary voters, as in Britain and United States,
the press conferences built around them constitute the opening shot in the party
election campaign, and the reference point for television and press discussion
of party policies.
Detailed analysis of the documents shows that parties avoid pledges of
specific action except in peripheral areas. The taking up of positions is done
through emphasizing the importance of certain policy areas compared to others.
Policy change consists in de-emphasizing previous priorities and taking up new
ones. However, this is relative: Socialist parties, for example, will always
emphasize welfare more than bourgeois parties, who in turn will always
emphasize topics like freedom and incentives more than Socialist parties.27This
25
The Manifesto Research Group, under the direction of Ian Budge, commenced work in 1979,
and has published the following reports: Budge, Robertson and Hearl, eds, Ideology, Strategy and
Party Change in 19 Democracies; Laver and Budge, eds, Party Policy and Government Coalitions;
Klingemann, Hofferbert, Budge et al., Parties, Policies and Democracy.
26 Ian
Budge and R. I. Hofferbert, 'Mandates and Policy Outputs: US Party Platforms and
Government Expenditures', American Political Science Review, 84 (1990), 111-31, and 'The Party
Mandate and the Westminster Model: Election Programmes and Government Spending in Britain',
British Journal of Political Science, 22 (1992), 151-82: Richard I. Hofferbert and Hans-Dieter
Klingemann, 'The Policy Impact of Party Programmes and Government Declarations in the Federal
Republic of Germany', European Journal of Political Research, 18 (1990), 277-304: Klingemann,
Hofferbert, Budge et al., Parties, Policies and Democracy.
27 Budge, Robertson and Hearl, eds,
Ideology, Strategy and Party Change, pp. 1-38. To a certain
extent, the idea of parties emphasizing different priorities rather than taking up opposing positions
on the same issue corresponds to Stokes' distinction between 'position' and 'valence' issues;
see A. Campbell, P. Converse, W. E. Miller and D. E. Stokes, Elections and the Public Order

456 BUDGE
empirically confirms Robertson's point cited above, that parties cannot

repudiate their past but can only modify it slightly.
The scheme developed for comparative coding of over 1,000 programmes
collected, counts the sentences (properly quasi-sentences)28 of the documents
into one of fifty-four categories covering the full range of policy areas.29When
percentaged, these scores represent the different emphases (and implicitly,
priorities) which parties give to different areas, such as welfare, law and order,
or defence.30These can then be subjected to statistical analyses designed, among
other things, to identify the major dimension(s) of party conflict.
The 'real' dimensionality of party and electoral spaces has been a matter of
extensive discussion both theoretically and empirically. It has loomed large in
theory because voting cycles are virtually inevitable in Euclidian spaces of three
dimensions and above, very likely in spaces of two dimensions, and only to be
totally avoided in spaces of one dimension with single-peaked preferences.
Generally, spatial theory has assumed that policy spaces must be many
dimensional because of the complexity of the political and social world; and
hence that they must be generally characterized by instability, absence of
equilibria, and voting cycles.31
In the light of empirical research much of the earlier debate seems misplaced
in the sense that a 'true' representation of party positions does not exist; and in
any case given the judgemental element in distinguishing one dimension from
another, we would not recognize the 'real' space when we had it (researchers
too operate under uncertainty). The propriety and dimensionality of a
representation depends on what aspects of party competition we want to
represent. The comparative analysis of the party programmes indicates that if
we want to focus on the aspects of policy which are generalizable across
countries, we have to concentrate on a single left-right dimension. No higher
order dimensional representation is as generalizable; and clearly a unidimen-
sional space gives a more direct visual impression of party positions and
movement between them than any other. The alternative to this, apart from
representing each country in spaces of different dimensions, is a twenty-
dimensional representation which cannot be directly visualized and which
(F'note continued)
(New York: Wiley, 1966), pp. 170-1. However, the idea of valency neglects the fact that
party emphases set priorities which can be quite directive of policy, especially in the field of
expenditures.
28Quasi-sentences are usually sentences but also include the bits between colons and semi-colons
in languages where periods are used.
29 Budge, Robertson and Hearl, eds, Ideology, Strategy and Party Change, pp. 458-67, gives the
complete coding scheme.
30Certain 'positional' codings were included experimentally in the scheme (for or against defence
expenditures, for example). Rarely do parties want to be seen as against strong defence, however,
so the negative category is usually thinly populated. Intentions are signalled by emphasizing other
areas such as 'peace'. Quite as sharp a gap thus opens up between the parties as if they had opposed
each other directly on the same policy.
31See McKelvey, 'General Conditions for Global Intransitives'.

incorporates most of the idiosyncratic elements which enter into competition

differently in each country.32
There is, however, a more directly compelling reason for representing policy
in unidimensional, left-right terms here. This is the way both parties and media
present party policy positions in election campaigns! There is an inevitable
element of simplification in public presentation which pushes discussion into
one dimension. Moreover, international and intellectual influences on the
presentation of news also locate discussion in the only dimension which is
generalizable across countries, the left-right one. We are on strong ground,
therefore, along with earlier theorists like Enelow and Hinich,33 in using this
dimension as the one which party leaderships think within when deciding where
to position themselves for the election.
It should be noted, however, in keeping with the discussion of ideology above,
that although the representation used here is unidimensional it is distinctly
un-Downsian in two respects. First, it does not have free party movement all
along the dimension but only in restricted segments of it, as parties turn out to
be bound to past positions. Secondly, positions are defined by differential
emphases on different issues ratherthan by taking up opposed positions on the
same issues.
Our models stand in a general Downsian tradition but assume severe
ideological constraints on party movement, associated with a prioritizing rather
than confrontational mode of party competition. So the left-right dimension
derived from the electoral programmes is entirely appropriatefor testing them.
What are 'left' and 'right' in party programmatic terms?
The right end [of the continuum]was constructedby adding together percentaged
references to 'Capitalist economics', 'Social Conservation', 'Freedom and
Domestic humanrights', and 'Military:positive'. The left end was constructedby
adding together percentages for 'State intervention', 'Peace and cooperation',
'Democracy', 'Social Services: positive', 'Education: positive', and 'Labour
groups: positive'. The final left-right [position of a party programme] was
32
The argument for concentrating on the unidimensional space is reinforced by the finding that
for the twenty-dimensional representationdistances are best measured by summing them up on each
separate dimension, rather than along the shortest line between points - a 'city-block' as opposed
to 'Euclidian' metric. This implies that preferences on each dimension are separateand hence avoids
problems of cyclic preferences and instability. See Enelow and Hinich, A Spatial Theory of Voting,
pp. 18-20; Peter C. Ordeshook, Game Theory and Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), p. 250. Such a 'city-block' metric is rather a complicated idea to get over
in public debate and media comment, which partly accounts for the fact stressed in the text following
that parties present policies and the media discuss them in one-dimensional left-right terms, even
though in deciding on policy in government they use many separable dimensions.
33
Enelow and Hinich, A Spatial Theory of Voting, pp. 38-40, recognized this tendency to focus
public and media discussion on one (left-right) dimension, in the concept of a 'predictive dimension'
on the basis of which electors make inferences about parties' specific policies.

458 BUDGE
computed as the total proportion of the [programme] devoted to right-wing

references minus the total proportiondevoted to left-wing references.34
How the procedure works out in practice is shown in Figures 1a and Ib which
'map' British and German parties' left-right movements over the post-war
period. This demonstrates that the Socialist and Conservative/Christian parties
do not leapfrog each other. Both 'maps' also fit convincingly with general
historical impressions of where the parties were in various periods, which is
important for their validation as realistic policy representations. Thus in Britain
the 'Social Democratic Consensus' of the 1950s is represented by the
Conservative move towards Labour, followed by ideological separation in the
1960s and 1970s and a rightward lurch in the 1980s and 1990s. The ideological
revisionism of Bad Godesburg (1959) is clearly shown in SPD positions in 1959
and 1964, even though the party returns left in 1980 and 1983.
Clearly such left-right spaces are suitable for testing the predictions about
party movement and policy change made in the models described above. We
now turn to checking these out against the corresponding data on party
movements for twenty countries.
V. TESTING THE MODELS OF PARTY-POLICY MAKING UNDER

UNCERTAINTY, FOR TWENTY POST-WAR DEMOCRACIES
The discussion of the data now available should not be allowed to obscure the
hypothetico-deductive nature of the approach adopted here. The models of
Section III were derived from an a priori critique and modification of
Downsian-style assumptions before ever being confronted with data. Any extra
validity which derives from prior theorizing and subsequent empirical
corroboration should be credited to them.
A first feature shared by all models is the assumption that parties do not move
out of their own ideological area and in particulardo not 'leapfrog' other parties
in policy terms. Such behaviour, implying strategic manoeuvring, could cast
doubt on the assumptions that parties decide on policies in terms of internal
ideological imperatives and that they decide independently of each other. As
ideology is a major factor establishing a stable non-convergent policy
equilibrium within this reasoning, it is important to check the correctness of
these ideas empirically.
Table 1 derives from the examination of twenty maps of post-war party
movement in different countries, similar to those presented above for Britain and
Germany. It counts the number of times parties outflank other parties in policy
34 Laver and Budge, Party Policy and Government Coalitions, p. 27, words in brackets inserted.
Although the dimension derives inductively from data on post-war party programmes, these in fact
comprehend all the classical political ideologies. The Gladstonian Liberal mix of free market and
peaceful internationalism is well represented by the German Liberals (see Figure Ib), while several
Scandinavian populist parties take up positions not dissimilar to those of Ross Perot and Silvio
Berlusconi in recent elections.

40
30
20
-10
-20
-50
1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995
Fig. la. Left-right positions of British parties 1945-92 mappedfrom election programmes
40
30
20
10
-10
-20
-30
-40
1949 1953 1967 1961 1965 1969 1972 1976 1980 1983 1987
Fig. Ib. Left-right positions of German parties 1949-87 mapped from election programmes

460 BUDGE
TABLE 1 Leapfrogging and Crossing to Other Ideological Areas as a

Proportion of All Spatial Positioning in Twenty Post-War
Democracies
Leapfrogging Taking a policy position

out of own ideological area
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
United States 0/12 0.00 - 3/24 0.13

Canada 6/39 0.15 6 6/39 0.15
Australia 1/18 0.06 1 6/36 0.17
New Zealand 0/15 0.00 - 5/30 0.17
Ireland 4/27 0.15 3 5/27 0.19
United Kingdom 4/42 0.10 4 5/42 0.12
Spain 1/25 0.04 1 - -
Italy 28/210 0.13 8 4/70 0.06
France V Rep. 5/70 0.07 4 - -
Germany 4/33 0.12 4 3/33 0.09
Austria 4/30 0.13 3 2/30 0.07
Luxembourg 6/49 0.12 5 3/33 0.09
Belgium 2/39 0.05 2 - -
Netherlands 1/30 0.03 1 2/30 0.07
Denmark 18/525 0.03 18 - -
Norway 8/231 0.03 7 8/66 0.12
Sweden 12/150 0.08 8 6/50 0.12
Iceland 3/75 0.04 3 3/36 0.08
Israel 9/80 0.11 6 2/44 0.05
Japan 8/42 0.19 5 4/30 0.13
Notes: (1) The numeratorrefersto the numberof cases of leapfrogging;the denominatorrefers

to the numberof party policy moves made. (2) Column 1 expressedas a decimal. (3) The
numberof cases of leapfrogginginvolvingcontiguousparties.(4) The numerator is the numberof
partiesin electionstakinga policy positionout of theirown ideologicalarea;the denominatoris
the numberof electionsmultipliedby the numberof qualifyingparties.(5) Column4 expressed
as a decimal.
terms out of the total number of comparisons made. It also takes account of
whether these incidents involve contiguous parties, where leapfrogging does not
go so much against the theory as it would if it involved strongly opposed parties.
As can be seen, leapfrogging is very limited anyway and, when it does take
place, overwhelmingly involves parties which are contiguous ideologically.
Moreover, parties occupy, in the vast majority of cases, policy positions within
their own ideological space, not outside it. The evidence for this, from twenty
countries, is so massive as to make it very difficult to ignore the anchoring effects
of ideology in future theories of party competition. It convincingly accounts for
the non-convergence of the equilibria we observe in such maps as those in
Figures la and Ib, which we can draw for all countries.

Our models agree on the centrality of ideology in limiting party movement.

They differ in the ways they see parties as deciding on what campaign position
to occupy inside their ideological boundaries. Operationalized for the
confrontation with our data, the models are:
1. The Stay Put Model (S). Parties endorse more or less the same priorities from
election to election. Operationally, we would regard this model as applying
where parties move over only a few out of the potential range of positions
open to them in the policy space.
2. The Alternation Model (A). Parties alter priorities in different directions
between each election. Operationally, we expect this to give rise to a zigzag
pattern as a leftward shift succeeds a rightward and vice versa, in response
to internal and external pressures on the leadership.
3. The Past Results Model (P). Parties evaluate policies in terms of whether a
previous leftward or rightwardshift was associated with vote gains or losses.
If it was associated with gains, they stay where they are or continue to move
in the same direction. If it was associated with losses, they change direction.
4. Robertson 's Rational Expectations Model (E). Parties adjust their behaviour
according to whether they think the next election will be competitive - in
which case they move to the centre - or non-competitive - in which case they
move right or left towards their own extreme. The operational form of this
model assumes that expectations are accurate, since they are identified with
the actual outcome of the election.
5. The Marker Party Model (M). Parties wish to maintain the distinction
between themselves and a neighbouring party with which they are in
long-term competition. They therefore take up a position calculated to
outflank the ideological rival in regard to the centre, or to left or right as the
case may be.
Operationalized in this way the various models can be checked for 'fit' with
the movements of significant parties in twenty countries, as shown in maps like
those illustrated in Figures 1a and Ib. The 'cases' consist of paired comparisons
of where a party is at time t compared with time t - 1. These comparisons enable
us to say whether a party is moving to the left or to the right. This can then be
compared with previous movement or characterized as moving to extremes or
centre or staying put. Combining this with information on whether the party
gained or lost votes in the previous election compared to the one before that,
or whether the results were close or not in the following election, gives the ability
to check out Models 3 and 4. By looking at the movements of several parties
simultaneously we can say whether a party maintains some consistent difference
between itself and another one. Of course, in some sense all the major parties
maintain their differences, since they do not leapfrog, but this is due to the
ideological constraints under which they operate ratherthan specific decisions.
The model really applies to parties quite close to each other in ideological space,
which one might abstractlyexpect to leapfrog occasionally but which studiously
do not.

TABLE 2 Fit of Models of Party-Policy Making under Uncertainty to Actual Left-Righ
Parties, over Twenty Democracies
Communist Lft.Soc Social Dem./ Centre/ Religious

Labour Agrarian
United States A 7/9 0.78
Canada P 8/12 0.67
Australia A 10/15 0.67
New Zealand A 9/14 0.64
Ireland A 4/7 0.58 A 5/7 0.7
United Kingdom P 10/12 0.83
Spain P 3/3 1.00 A 1/1 1.0
Italy P 5/8 0.63 A 9/15 0.60 S 7/10 0.7
France V Rep. M 7/9 0.78 A 6/7 0.86
Germany A 5/9 0.56 E 7/10 0.7
Austria A 6/7 0.86
Luxembourg P 3/5 0.60 E 4/6 0.67 E 5/7 0.7
Belgium A 8/10 0.80 P 9/11 0.8
Netherlands A 6/9 0.67 P 13/21 0.6

Denmark A 8/13 0.62 P 7/13 0.54 E 11/15 0.73 A 3/4 0.7
Norway A 6/9 0.67 A 7/9 0.78 P 4/6 0.67 E 5/10 0.5
Sweden A 9/13 0.69 A 7/13 0.54 A 8/13 0.62
Iceland P 5/8 0.63 P/A 9/12 0.75 P 5/6 0.83
Israel A 12/180.67 P 11/12 0.9
Japan A 5/6 0.83 A 4/6 0.67 A 2/4 0.50
Notes:SeeTable1 forexplanationof fractionsanddecimalization; A = PolicyAlternation Model;P= PastElection(

Model;M = MarkerPartyModel;S = StayPutModel.Onlythebest-fittingmodelforeachpartyis reported.Success
two electionsis 'appropriate'in termsof the model:in othercases this involvesa comparisonwiththe previousm
'same'positionas last time is relevantfor some modelsandnot for others.In some countriesthereare two or m
aggregated.Theentryof new parties,missingdataandinconclusivecomparisonsalso causetotalsto varywithinth
gains/lossesareestimatedpurelyin numericaltermsof increases/decreases in percentagevote,ratherthan'winnin
countriesno one partycan 'win' an election.ThusBritishLabouris seen as gainingin 1987 and 1992 becauseit i
'gain'and 'loss' makesno systematicdifferenceto findings.In checkingfutureelectionoutcomesfor the Rationa
estimatedon howclosearethepotentialelectoralcoalitionsto whichpartiesbelongratherthanon theirown vote,exc
a governmenton theirown. The time periodfor the partiesexaminedis generallythatshownin LaverandBudg
andKlingemann, Hofferbert,Budgeet al., Parties,PoliciesandDemocracy,withtheexceptionof the UnitedState
updatedto 1992:andNew Zealand,Spain,IcelandandJapan,wheredatahavebeentakenfromthe Codebooksof
andeditedby AndreaVolkensof the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin.In some countriesresultshavebeencombine
suchas bothRepublicanandLiberalsin Italyunderthe 'Liberal'column.

464 BUDGE
Table 2 now reports the correspondence between the predictions of these

models and the actual direction of and changes in party policy over the post-war
period. The results for each country are based on charts like those for Britain
and Germany reported above. The charts and figures are those published either
in Party Policy and Government Coalitions or Parties, Policies and Democracy,
with the addition of New Zealand, Iceland, Spain and Japan from unpublished
sources. Time periods are those which appear in the books and vary slightly
between countries but generally cover most of the post-war period.
In Table 2 only the best fitting model (signified by the initial attached to it
in the list of models above) is given for each party, together with the success
rate for the predictions derived from the model,35 shown both as a fraction of
total cases, and as a proportion. Other models may fit particularcases quite well,
but only the result for the best fitting one is reported.
What is really remarkable in the table is the degree of fit between the
uncertainty models developed a priori and the actual adjustments made by
parties to their electoral programmes. The generally positive results over a
whole range of parties, countries and party systems indicate that we do seem
to have identified the full range of decision-rules that parties follow under
uncertainty. Six out of seventy parties are not well fitted by any model, if we
take a 0.60 success rate as a cut-off point. But this is a very small number out
of the total, and it must be said that these cases all have a success rate of between
0.50 and 0.60, indicating that the models are not entirely irrelevantto them. Most
individual parties have success rates of over 0.66.
Of course the total of cases for each party is generally small, sometimes very
small. This may introduce instability into the estimates, as one or two new
comparisons, if deviant, might severely reduce the proportions. One reason for
using the published time-series, which generally end in the 1980s, is to check
empirically in later research whether the admission of new time points from the
late 1980s and 1990s does indeed destabilize the estimates. Checking this
possibility empirically will supplement statistical estimates of possible error,
which are not entirely satisfactory as they are based on sampling assumptions,
while what we have in the table are the complete sets of time points currently
available.
Instability and errorin these senses will be investigated along with the effects
of possible measurement and coding mistakes in the long-term project
underlying this article. Table 3, however, produces evidence of the stability of
party estimates, in the impressive proportion of successes both for individual
models and for all best fitting models aggregated across countries. In the
latter case the proportion of successes is 0.68, over two-thirds of all cases.
Deriving from 432 party movements, across time, different countries and
35 As the number of
predictions is equal to the number of cases, their success rate is also their
efficiency rate (equivalent to the number of successful predictions divided by total number in the
prediction set). Thus the efficiency rates are high by normal standardsin social science. See Laver
and Budge, Party Policy and Government Coalitions, pp. 416-17.

TABLE 3 Overall Success/Efficiency Rate of

Models of Party-Policy Making
Policy AlternationModel (A) 291/431 0.68

Past Election (Gain/loss) Model (P) 137/196 0.70
Rational Expectations Model (E) 51/79 0.65
MarkerParty Model (M) 13/16 0.81
Stay Put Model (S) 7/10 0.70
All models combined 499/732 0.68
Note: Success rate is proportion of moves correctly predicted out of

all moves made. Efficiency rate is proportion of moves correctly
predicted out of all predictions made. As predictions from the models
are unique, they are identical in this case.
contrasting party systems, this cannot but be taken as highly significant in both
a substantive and statistical sense.
Out of the models applied in Table 2, two do most of the work - the Policy
Alternation and the Past Election rule. Alternation applies most widely, to forty
parties with 0.68 success. Deciding on the next move by reference to results at
the last election covers about half that number of parties. Its success rate where
it applies is slightly higher (0.70). Robertson's Rational Expectations Model
comes a long way behind, covering nine parties with a success rate of 0.65. The
Stay Put Model applies only to one case but an important and interesting one
- the Christian Democrats in Italy whose positioning near the exact numeric
centre of (0) is remarkable,but plausible in the light of their history and concern
with placing themselves in the middle of coalition negotiations.
Similarly, only two parties seem to 'mark' others and position themselves in
relation to them - the French Communists to the left of the Socialists and the
UDF to the centre of the Gaullists. Again this is plausible, since the history of
all these parties could be written in terms of a struggle for dominance of their
ideological tendance. The 'marker' parties, however, Socialists and Gaullists
themselves, the chief contenders for power, seem very committed to policy
alternation.
As alternation is certainly the predominant mode of policy making and
competition, this is not surprising. Fifteen out of twenty Socialist parties use it,
with three Communist parties and the Left-Socialists of Norway. Socialist
parties with their strong ideological core seem to find it politic to alternate
centrist shifts in search of new voters with moves back to old positions to rally
convinced supporters. However, the rule predominates almost as much among
Liberal parties (even for the British Liberals success rates for alternation are
nearly as high as for the best-fitting Past Election Model). One can certainly see
Centrist parties as being pressured to choose between right and left, and
alternating as a way to meet such pressures.

466 BUDGE
Among conservative and religious parties, in contrast, continuing in the

direction associated with past gains (or reversing in the face of past loss) is more
widespread. This may reflect a greaterpragmatism among these parties, but they
too are strongly tied to a particular ideological segment of the left-right
continuum.
The major conclusion is that the different rules for decision making are
distributed fairly widely over party families, so they do not distinguish one
sharply from another. Equally, parties within each country normally adopt
different decision modes from each other with the exceptions of Ireland,
Australia and the United States (alternatingpolicy) and Britain, where all parties
evaluate policy in the light of past election results. The predominance of the
Policy Alternation rule across different party systems and countries does indeed
point to the prevalence of radical uncertainties in election politics. That is
perhaps the most general lesson to be drawn from these findings. It is, however,
tempered by ideological outlooks which apportion the space among different
parties so that each party is at least fairly certain of where the others will not be.
VI. CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS: ELECTORAL NON-CONVERGENCE

BUT GOVERNMENTAL CONVERGENCE?
Table 1 shows clearly that parties do not converge in terms of election policy,
but that outcomes are stable and follow understandablepatterns, both in terms
of their broad location in policy space and in terms of the detailed adjustments
that are made within that broad location (Table 2). Section ii gave theoretical
reasons for expecting such results, centred on parties' necessary reliance on
ideology in an electoral situation of radical uncertainty. The once-and-for-all
position taken by the election programme is a (non-convergent) equilibrium
point for that election, because of the cognitive pressures for consistency exerted
by the party as a whole, by the media and indeed public debate in general.
Spatial models in the Downsian tradition concern themselves with conver-
gence on the preferences of the median elector both because of the stability it
gives (in terms of avoiding the arbitrarydecisions otherwise needed to break
voting cycles) and because it is the most equitable democratic solution (in the
sense that majority preferences will be reasonably satisfied through imple-
mentation of the median one). What does our corroborated expectation of
non-convergent election equilibria do to this concern? Do they in particular
threaten normative justifications of democracy which stress its ability to get
majority preferences transformed into policy?
Two considerations from the research qualify this threatfrom non-convergent
policy equilibria. First, party confrontation consists of putting certain policy
priorities higher than others, not in endorsing conflicting preferences on the
same issues. Most electors are unlikely, therefore, straightforwardly to oppose
the policies adopted by a government. It is just that they would have preferred
others to be put through first, or given precedence. To give a concrete example,

someone who voted for a conservative party might be worried about defence
and taxes but does not oppose (indeed, welcomes) increased welfare.36
Secondly, reverting to what was said about linking the spatial theory of voting
with spatial theories of government, our previous research shows that roughly
80 per cent of governments include the party with the median legislator37(which
in PR systems at any rate represents the median elector). The same research
shows that this party generally gets a disproportionate policy gain from the
government programme. Both results on the power of the median are of course
anticipated in the spatial literature.38
What this means for our conclusions on non-convergent election equilibria,
is that in the broadercontext these adjust themselves at the level of government.
They thus pose no threat to normative justifications of democracy as what is
importantin the long run is that median preferences are acted on by government.
Electoral convergence has been seen as a means to this end but, if it can be
attained regardless, this strengthens the case for the emergence of equitable
outcomes under democracy, rather than weakens it. With their concurrent
demonstration that party-policy positions really are in stable equilibrium at
elections, the theories of policy making under uncertainty proposed here
overcome many of the obstacles that have blocked the way to a convincing
theoretical explanation of how parties function in democracies.
36
As policy areas seem to be separableboth in partyprogrammesand government decision making,
there is also no implication that spending more on one policy area (such as welfare) implies less on
another (such as defence). Welfare can be financed in many other ways than raising taxes - inflation,
foreign borrowing, expanding economic activity, etc.
37Laver and Budge, Party Policy and Government Coalitions, p. 417. This result holds whether
the same left-right dimension employed here is used as the spatial representation, or whether a
twenty-dimensional city-block space is used (in which case the partyis that with the median legislator
on a majority of the separable dimensions).
38
For a good summary, see Enelow and Hinich, A Spatial Theory of Voting, pp. 8-30.


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