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What do Parties Want Policyversus OfficeHelene Helboe PedersenVersion of record first published 05 Jul 2012

To cite this article Helene Helboe Pedersen (2012) What do Parties Want Policy versusOffice West European Politics 354 896-910

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What do Parties Want Policyversus Office

HELENE HELBOE PEDERSEN

What parties want ndash policy office or votes ndash affects how they represent their votersmake strategic decisions and respond to external changes in society What parties striveto accomplish is crucially important for what they do Moreover our knowledge of whatparties want affects what we expect them to do For instance coalition theory assumesthat parties have homogeneous goals and hence are equally likely to join coalitionsgiven the same circumstances However this article investigates this basic assumptionof party goal homogeneity and finds that party goals do indeed diverge The articledemonstrates that party goals are influenced by party-specific factors such as party sizepolicy position and intra-party politics It therefore suggests further that intra-partypolitics should be included more systematically in future studies of party behaviour

Introduction

Party goals affect party behaviour and hence party democracy Whatparties seek to accomplish matters for the way they handle the powerdelegated to them by the voters Party goals also affect how we understandand explain party behaviour Theories of coalition formation base theirpredictions on fundamental assumptions about party goals (Laver andSchofield 1990) and theories of party change also stress their importance(Harmel and Janda 1994) Most coalition theories assume that politicalparties prioritise the fundamental goals of votes office and policy similarlyand hence are equally lsquokoalitionsfahigrsquo (von Beyme 1983 see howeverSened 1996) In the early 1990s the literature on party change began toconsider variation in party goals which is now seen as an importantexplanation of how parties respond to external shocks or structural changes(Harmel and Janda 1994 Smith 1989) In his famous model of partybehaviour Kaare Stroslashm (1990) expects party goals ndash and hence partybehaviour ndash to vary across parties depending on party organisation andpolitical institutions

Correspondence Address helenepsaudk

West European PoliticsVol 35 No 4 896ndash910 July 2012

ISSN 0140-2382 Print1743-9655 Online ordf 2012 Taylor amp Francis

httpdxdoiorg101080014023822012682350

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However the models have not been investigated thoroughly and there is alack of general investigations based on data on many parties and acrossdifferent political systems This article investigates variation in party goalsand considers to what extent party-specific factors such as intra-partydemocracy size and policy position explain this variation The study isbased on data including 117 parties from 23 countries The articleestablishes that party-specific factors do indeed influence party goals acrossdifferent political systems

The investigation of party goal variation is important both theoreticallyand empirically Theoretically divergence in party goals means that theoriesof party behaviour in terms of for instance coalition formation or orga-nisational adaption need to take this divergence and its causes into accountEmpirically party goal divergence means that parties respond differently toopportunities as well as challenges and hence basically represent their votersand members differently This article contributes to our theoretical andempirical understanding of party behaviour by investigating to what extentparty goals vary across parties and most importantly how we may accountfor this variation notably through the lens of intra-party politics

The article proceeds in three stages In the following section party theoryis reviewed and discussed in relation to the assumption that parties havehomogeneous goals The dependent variable party goals is specified and itis argued that the goal of policy in particular must be carefully defined Inthe subsequent section data collected by Laver and Hunt (1992) arepresented and evaluated based on a second dataset collected by Harmel andJanda (1996) Finally the analysis is conducted and two results emerge 1)party goals do indeed vary across parties and 2) what parties primarily seekto accomplish depends on their positional power in parliament as well astheir internal organisation Consequently the article leads us to consider theutility of treating parties as unitary actors with homogeneous goals

The Question of Homogeneous Party Goals

Most coalition theory is based on the assumption that parties havehomogeneous goals Policy-blind coalition theories assume that parties areexclusively motivated by the pursuit of office benefits and therefore expectminimal winning coalitions (Riker 1962 von Neumann and Morgenstern1953) which maximise the office payoff for the coalition parties to formAxelrod (1970) was among the first to include policy goals in the theory ofcoalition formation Still concerned with coalition type he argued thatminimal connected winning coalitions should form they consist of partieslsquoconnectedrsquo along a policy dimension and are minimal in the sense that theylose the majority if one member party leaves the coalition

Coalition theory subsequently became increasingly concerned with whysome parties are more successful in getting into office than others The partycontrolling the median legislator is expected to have a particularly strong

Policy versus Office 897

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position in coalition negotiations and generally large parties centrallyplaced in the policy space are expected to participate more often incoalitions than small policy-extreme parties (van Roozendaal 1990)However even these party-oriented theories still base their expectation onthe assumption that parties pursue the same goals and hence behavesimilarly given the same policy position and size

Theories on partiesrsquo organisational change have also been guided althoughless explicitly by the assumption that parties have homogeneous goals Eversince the influential work of Duverger (1964 [1951]) and Kirchheimer (1966)parties have been expected to adjust more or less automatically to externalchanges in order to perform well in their competition with other partiesParties have been expected to converge around specific party models eg themass party (Duverger 1964) the catch-all party (Kirchheimer 1966) thecartel party (Katz and Mair 1995) or the network party (Heidar and Saglie2003) The underlying premise of the idea of convergence is that parties aredriven by the same basic goals If parties were only secondarily interested inwinning votes but primarily interested in representing certain political ideaswe would not necessarily expect them to organise in a vote-maximisingmanner adjusting to the structural changes in society

Scholars working on coalition formation have to some extent consideredthe importance of divergent party goals Sened (1996) is among the fewscholars who have developed models of coalition formation which allow theweights of policy and office goals to vary across parties However thesetheoretical innovations have not been thoroughly tested (Shikano andLinhart 2010 112) and the models do not include explanations of thepresumed divergence in party goals Warwick (2006) argues that partieshave different policy horizons ie they differ in terms of their willingness tocompromise on policy in order to win office Furthermore based on theassumption that parties dominated by activists will be more policy seekingthan parties dominated by party leaders Pedersen (2010a) and Back (2008)argue that the former are less likely to join a coalition as they are less willingto abandon their policy to enter a coalition Their empirical analysessupport their argument that the higher the level of intra-party democracythe less likely a party is to enter coalitions

Research on party change began to consider the impact of divergent partygoals especially Harmel and Janda (1994 269ndash70) who argue that differenttypes of external shocks are of diverse importance to different partiesdepending on their primary goals Vote-maximising parties are moreresponsive to electoral failure than parties that primarily seek to advocatepolicy Therefore they argue that party change depends on party goalsRecent empirical analyses also show that party changes are certainlymediated by party goals (eg Duncan 2007 Mazzoleni 2009) howeverresearch on why party goal divergence is limited

The question of party goals relates not only to the similarity of goals butalso to how many goals parties might have and to what extent they are

898 H H Pedersen

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compatible Early coalition theories assumed that parties have only onegoal to get into office They may seek votes or policy as instruments to getinto office but their main goal is to obtain office benefits When the policygoal was included in coalition theory it was primarily seen as a supplementto office which was seen as a precondition for policy As coalitions areexpected to be majority coalitions membership of the executive provides thebest opportunity to influence policy as well as gaining office benefits andhence no trade-off between policy and office exists If this is in fact the casethere is no reason to expect intra-party politics to matter Party activistsshould be best off with an office-seeking leader and they have no reason totry to constrain hisher behaviour in coalition bargaining However thereare reasons to believe that this is not the case

First the idea that office is a precondition for policy only applies to partysystems where a single party has a majority on its own or in systems where thegovernment coalition has a majority In the case of minority governmentspolicy influence is not a benefit solely reserved for the government partiesEven in systems of majority (single-party) governments the opposition mayinfluence public policy indirectly through extra-parliamentary strategiesHence office may be instrumentally advantageous for parties seeking policybut it is not a precondition for influencing public policy

Second and according to Stroslashm (1990 571) parties are not likely to haveonly one goal He argues that parties have multiple goals not alwayscompatible but often conflicting Hence parties face trade-offs when theydecide on their strategies and behaviour Stroslashm (1990 567) lists three partygoals 1) policy defined as influencing public policy 2) votes defined asmaximising the share of votes won in an election and 3) office defined aslsquoprivate goods bestowed on recipients of politically discretionary govern-mental and sub-governmental appointmentsrsquo Harmel and Janda (1994) addintra-party democracy to the list and define it as a careful and activerepresentation of membersrsquo wishes The idea of multiple incompatible goalshas been fruitful in identifying the dilemmas parties are faced withHowever to make the incompatibility meaningful the goals have to becarefully defined

In fact Stroslashm defines office broadly as control over political office (Mullerand Stroslashm 1999 6) and narrowly as private goods (Stroslashm 1990 567) Thenarrow definition is most suitable for policy-blind coalition theorieswhereas the broad definition is more fitting for coalition theories includingpolicy objectives However if office is broadly defined it becomes difficult tosee the trade-off between office and policy In Stroslashmrsquos (1990 572) words

Institutionally policy influence and office benefits are often compatiblegoals since government incumbency promotes both However withingovernment coalitions parties often bargain separately over policyand portfolios In such situations parties may trade spoils for policyinfluence or vice versa Thus the trade-off between policy and office

Policy versus Office 899

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benefits arises mainly for governing parties However parties engagedin legislative coalitions (eg in support of minority government) mayface similar choices

If policy and office are only traded within coalitions there is no reason toexpect such trade-offs to influence the decision whether or not to enter acoalition A party only gains access to policy and office benefits byparticipating in coalitions Hence if both office and policy are definedbroadly as control over political office and influence on public policy onlygovernment parties may face a dilemma However the trade-off becomesmore evident and relevant to the coalition formation if the policy concept isdefined more narrowly and perhaps also more realistically According to thebroad policy definition parties are expected to enter any coalition thatmoves public policy slightly closer to the preferred party policy (Warwick2005 383) However if parties are also expected to consider who isresponsible for public policy they may choose not to enter a coalition ifpolicy payoffs are too small In that case the concepts of policy rigidity(Sanchez-Cuenca 2004) or policy horizons (Warwick 2006) may describehow parties draw policy limits as they prioritise between office and policy

Party goals are obviously not easily identified or defined Parties havemultiple goals including office policy votes and representation (intra-party democracy) that are not always compatible However to make thetrade-off especially between policy and office evident we have to eithernarrowly define office as private spoils and make the trade-off evident togoverning parties1 or we have to define policy more narrowly to make itmeaningful to talk about policy limits that may contradict the pursuit ofoffice

Explaining Party Goals

According to Stroslashmrsquos (1990) models of party behaviour party goals areinfluenced by party organisation and political institutions in particular Thisarticle focuses on the impact of party-specific factors such as bargainingposition and internal constraints

Before we turn to a discussion of the different explanatory factors andtheir expected impact on party goals it is crucial to consider the direction ofcausality Party goals are very basic characteristics of a party One mayargue that parties are formed based on specific goals party entrepreneurswill organise the party according to these goals and the goals may affect thepartyrsquos voter support Party goals and other party characteristics are thusrelated in a very complex manner However parties are not formed as staticunits but as organisations According to Katz and Mair (1992 1994) partyorganisations consist of different party faces which may not always be inagreement about party policy party strategies or basic goals like policy oroffice I argue that once a party is formed it is most accurate to see party

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goals as the result of these strategic actorsrsquo considerations of the currentpossibilities in the party system and the balance of power between them

Three factors influence basic party goals the internal organisation of theparty party size and the partyrsquos policy position First party activists areassumed to be less pragmatic than their party leaders in parliament and ifthey have a large say over strategic and substantive decisions they will beless willing to give up policy principles to win office or perhaps votes (Back2008 Katz 2001 288 Pedersen 2010a Stroslashm 1990 577) Party leaders arenot necessarily cynical office seekers ready to abandon any policyprogramme in order to gain private spoils and party activists are notnecessarily out of touch with reality and unbendable in policy negotiationsRather we assume that party leadersrsquo policy limits are wider than those ofparty activists since they enjoy the private spoils of office and are socialisedin parliament to accept the need to compromise to reach majority decisionsParty activists are more policy rigid since in their view policy is symbolicand carries a value in its own right which motivates party members and(unpaid) activists (Katz and Mair 1992) Hence we expect intra-partydemocracy to be positively related to the pursuit of policy

Second even internally democratic parties may find themselves in abargaining position where only small policy concessions are required to winoffice Based on the assumption that coalition formation is structured alonga policy dimension and the support of a majority in the representative bodyis needed for the coalition to be viable centre parties have a privilegedposition in coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990 111) Inmultiparty systems parties placed centrally in a policy space are morelikely to be able to enter coalitions with only minor compromises Incontrast extreme parties are less likely to be able to influence the coalitionrsquospolicy position since the necessary support of the centre parties may be lostThe trade-off between office and policy is therefore less difficult for partiescentrally placed in the party system since the concessions they need to makeare less hard This leads to the hypothesis that centrally placed parties aremore likely than policy-extreme parties to seek office The impact of policyposition may also be indirect as left-wing parties tend to be more internallydemocratic (Duverger 1964 Gibson and Harmel 1998 Hansen andPedersen 2003 Pedersen 2010b) and therefore less office seeking

Finally the most famous finding in studies of the payoff structure incoalition formation is the near-proportionality between the number ofministers a party has and the number of seats it contributes to the coalition(Gamson 1961) Assuming that the parties use these ministers to implementpolicy (Laver and Shepsle 1996) large parties are likely to enter coalitionsmaking only small compromises whereas small parties control fewerministers and hence fewer policy areas Consequently large parties face amore modest trade-off between office and policy This leads to a finalhypothesis stating that large parties are more likely to seek office than smallparties As in the case of policy position party size may influence party goals

Policy versus Office 901

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indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

902 H H Pedersen

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

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also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

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seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

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general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

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office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

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indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

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3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

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However the models have not been investigated thoroughly and there is alack of general investigations based on data on many parties and acrossdifferent political systems This article investigates variation in party goalsand considers to what extent party-specific factors such as intra-partydemocracy size and policy position explain this variation The study isbased on data including 117 parties from 23 countries The articleestablishes that party-specific factors do indeed influence party goals acrossdifferent political systems

The investigation of party goal variation is important both theoreticallyand empirically Theoretically divergence in party goals means that theoriesof party behaviour in terms of for instance coalition formation or orga-nisational adaption need to take this divergence and its causes into accountEmpirically party goal divergence means that parties respond differently toopportunities as well as challenges and hence basically represent their votersand members differently This article contributes to our theoretical andempirical understanding of party behaviour by investigating to what extentparty goals vary across parties and most importantly how we may accountfor this variation notably through the lens of intra-party politics

The article proceeds in three stages In the following section party theoryis reviewed and discussed in relation to the assumption that parties havehomogeneous goals The dependent variable party goals is specified and itis argued that the goal of policy in particular must be carefully defined Inthe subsequent section data collected by Laver and Hunt (1992) arepresented and evaluated based on a second dataset collected by Harmel andJanda (1996) Finally the analysis is conducted and two results emerge 1)party goals do indeed vary across parties and 2) what parties primarily seekto accomplish depends on their positional power in parliament as well astheir internal organisation Consequently the article leads us to consider theutility of treating parties as unitary actors with homogeneous goals

The Question of Homogeneous Party Goals

Most coalition theory is based on the assumption that parties havehomogeneous goals Policy-blind coalition theories assume that parties areexclusively motivated by the pursuit of office benefits and therefore expectminimal winning coalitions (Riker 1962 von Neumann and Morgenstern1953) which maximise the office payoff for the coalition parties to formAxelrod (1970) was among the first to include policy goals in the theory ofcoalition formation Still concerned with coalition type he argued thatminimal connected winning coalitions should form they consist of partieslsquoconnectedrsquo along a policy dimension and are minimal in the sense that theylose the majority if one member party leaves the coalition

Coalition theory subsequently became increasingly concerned with whysome parties are more successful in getting into office than others The partycontrolling the median legislator is expected to have a particularly strong

Policy versus Office 897

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position in coalition negotiations and generally large parties centrallyplaced in the policy space are expected to participate more often incoalitions than small policy-extreme parties (van Roozendaal 1990)However even these party-oriented theories still base their expectation onthe assumption that parties pursue the same goals and hence behavesimilarly given the same policy position and size

Theories on partiesrsquo organisational change have also been guided althoughless explicitly by the assumption that parties have homogeneous goals Eversince the influential work of Duverger (1964 [1951]) and Kirchheimer (1966)parties have been expected to adjust more or less automatically to externalchanges in order to perform well in their competition with other partiesParties have been expected to converge around specific party models eg themass party (Duverger 1964) the catch-all party (Kirchheimer 1966) thecartel party (Katz and Mair 1995) or the network party (Heidar and Saglie2003) The underlying premise of the idea of convergence is that parties aredriven by the same basic goals If parties were only secondarily interested inwinning votes but primarily interested in representing certain political ideaswe would not necessarily expect them to organise in a vote-maximisingmanner adjusting to the structural changes in society

Scholars working on coalition formation have to some extent consideredthe importance of divergent party goals Sened (1996) is among the fewscholars who have developed models of coalition formation which allow theweights of policy and office goals to vary across parties However thesetheoretical innovations have not been thoroughly tested (Shikano andLinhart 2010 112) and the models do not include explanations of thepresumed divergence in party goals Warwick (2006) argues that partieshave different policy horizons ie they differ in terms of their willingness tocompromise on policy in order to win office Furthermore based on theassumption that parties dominated by activists will be more policy seekingthan parties dominated by party leaders Pedersen (2010a) and Back (2008)argue that the former are less likely to join a coalition as they are less willingto abandon their policy to enter a coalition Their empirical analysessupport their argument that the higher the level of intra-party democracythe less likely a party is to enter coalitions

Research on party change began to consider the impact of divergent partygoals especially Harmel and Janda (1994 269ndash70) who argue that differenttypes of external shocks are of diverse importance to different partiesdepending on their primary goals Vote-maximising parties are moreresponsive to electoral failure than parties that primarily seek to advocatepolicy Therefore they argue that party change depends on party goalsRecent empirical analyses also show that party changes are certainlymediated by party goals (eg Duncan 2007 Mazzoleni 2009) howeverresearch on why party goal divergence is limited

The question of party goals relates not only to the similarity of goals butalso to how many goals parties might have and to what extent they are

898 H H Pedersen

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compatible Early coalition theories assumed that parties have only onegoal to get into office They may seek votes or policy as instruments to getinto office but their main goal is to obtain office benefits When the policygoal was included in coalition theory it was primarily seen as a supplementto office which was seen as a precondition for policy As coalitions areexpected to be majority coalitions membership of the executive provides thebest opportunity to influence policy as well as gaining office benefits andhence no trade-off between policy and office exists If this is in fact the casethere is no reason to expect intra-party politics to matter Party activistsshould be best off with an office-seeking leader and they have no reason totry to constrain hisher behaviour in coalition bargaining However thereare reasons to believe that this is not the case

First the idea that office is a precondition for policy only applies to partysystems where a single party has a majority on its own or in systems where thegovernment coalition has a majority In the case of minority governmentspolicy influence is not a benefit solely reserved for the government partiesEven in systems of majority (single-party) governments the opposition mayinfluence public policy indirectly through extra-parliamentary strategiesHence office may be instrumentally advantageous for parties seeking policybut it is not a precondition for influencing public policy

Second and according to Stroslashm (1990 571) parties are not likely to haveonly one goal He argues that parties have multiple goals not alwayscompatible but often conflicting Hence parties face trade-offs when theydecide on their strategies and behaviour Stroslashm (1990 567) lists three partygoals 1) policy defined as influencing public policy 2) votes defined asmaximising the share of votes won in an election and 3) office defined aslsquoprivate goods bestowed on recipients of politically discretionary govern-mental and sub-governmental appointmentsrsquo Harmel and Janda (1994) addintra-party democracy to the list and define it as a careful and activerepresentation of membersrsquo wishes The idea of multiple incompatible goalshas been fruitful in identifying the dilemmas parties are faced withHowever to make the incompatibility meaningful the goals have to becarefully defined

In fact Stroslashm defines office broadly as control over political office (Mullerand Stroslashm 1999 6) and narrowly as private goods (Stroslashm 1990 567) Thenarrow definition is most suitable for policy-blind coalition theorieswhereas the broad definition is more fitting for coalition theories includingpolicy objectives However if office is broadly defined it becomes difficult tosee the trade-off between office and policy In Stroslashmrsquos (1990 572) words

Institutionally policy influence and office benefits are often compatiblegoals since government incumbency promotes both However withingovernment coalitions parties often bargain separately over policyand portfolios In such situations parties may trade spoils for policyinfluence or vice versa Thus the trade-off between policy and office

Policy versus Office 899

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benefits arises mainly for governing parties However parties engagedin legislative coalitions (eg in support of minority government) mayface similar choices

If policy and office are only traded within coalitions there is no reason toexpect such trade-offs to influence the decision whether or not to enter acoalition A party only gains access to policy and office benefits byparticipating in coalitions Hence if both office and policy are definedbroadly as control over political office and influence on public policy onlygovernment parties may face a dilemma However the trade-off becomesmore evident and relevant to the coalition formation if the policy concept isdefined more narrowly and perhaps also more realistically According to thebroad policy definition parties are expected to enter any coalition thatmoves public policy slightly closer to the preferred party policy (Warwick2005 383) However if parties are also expected to consider who isresponsible for public policy they may choose not to enter a coalition ifpolicy payoffs are too small In that case the concepts of policy rigidity(Sanchez-Cuenca 2004) or policy horizons (Warwick 2006) may describehow parties draw policy limits as they prioritise between office and policy

Party goals are obviously not easily identified or defined Parties havemultiple goals including office policy votes and representation (intra-party democracy) that are not always compatible However to make thetrade-off especially between policy and office evident we have to eithernarrowly define office as private spoils and make the trade-off evident togoverning parties1 or we have to define policy more narrowly to make itmeaningful to talk about policy limits that may contradict the pursuit ofoffice

Explaining Party Goals

According to Stroslashmrsquos (1990) models of party behaviour party goals areinfluenced by party organisation and political institutions in particular Thisarticle focuses on the impact of party-specific factors such as bargainingposition and internal constraints

Before we turn to a discussion of the different explanatory factors andtheir expected impact on party goals it is crucial to consider the direction ofcausality Party goals are very basic characteristics of a party One mayargue that parties are formed based on specific goals party entrepreneurswill organise the party according to these goals and the goals may affect thepartyrsquos voter support Party goals and other party characteristics are thusrelated in a very complex manner However parties are not formed as staticunits but as organisations According to Katz and Mair (1992 1994) partyorganisations consist of different party faces which may not always be inagreement about party policy party strategies or basic goals like policy oroffice I argue that once a party is formed it is most accurate to see party

900 H H Pedersen

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goals as the result of these strategic actorsrsquo considerations of the currentpossibilities in the party system and the balance of power between them

Three factors influence basic party goals the internal organisation of theparty party size and the partyrsquos policy position First party activists areassumed to be less pragmatic than their party leaders in parliament and ifthey have a large say over strategic and substantive decisions they will beless willing to give up policy principles to win office or perhaps votes (Back2008 Katz 2001 288 Pedersen 2010a Stroslashm 1990 577) Party leaders arenot necessarily cynical office seekers ready to abandon any policyprogramme in order to gain private spoils and party activists are notnecessarily out of touch with reality and unbendable in policy negotiationsRather we assume that party leadersrsquo policy limits are wider than those ofparty activists since they enjoy the private spoils of office and are socialisedin parliament to accept the need to compromise to reach majority decisionsParty activists are more policy rigid since in their view policy is symbolicand carries a value in its own right which motivates party members and(unpaid) activists (Katz and Mair 1992) Hence we expect intra-partydemocracy to be positively related to the pursuit of policy

Second even internally democratic parties may find themselves in abargaining position where only small policy concessions are required to winoffice Based on the assumption that coalition formation is structured alonga policy dimension and the support of a majority in the representative bodyis needed for the coalition to be viable centre parties have a privilegedposition in coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990 111) Inmultiparty systems parties placed centrally in a policy space are morelikely to be able to enter coalitions with only minor compromises Incontrast extreme parties are less likely to be able to influence the coalitionrsquospolicy position since the necessary support of the centre parties may be lostThe trade-off between office and policy is therefore less difficult for partiescentrally placed in the party system since the concessions they need to makeare less hard This leads to the hypothesis that centrally placed parties aremore likely than policy-extreme parties to seek office The impact of policyposition may also be indirect as left-wing parties tend to be more internallydemocratic (Duverger 1964 Gibson and Harmel 1998 Hansen andPedersen 2003 Pedersen 2010b) and therefore less office seeking

Finally the most famous finding in studies of the payoff structure incoalition formation is the near-proportionality between the number ofministers a party has and the number of seats it contributes to the coalition(Gamson 1961) Assuming that the parties use these ministers to implementpolicy (Laver and Shepsle 1996) large parties are likely to enter coalitionsmaking only small compromises whereas small parties control fewerministers and hence fewer policy areas Consequently large parties face amore modest trade-off between office and policy This leads to a finalhypothesis stating that large parties are more likely to seek office than smallparties As in the case of policy position party size may influence party goals

Policy versus Office 901

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indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

902 H H Pedersen

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

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also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

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seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

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il 20

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general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

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office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

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indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

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3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

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position in coalition negotiations and generally large parties centrallyplaced in the policy space are expected to participate more often incoalitions than small policy-extreme parties (van Roozendaal 1990)However even these party-oriented theories still base their expectation onthe assumption that parties pursue the same goals and hence behavesimilarly given the same policy position and size

Theories on partiesrsquo organisational change have also been guided althoughless explicitly by the assumption that parties have homogeneous goals Eversince the influential work of Duverger (1964 [1951]) and Kirchheimer (1966)parties have been expected to adjust more or less automatically to externalchanges in order to perform well in their competition with other partiesParties have been expected to converge around specific party models eg themass party (Duverger 1964) the catch-all party (Kirchheimer 1966) thecartel party (Katz and Mair 1995) or the network party (Heidar and Saglie2003) The underlying premise of the idea of convergence is that parties aredriven by the same basic goals If parties were only secondarily interested inwinning votes but primarily interested in representing certain political ideaswe would not necessarily expect them to organise in a vote-maximisingmanner adjusting to the structural changes in society

Scholars working on coalition formation have to some extent consideredthe importance of divergent party goals Sened (1996) is among the fewscholars who have developed models of coalition formation which allow theweights of policy and office goals to vary across parties However thesetheoretical innovations have not been thoroughly tested (Shikano andLinhart 2010 112) and the models do not include explanations of thepresumed divergence in party goals Warwick (2006) argues that partieshave different policy horizons ie they differ in terms of their willingness tocompromise on policy in order to win office Furthermore based on theassumption that parties dominated by activists will be more policy seekingthan parties dominated by party leaders Pedersen (2010a) and Back (2008)argue that the former are less likely to join a coalition as they are less willingto abandon their policy to enter a coalition Their empirical analysessupport their argument that the higher the level of intra-party democracythe less likely a party is to enter coalitions

Research on party change began to consider the impact of divergent partygoals especially Harmel and Janda (1994 269ndash70) who argue that differenttypes of external shocks are of diverse importance to different partiesdepending on their primary goals Vote-maximising parties are moreresponsive to electoral failure than parties that primarily seek to advocatepolicy Therefore they argue that party change depends on party goalsRecent empirical analyses also show that party changes are certainlymediated by party goals (eg Duncan 2007 Mazzoleni 2009) howeverresearch on why party goal divergence is limited

The question of party goals relates not only to the similarity of goals butalso to how many goals parties might have and to what extent they are

898 H H Pedersen

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compatible Early coalition theories assumed that parties have only onegoal to get into office They may seek votes or policy as instruments to getinto office but their main goal is to obtain office benefits When the policygoal was included in coalition theory it was primarily seen as a supplementto office which was seen as a precondition for policy As coalitions areexpected to be majority coalitions membership of the executive provides thebest opportunity to influence policy as well as gaining office benefits andhence no trade-off between policy and office exists If this is in fact the casethere is no reason to expect intra-party politics to matter Party activistsshould be best off with an office-seeking leader and they have no reason totry to constrain hisher behaviour in coalition bargaining However thereare reasons to believe that this is not the case

First the idea that office is a precondition for policy only applies to partysystems where a single party has a majority on its own or in systems where thegovernment coalition has a majority In the case of minority governmentspolicy influence is not a benefit solely reserved for the government partiesEven in systems of majority (single-party) governments the opposition mayinfluence public policy indirectly through extra-parliamentary strategiesHence office may be instrumentally advantageous for parties seeking policybut it is not a precondition for influencing public policy

Second and according to Stroslashm (1990 571) parties are not likely to haveonly one goal He argues that parties have multiple goals not alwayscompatible but often conflicting Hence parties face trade-offs when theydecide on their strategies and behaviour Stroslashm (1990 567) lists three partygoals 1) policy defined as influencing public policy 2) votes defined asmaximising the share of votes won in an election and 3) office defined aslsquoprivate goods bestowed on recipients of politically discretionary govern-mental and sub-governmental appointmentsrsquo Harmel and Janda (1994) addintra-party democracy to the list and define it as a careful and activerepresentation of membersrsquo wishes The idea of multiple incompatible goalshas been fruitful in identifying the dilemmas parties are faced withHowever to make the incompatibility meaningful the goals have to becarefully defined

In fact Stroslashm defines office broadly as control over political office (Mullerand Stroslashm 1999 6) and narrowly as private goods (Stroslashm 1990 567) Thenarrow definition is most suitable for policy-blind coalition theorieswhereas the broad definition is more fitting for coalition theories includingpolicy objectives However if office is broadly defined it becomes difficult tosee the trade-off between office and policy In Stroslashmrsquos (1990 572) words

Institutionally policy influence and office benefits are often compatiblegoals since government incumbency promotes both However withingovernment coalitions parties often bargain separately over policyand portfolios In such situations parties may trade spoils for policyinfluence or vice versa Thus the trade-off between policy and office

Policy versus Office 899

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benefits arises mainly for governing parties However parties engagedin legislative coalitions (eg in support of minority government) mayface similar choices

If policy and office are only traded within coalitions there is no reason toexpect such trade-offs to influence the decision whether or not to enter acoalition A party only gains access to policy and office benefits byparticipating in coalitions Hence if both office and policy are definedbroadly as control over political office and influence on public policy onlygovernment parties may face a dilemma However the trade-off becomesmore evident and relevant to the coalition formation if the policy concept isdefined more narrowly and perhaps also more realistically According to thebroad policy definition parties are expected to enter any coalition thatmoves public policy slightly closer to the preferred party policy (Warwick2005 383) However if parties are also expected to consider who isresponsible for public policy they may choose not to enter a coalition ifpolicy payoffs are too small In that case the concepts of policy rigidity(Sanchez-Cuenca 2004) or policy horizons (Warwick 2006) may describehow parties draw policy limits as they prioritise between office and policy

Party goals are obviously not easily identified or defined Parties havemultiple goals including office policy votes and representation (intra-party democracy) that are not always compatible However to make thetrade-off especially between policy and office evident we have to eithernarrowly define office as private spoils and make the trade-off evident togoverning parties1 or we have to define policy more narrowly to make itmeaningful to talk about policy limits that may contradict the pursuit ofoffice

Explaining Party Goals

According to Stroslashmrsquos (1990) models of party behaviour party goals areinfluenced by party organisation and political institutions in particular Thisarticle focuses on the impact of party-specific factors such as bargainingposition and internal constraints

Before we turn to a discussion of the different explanatory factors andtheir expected impact on party goals it is crucial to consider the direction ofcausality Party goals are very basic characteristics of a party One mayargue that parties are formed based on specific goals party entrepreneurswill organise the party according to these goals and the goals may affect thepartyrsquos voter support Party goals and other party characteristics are thusrelated in a very complex manner However parties are not formed as staticunits but as organisations According to Katz and Mair (1992 1994) partyorganisations consist of different party faces which may not always be inagreement about party policy party strategies or basic goals like policy oroffice I argue that once a party is formed it is most accurate to see party

900 H H Pedersen

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goals as the result of these strategic actorsrsquo considerations of the currentpossibilities in the party system and the balance of power between them

Three factors influence basic party goals the internal organisation of theparty party size and the partyrsquos policy position First party activists areassumed to be less pragmatic than their party leaders in parliament and ifthey have a large say over strategic and substantive decisions they will beless willing to give up policy principles to win office or perhaps votes (Back2008 Katz 2001 288 Pedersen 2010a Stroslashm 1990 577) Party leaders arenot necessarily cynical office seekers ready to abandon any policyprogramme in order to gain private spoils and party activists are notnecessarily out of touch with reality and unbendable in policy negotiationsRather we assume that party leadersrsquo policy limits are wider than those ofparty activists since they enjoy the private spoils of office and are socialisedin parliament to accept the need to compromise to reach majority decisionsParty activists are more policy rigid since in their view policy is symbolicand carries a value in its own right which motivates party members and(unpaid) activists (Katz and Mair 1992) Hence we expect intra-partydemocracy to be positively related to the pursuit of policy

Second even internally democratic parties may find themselves in abargaining position where only small policy concessions are required to winoffice Based on the assumption that coalition formation is structured alonga policy dimension and the support of a majority in the representative bodyis needed for the coalition to be viable centre parties have a privilegedposition in coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990 111) Inmultiparty systems parties placed centrally in a policy space are morelikely to be able to enter coalitions with only minor compromises Incontrast extreme parties are less likely to be able to influence the coalitionrsquospolicy position since the necessary support of the centre parties may be lostThe trade-off between office and policy is therefore less difficult for partiescentrally placed in the party system since the concessions they need to makeare less hard This leads to the hypothesis that centrally placed parties aremore likely than policy-extreme parties to seek office The impact of policyposition may also be indirect as left-wing parties tend to be more internallydemocratic (Duverger 1964 Gibson and Harmel 1998 Hansen andPedersen 2003 Pedersen 2010b) and therefore less office seeking

Finally the most famous finding in studies of the payoff structure incoalition formation is the near-proportionality between the number ofministers a party has and the number of seats it contributes to the coalition(Gamson 1961) Assuming that the parties use these ministers to implementpolicy (Laver and Shepsle 1996) large parties are likely to enter coalitionsmaking only small compromises whereas small parties control fewerministers and hence fewer policy areas Consequently large parties face amore modest trade-off between office and policy This leads to a finalhypothesis stating that large parties are more likely to seek office than smallparties As in the case of policy position party size may influence party goals

Policy versus Office 901

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indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

902 H H Pedersen

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

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also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

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seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

Dow

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general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

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il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

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indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

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27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

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compatible Early coalition theories assumed that parties have only onegoal to get into office They may seek votes or policy as instruments to getinto office but their main goal is to obtain office benefits When the policygoal was included in coalition theory it was primarily seen as a supplementto office which was seen as a precondition for policy As coalitions areexpected to be majority coalitions membership of the executive provides thebest opportunity to influence policy as well as gaining office benefits andhence no trade-off between policy and office exists If this is in fact the casethere is no reason to expect intra-party politics to matter Party activistsshould be best off with an office-seeking leader and they have no reason totry to constrain hisher behaviour in coalition bargaining However thereare reasons to believe that this is not the case

First the idea that office is a precondition for policy only applies to partysystems where a single party has a majority on its own or in systems where thegovernment coalition has a majority In the case of minority governmentspolicy influence is not a benefit solely reserved for the government partiesEven in systems of majority (single-party) governments the opposition mayinfluence public policy indirectly through extra-parliamentary strategiesHence office may be instrumentally advantageous for parties seeking policybut it is not a precondition for influencing public policy

Second and according to Stroslashm (1990 571) parties are not likely to haveonly one goal He argues that parties have multiple goals not alwayscompatible but often conflicting Hence parties face trade-offs when theydecide on their strategies and behaviour Stroslashm (1990 567) lists three partygoals 1) policy defined as influencing public policy 2) votes defined asmaximising the share of votes won in an election and 3) office defined aslsquoprivate goods bestowed on recipients of politically discretionary govern-mental and sub-governmental appointmentsrsquo Harmel and Janda (1994) addintra-party democracy to the list and define it as a careful and activerepresentation of membersrsquo wishes The idea of multiple incompatible goalshas been fruitful in identifying the dilemmas parties are faced withHowever to make the incompatibility meaningful the goals have to becarefully defined

In fact Stroslashm defines office broadly as control over political office (Mullerand Stroslashm 1999 6) and narrowly as private goods (Stroslashm 1990 567) Thenarrow definition is most suitable for policy-blind coalition theorieswhereas the broad definition is more fitting for coalition theories includingpolicy objectives However if office is broadly defined it becomes difficult tosee the trade-off between office and policy In Stroslashmrsquos (1990 572) words

Institutionally policy influence and office benefits are often compatiblegoals since government incumbency promotes both However withingovernment coalitions parties often bargain separately over policyand portfolios In such situations parties may trade spoils for policyinfluence or vice versa Thus the trade-off between policy and office

Policy versus Office 899

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benefits arises mainly for governing parties However parties engagedin legislative coalitions (eg in support of minority government) mayface similar choices

If policy and office are only traded within coalitions there is no reason toexpect such trade-offs to influence the decision whether or not to enter acoalition A party only gains access to policy and office benefits byparticipating in coalitions Hence if both office and policy are definedbroadly as control over political office and influence on public policy onlygovernment parties may face a dilemma However the trade-off becomesmore evident and relevant to the coalition formation if the policy concept isdefined more narrowly and perhaps also more realistically According to thebroad policy definition parties are expected to enter any coalition thatmoves public policy slightly closer to the preferred party policy (Warwick2005 383) However if parties are also expected to consider who isresponsible for public policy they may choose not to enter a coalition ifpolicy payoffs are too small In that case the concepts of policy rigidity(Sanchez-Cuenca 2004) or policy horizons (Warwick 2006) may describehow parties draw policy limits as they prioritise between office and policy

Party goals are obviously not easily identified or defined Parties havemultiple goals including office policy votes and representation (intra-party democracy) that are not always compatible However to make thetrade-off especially between policy and office evident we have to eithernarrowly define office as private spoils and make the trade-off evident togoverning parties1 or we have to define policy more narrowly to make itmeaningful to talk about policy limits that may contradict the pursuit ofoffice

Explaining Party Goals

According to Stroslashmrsquos (1990) models of party behaviour party goals areinfluenced by party organisation and political institutions in particular Thisarticle focuses on the impact of party-specific factors such as bargainingposition and internal constraints

Before we turn to a discussion of the different explanatory factors andtheir expected impact on party goals it is crucial to consider the direction ofcausality Party goals are very basic characteristics of a party One mayargue that parties are formed based on specific goals party entrepreneurswill organise the party according to these goals and the goals may affect thepartyrsquos voter support Party goals and other party characteristics are thusrelated in a very complex manner However parties are not formed as staticunits but as organisations According to Katz and Mair (1992 1994) partyorganisations consist of different party faces which may not always be inagreement about party policy party strategies or basic goals like policy oroffice I argue that once a party is formed it is most accurate to see party

900 H H Pedersen

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goals as the result of these strategic actorsrsquo considerations of the currentpossibilities in the party system and the balance of power between them

Three factors influence basic party goals the internal organisation of theparty party size and the partyrsquos policy position First party activists areassumed to be less pragmatic than their party leaders in parliament and ifthey have a large say over strategic and substantive decisions they will beless willing to give up policy principles to win office or perhaps votes (Back2008 Katz 2001 288 Pedersen 2010a Stroslashm 1990 577) Party leaders arenot necessarily cynical office seekers ready to abandon any policyprogramme in order to gain private spoils and party activists are notnecessarily out of touch with reality and unbendable in policy negotiationsRather we assume that party leadersrsquo policy limits are wider than those ofparty activists since they enjoy the private spoils of office and are socialisedin parliament to accept the need to compromise to reach majority decisionsParty activists are more policy rigid since in their view policy is symbolicand carries a value in its own right which motivates party members and(unpaid) activists (Katz and Mair 1992) Hence we expect intra-partydemocracy to be positively related to the pursuit of policy

Second even internally democratic parties may find themselves in abargaining position where only small policy concessions are required to winoffice Based on the assumption that coalition formation is structured alonga policy dimension and the support of a majority in the representative bodyis needed for the coalition to be viable centre parties have a privilegedposition in coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990 111) Inmultiparty systems parties placed centrally in a policy space are morelikely to be able to enter coalitions with only minor compromises Incontrast extreme parties are less likely to be able to influence the coalitionrsquospolicy position since the necessary support of the centre parties may be lostThe trade-off between office and policy is therefore less difficult for partiescentrally placed in the party system since the concessions they need to makeare less hard This leads to the hypothesis that centrally placed parties aremore likely than policy-extreme parties to seek office The impact of policyposition may also be indirect as left-wing parties tend to be more internallydemocratic (Duverger 1964 Gibson and Harmel 1998 Hansen andPedersen 2003 Pedersen 2010b) and therefore less office seeking

Finally the most famous finding in studies of the payoff structure incoalition formation is the near-proportionality between the number ofministers a party has and the number of seats it contributes to the coalition(Gamson 1961) Assuming that the parties use these ministers to implementpolicy (Laver and Shepsle 1996) large parties are likely to enter coalitionsmaking only small compromises whereas small parties control fewerministers and hence fewer policy areas Consequently large parties face amore modest trade-off between office and policy This leads to a finalhypothesis stating that large parties are more likely to seek office than smallparties As in the case of policy position party size may influence party goals

Policy versus Office 901

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indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

902 H H Pedersen

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

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also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

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il 20

13

seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

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il 20

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general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

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il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

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27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

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ded

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517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

benefits arises mainly for governing parties However parties engagedin legislative coalitions (eg in support of minority government) mayface similar choices

If policy and office are only traded within coalitions there is no reason toexpect such trade-offs to influence the decision whether or not to enter acoalition A party only gains access to policy and office benefits byparticipating in coalitions Hence if both office and policy are definedbroadly as control over political office and influence on public policy onlygovernment parties may face a dilemma However the trade-off becomesmore evident and relevant to the coalition formation if the policy concept isdefined more narrowly and perhaps also more realistically According to thebroad policy definition parties are expected to enter any coalition thatmoves public policy slightly closer to the preferred party policy (Warwick2005 383) However if parties are also expected to consider who isresponsible for public policy they may choose not to enter a coalition ifpolicy payoffs are too small In that case the concepts of policy rigidity(Sanchez-Cuenca 2004) or policy horizons (Warwick 2006) may describehow parties draw policy limits as they prioritise between office and policy

Party goals are obviously not easily identified or defined Parties havemultiple goals including office policy votes and representation (intra-party democracy) that are not always compatible However to make thetrade-off especially between policy and office evident we have to eithernarrowly define office as private spoils and make the trade-off evident togoverning parties1 or we have to define policy more narrowly to make itmeaningful to talk about policy limits that may contradict the pursuit ofoffice

Explaining Party Goals

According to Stroslashmrsquos (1990) models of party behaviour party goals areinfluenced by party organisation and political institutions in particular Thisarticle focuses on the impact of party-specific factors such as bargainingposition and internal constraints

Before we turn to a discussion of the different explanatory factors andtheir expected impact on party goals it is crucial to consider the direction ofcausality Party goals are very basic characteristics of a party One mayargue that parties are formed based on specific goals party entrepreneurswill organise the party according to these goals and the goals may affect thepartyrsquos voter support Party goals and other party characteristics are thusrelated in a very complex manner However parties are not formed as staticunits but as organisations According to Katz and Mair (1992 1994) partyorganisations consist of different party faces which may not always be inagreement about party policy party strategies or basic goals like policy oroffice I argue that once a party is formed it is most accurate to see party

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goals as the result of these strategic actorsrsquo considerations of the currentpossibilities in the party system and the balance of power between them

Three factors influence basic party goals the internal organisation of theparty party size and the partyrsquos policy position First party activists areassumed to be less pragmatic than their party leaders in parliament and ifthey have a large say over strategic and substantive decisions they will beless willing to give up policy principles to win office or perhaps votes (Back2008 Katz 2001 288 Pedersen 2010a Stroslashm 1990 577) Party leaders arenot necessarily cynical office seekers ready to abandon any policyprogramme in order to gain private spoils and party activists are notnecessarily out of touch with reality and unbendable in policy negotiationsRather we assume that party leadersrsquo policy limits are wider than those ofparty activists since they enjoy the private spoils of office and are socialisedin parliament to accept the need to compromise to reach majority decisionsParty activists are more policy rigid since in their view policy is symbolicand carries a value in its own right which motivates party members and(unpaid) activists (Katz and Mair 1992) Hence we expect intra-partydemocracy to be positively related to the pursuit of policy

Second even internally democratic parties may find themselves in abargaining position where only small policy concessions are required to winoffice Based on the assumption that coalition formation is structured alonga policy dimension and the support of a majority in the representative bodyis needed for the coalition to be viable centre parties have a privilegedposition in coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990 111) Inmultiparty systems parties placed centrally in a policy space are morelikely to be able to enter coalitions with only minor compromises Incontrast extreme parties are less likely to be able to influence the coalitionrsquospolicy position since the necessary support of the centre parties may be lostThe trade-off between office and policy is therefore less difficult for partiescentrally placed in the party system since the concessions they need to makeare less hard This leads to the hypothesis that centrally placed parties aremore likely than policy-extreme parties to seek office The impact of policyposition may also be indirect as left-wing parties tend to be more internallydemocratic (Duverger 1964 Gibson and Harmel 1998 Hansen andPedersen 2003 Pedersen 2010b) and therefore less office seeking

Finally the most famous finding in studies of the payoff structure incoalition formation is the near-proportionality between the number ofministers a party has and the number of seats it contributes to the coalition(Gamson 1961) Assuming that the parties use these ministers to implementpolicy (Laver and Shepsle 1996) large parties are likely to enter coalitionsmaking only small compromises whereas small parties control fewerministers and hence fewer policy areas Consequently large parties face amore modest trade-off between office and policy This leads to a finalhypothesis stating that large parties are more likely to seek office than smallparties As in the case of policy position party size may influence party goals

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indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

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also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

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seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

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general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

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office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

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indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

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3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

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il 20

13

goals as the result of these strategic actorsrsquo considerations of the currentpossibilities in the party system and the balance of power between them

Three factors influence basic party goals the internal organisation of theparty party size and the partyrsquos policy position First party activists areassumed to be less pragmatic than their party leaders in parliament and ifthey have a large say over strategic and substantive decisions they will beless willing to give up policy principles to win office or perhaps votes (Back2008 Katz 2001 288 Pedersen 2010a Stroslashm 1990 577) Party leaders arenot necessarily cynical office seekers ready to abandon any policyprogramme in order to gain private spoils and party activists are notnecessarily out of touch with reality and unbendable in policy negotiationsRather we assume that party leadersrsquo policy limits are wider than those ofparty activists since they enjoy the private spoils of office and are socialisedin parliament to accept the need to compromise to reach majority decisionsParty activists are more policy rigid since in their view policy is symbolicand carries a value in its own right which motivates party members and(unpaid) activists (Katz and Mair 1992) Hence we expect intra-partydemocracy to be positively related to the pursuit of policy

Second even internally democratic parties may find themselves in abargaining position where only small policy concessions are required to winoffice Based on the assumption that coalition formation is structured alonga policy dimension and the support of a majority in the representative bodyis needed for the coalition to be viable centre parties have a privilegedposition in coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990 111) Inmultiparty systems parties placed centrally in a policy space are morelikely to be able to enter coalitions with only minor compromises Incontrast extreme parties are less likely to be able to influence the coalitionrsquospolicy position since the necessary support of the centre parties may be lostThe trade-off between office and policy is therefore less difficult for partiescentrally placed in the party system since the concessions they need to makeare less hard This leads to the hypothesis that centrally placed parties aremore likely than policy-extreme parties to seek office The impact of policyposition may also be indirect as left-wing parties tend to be more internallydemocratic (Duverger 1964 Gibson and Harmel 1998 Hansen andPedersen 2003 Pedersen 2010b) and therefore less office seeking

Finally the most famous finding in studies of the payoff structure incoalition formation is the near-proportionality between the number ofministers a party has and the number of seats it contributes to the coalition(Gamson 1961) Assuming that the parties use these ministers to implementpolicy (Laver and Shepsle 1996) large parties are likely to enter coalitionsmaking only small compromises whereas small parties control fewerministers and hence fewer policy areas Consequently large parties face amore modest trade-off between office and policy This leads to a finalhypothesis stating that large parties are more likely to seek office than smallparties As in the case of policy position party size may influence party goals

Policy versus Office 901

Dow

nloa

ded

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Geo

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517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

902 H H Pedersen

Dow

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ded

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

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at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

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seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

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general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

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office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

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indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

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3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

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indirectly since party size can be expected to be related to the internal partyorganisation (Michels 1966)

Data and Measurement

Two data sources are applied to evaluate the three hypotheses Laver andHuntrsquos (1992) expert survey conducted in 1989 and data obtained from theParty Change Project headed by Harmel and Janda (1996) There are tworeasons to use two data sources First it makes it possible to comparedifferent measures of very complex concepts and thereby to test the validityand reliability of the measures Second the two data sources have differentstrengths Laver and Huntrsquos data include information on parties from 25countries making it possible to draw general conclusions about thehypothesis tested Harmel and Jandarsquos data include more party goals intheir operationalisation of party goal prioritisation which allows fornuanced conclusions about the similarity of party goals Moreover the twodatasets are based on different sources Laver and Huntrsquos data are obtainedfrom a large-scale expert survey whereas Harmel and Jandarsquos data arecollected based on a comprehensive literature review By comparing the twodatasets we are able to evaluate possible weaknesses in both types

Measuring Party Goals

Regarding party goals there is one relevant question in Laver and Huntrsquos(1992) survey The respondents were asked to lsquomake judgments on theextent to which the party leaders trade-off policy objectives against gettinginto office when bargaining over government formationrsquo (ibid 40) Thequestion was formulated as follows

Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up policy objectivesin order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place ingovernment in order to maintain policy objectives (Ibid 125question 14)

The question only concerns the party goals of policy and office and neglectsother possible goals such as intra-party democracy and votes However theforce of the question is that it makes the expert assess a situation in whichpolicy and office are incompatible goals thus assuring that the party isevaluated in this specific situation The answers are given in numbers 1 to20 lsquo1rsquo indicates maximum willingness to give up office in order to maintainpolicy lsquo20rsquo indicates maximum willingness to abandon policy to gain officeOf the observations 595 per cent score above lsquo10rsquo meaning that they wouldprioritise office over policy if they had to choose

Harmel and Jandarsquos Party Change Project (1996) includes parties fromfour countries Denmark Germany Britain and the US Data were coded

902 H H Pedersen

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from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

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also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

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seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

Dow

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ded

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Apr

il 20

13

general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

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il 20

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office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

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Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

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rget

own

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ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

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ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

from 1950 to 1990 The analyses conducted here are based on data from1990 Harmel and Janda list four party goals 1) votes defined as winningvotes and elections 2) office defined as gaining executive office 3) policydefined as advocacy of interestsissuesideology They argue that lsquowhen aparty consistently places ideological or issue purity andor pursuit of aparticular interest above practical electoral concerns it is apparently givingprimacy to the policy goal over votes or officersquo (Harmel and Janda 1996 3)The final goal (4) is democracy defined as implementing intrapartydemocracy

The relative priorities regarding the four goals are coded primarily basedon the review of secondary party material Indicators of the democracy goalare mainly organisational features such as regular meetings in membershiporgans and rotation requirements The policy goal is indicated byenforcement policies fostering party discipline and figures on the relativecosts spent on candidate-oriented material versus policy-oriented materialThe office goal is indicated by public statements on willingness to join varioustypes of coalitions and the vote goal is whether meetings in party organs areheld only before elections or if the party is inclined to keep party factionswithin the party even though they may insist on policy concessions Table 1shows the frequency distribution of the priority of policy The variable cantake on four values first second third and fourth priority First priority isassociated with the value 1 fourth priority with the value 4 Hence lowvalues indicate high priority The priority of policy varies from first to fourthpriority However 684 per cent of the parties give first or second priority topolicy Most frequently parties give policy second priority To most partiespolicy is a very important goal but there is no sign of perfect similarity Insum parties do indeed rank different goals differently

To check the quality of the measures I test whether they are correlatedAlthough the two databases are based on different data sources some of thesecondary material used by coders in the Party Change Project is very likelyto be written by the experts estimating party goals in Laver and Huntrsquosproject However as the indicators used in the Party Change Project showlsquoharderrsquo data such as number of meetings and party statutes were includedHence the correlation analysis is not only an inter-coding reliability test but

TABLE 1

PARTIESrsquo PRIORITY OF POLICY IN RELATION TO OFFICE VOTES AND

INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY 1990

Priority Absolute

Cumulative

1st 5 263 2632nd 8 421 6843rd 4 211 8954th 2 105 1000

Total 19 1000

Policy versus Office 903

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ded

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ity]

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il 20

13

also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

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ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

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vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

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ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

also a validity test The correlation analysis shows that the two measures arepositively and significantly correlated (gammafrac14 0453) for the 18 partiesincluded in both databases If Harmel and Jandarsquos data are coded only forthe trade-off between policy and office which is measured in Laver andHuntrsquos data gamma increases to 0650

Measuring Intra-party Democracy

Both databases also include information on intra-party democracy Laverand Hunt (1992 124 question 11) ask their country specialists to assess theinfluence of party activists on the formation of party policy and to assess theinfluence of party activists on decisions about participation in government(ibid question 12) The specialists can use numbers from 1 to 20 highvalues indicate greater influence The measures are very highly correlated(Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0854) and are therefore combined in a simple additive lsquoIntra-party democracyrsquo index (Cronbachrsquos alphafrac14 0915)

Harmel and Janda measure the extent to which the extra-parliamentaryparty may control the parliamentary group and their actions Assuming thatthe primary constituency of the extra-parliamentary party is the partymembers whereas the primary constituency of the parliamentary party isthe electorate this is also a measure of intra-party democracy (Gibson andHarmel 1998) To measure the concept lsquoparliamentary versus extra-parliamentary powerrsquo they use seven items2 Again the coding is based onsecondary literature on the parties and they have consulted country expertsregarding the final coding Based on a factor analysis they include thefollowing four items in their final index called lsquoparlextraparlrsquo (Harmel andJanda 1996 7ndash13)

1) Rotation is it a requirement that the partyrsquos MPs rotate out of officeafter a particular period of time If so is the rotation requirement takenseriously

2) Policy to what extent is the extra-parliamentary party (as opposed tothe parliamentary group) responsible for formulating the partyrsquos publicpolicy position

3) Conformity to what extent is the parliamentary group required toconform to the extra-parliamentary organisationrsquos policy position

4) Discipline who if anyone is responsible for disciplining parliamentaryrepresentatives who deviate from the extra-parliamentary partyrsquos policyposition

Again estimating the correlation between lsquoparlextraparlrsquo and lsquointra-partydemocracyrsquo allows us to test the reliability and validity of the measures Themeasures are highly correlated (gammafrac14 0774) and it is reasonable tointerpret the correlation as a test of validity as the two questions in Laverand Huntrsquos questionnaire and the items used by Harmel and Janda could be

904 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

seen as different aspects of intra-party democracy Whereas Laver and Hunt(1992) ask directly about activist influence Gibson and Harmel (1998)assume that the strength of the extra-parliamentary party organisation is anindicator of intra-party democracy

Measuring Size and Policy Position

Party size is measured as the share of parliamentary seats a party holds3

The policy position is estimated based on two dimensions in Laver andHuntrsquos study 1) increase services (1) versus cut taxes (20) and 2) pro-publicownership (1) versus anti-public ownership (20) The two dimensions arehighly correlated (Pearsonrsquos rfrac14 0924) and a combined measure of the twoplaces the parties along a leftndashright policy dimension

Study One Are Party Goals Homogeneous

In Harmel and Jandarsquos (1996) data it is possible to rank four party goalspolicy office intra-party democracy and votes in 24 different ways Acrossthe 19 parties indicating substantial goal divergence 12 rankings are foundThe most common combination is 1) office 2) policy 3) votes and 4) intra-party democracy which however only appears four times Intra-partydemocracy is the only goal that never has first priority 632 per cent of theparties have office as first or second priority while 263 per cent have officeas first and policy as second priority Only one of the parties with policy asfirst priority has office as second priority Hence it seems that primarilyoffice-seeking parties also give rather high priority to policy whereasprimarily policy-seeking parties do not give very high priority to office

Goals tend to appear as pairs in the ranking order as policydemocracyand votesoffice However the trend is not strong Ten of 19 parties haverankings in which policy and intra-party democracy is either first and secondor third and fourth Variation in terms of how parties rank different goalsappears to be large which indicates that party goals are not homogenousHowever only five of 19 parties do not have office or policy as first priorityand three of these are parties in two-party systems in which votes are theprecondition for office (and policy) Hence parties do indeed rank differentgoals differently but it is also reasonable to conclude that office and policyare the most important goals to most political parties across differentcountries

Figure 1 based on Laver and Huntrsquos expert survey (1992) focuses on theranking of policy and office and shows to what extent parties are willing togive up policy to win office Very few parties are willing to give up any policyto win office and only a few parties are not willing to give up any policy inorder to win office Thus most parties are not solely office or policy seekersOf the parties 405 per cent score lower than 10 which means that amajority of parties (595 per cent) give office a higher priority than policy In

Policy versus Office 905

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

general however the partiesrsquo willingness to give up policy for office benefitsvaries greatly

Study Two Do Party-Specific Factors Influence the Ranking of Office and

Policy

Based on Laver and Huntrsquos (1992) survey data we run a multilevel analysiswith parties represented in national parliaments in 1990 as analytical unitsAs the main focus here is on party-specific factors explaining differences ingoal prioritisation a fixed effects model is used to control for the impact ofcountry-level variables This type of model is necessary as a test shows thatthe between-country variance is different from zero with a p-value equal to0045 All variables are recoded to run from 0 to 1 The policy positionsquared is included as a curvilinear relationship was expected partiescentrally placed in the policy space are expected to be more oriented towards

FIGURE 1

HISTOGRAM SHOWING THE SCORES ON THE PARTIESrsquo WILLINGNESS TO GIVE

UP POLICY (1) TO WIN OFFICE (20) ABSOLUTE SCORES

Note The question was formulated Forced to make a choice would party leaders give up

policy objectives in order to get into government (1) or would they sacrifice a place in

government in order to maintain policy objectives (20)

906 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

office than left- or right-wing parties which a scatterplot proves to be trueIt is worth noticing that there is no sign of multicollinearity across theseindependent variables Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis

One important result of the analysis is that intra-party democracy has asignificant and negative impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to choose officeover policy As expected the more internally democratic the parties are theless likely they are to prioritise office over policy4 Therefore the ranking ofdifferent goals varies across parties in a systematic manner influenced bytheir internal organisation of power The analysis also shows that party sizehas a significant and positive impact on the partiesrsquo propensity to seek officeover policy As expected large parties are generally more office seeking thansmall parties Further since the coefficient of the squared policy position isnegative the relationship is as expected concave Mainstream partiesplaced centrally on the leftndashright policy dimension are more likely to seekoffice over policy than parties placed at the ends of the dimension Henceboth right-wing and left-wing parties tend to give policy higher priorityThese findings suggest that the size and policy position of political partiesinfluence how troublesome the trade-off is between office and policy Largecentrally placed parties have to make smaller policy compromises to winoffice and are therefore more inclined to seek office

In sum the analyses show first that the ranking of different goals variesacross parties yet policy or office is the most frequent first priority Secondthe analyses show that the evaluation of different goals depends on inter-party as well as intra-party circumstances High levels of intra-partydemocracy are associated with high priority of policy indicating that whenparty activists are influential the party as a unit is less likely to give policyconcessions to win office High levels of bargaining strength in terms ofpolicy position and party size are associated with high priority of office

TABLE 2

DOES INTRA-PARTY DEMOCRACY INFLUENCE PARTY GOALS FIXED EFFECTS

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS

Model

Intra-party democracy 70275Party size 0323Policy position 1933Squared policy position 71681Constant 0243R2 0528F-test 28730N 117

Notes Dependent variable Do party leaders forced to make a choice give priority to policyover office or vice versa High values indicate that party leaders choose office over policyGreece is left out as the database did not have sufficient information on intra-party democracyand the trade-off between office and policy Moreover parties that were not represented inparliament in 1990 are left outp5 0001 p5 0010 p5 0050 two-tailed tests

Policy versus Office 907

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

indicating that the trade-off between policy and office is less hard for partiesin favourable bargaining positions

Concluding Discussion

The study of party goals is important for numerous reasons Knowledgeabout party preferences improves our understanding and explanation ofparty behaviour as campaign organisations as membership organisationsand as governing organisations As party goals are important to partybehaviour they are also important to the practice of party democracy andhence the way parties serve as connection between civil society and the state

The article demonstrates that party preferences vary across parties Thismeans that theories on party behaviour need to take account of divergencein party preferences which will make parties choose different strategies foreg coalition formation organisational changes or policy positioning Oneway to take account of divergence in party preference is as pointed out inthe article to include information on intra-party politics which was shownto have a significant impact on party preferences The unitary actorassumption which has especially guided theories on coalition formationtherefore needs to be revised since organisational differences in parties haveproven important for the preferences of parties as units Further this resultsuggests that political entrepreneurs wanting to form new parties face adilemma Internally democratic decision procedures may attract policy-oriented party members that contribute with (cheap) labour votes andpossibly also mobilisation and persuasion of potential voters However astrong base of party members influencing party strategy and policy tends toreduce a partyrsquos flexibility in inter-party negotiations in parliament whichmakes it more difficult for the party leader to seek office

The analyses also indicated that country-level factors such as politicalinstitutions and political culture affect party preferences However thisarticle has not spelled out which country-level factors are important andhow they interact with party-specific factors such as intra-party democracyparty size and policy position Future research should investigate thesequestions to find out whether specific political institutions foster certaintypes of parties in terms of goals

Notes

1 However Laver and Shepsle (1990) argue that ministers are absolute leaders in their policy

area meaning that ministerial positions and policy influence go hand in hand

2 These items are 1) control over the selection of parliamentary candidates 2) the extent to

which the extra-parliamentary party is involved in the selection of the parliamentary group

leader 3) existence and implementation of rotation rules 4) responsibility for disciplining

parliamentary representatives 5) requirements to conform to the policy position of the extra-

parliamentary party 6) responsibility for formulating public policy positions and 7) whether

the primary leadership is held by the extra-parliamentary or parliamentary party

908 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

3 These numbers are given in Webb et al (2002) and in Diamond and Gunther (2001) I have

used the results from the last election before 1990

4 This result is robust even if the index of intra-party democracy is split up using the single

variables activist influence on party policy and activist influence on decisions on

government participation The regression coefficient of the latter is greater (ndash0404) than

the one regarding party policy (ndash0226) which was to be expected but both coefficients are

negative and significant

References

Axelrod Robert (1970) Conflict of Interests A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to

Politics Chicago Markham

Back Hannah (2008) lsquoIntra-Party Politics and Coalition Formation Evidence from Swedish

Local Governmentrsquo Party Politics 141 71ndash89

Diamond Larry and Richard Gunther (2001) Political Parties and Democracy Baltimore

MD Johns Hopkins University Press

Duncan Fraser (2007) lsquolsquolsquoLately Things Just Donrsquot Seem the Samersquorsquo External Shocks Party

Change and the Adaption of the Dutch Christian Democrats during lsquolsquoPurple Haguersquorsquo 1994ndash

8rsquo Party Politics 131 69ndash87

Duverger Michel (1964 [1951]) Political Parties Their Organization and Activity in the Modern

State London Methuen

Gamson William (1961) lsquoA Theory of Coalition Formationrsquo American Sociological Review

263 373ndash82

Gibson Rachel and Robert Harmel (1998) lsquoParty Families and Democratic Performance

Extraparliamentary versus Parliamentary Group Powerrsquo in Richard Hofferbert (ed) Parties

and Democracy Oxford Blackwell Publishers 211ndash29

Hansen Bernhard and Karina Pedersen (2003) lsquoMedlemsrollen og det interne partidemokratirsquo

in Lars Bille and Joslashrgen Elklit (eds) Partiernes medlemmer Aarhus Aarhus University

Press 103ndash32

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1994) lsquoAn Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party

Changersquo Journal of Theoretical Politics 63 259ndash87

Harmel Robert and Kenneth Janda (1996) The Party Change Project available at http

www-poliscitamueduprogramscrossdata (accessed 15 May 2012)

Heidar Knut and Jo Saglie (2003) lsquoPredestined Parties Organizational Change in Norwegian

Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 92 219ndash39

Katz Richard S (2001) lsquoThe Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party

Democracyrsquo Party Politics 73 277ndash96

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair eds (1992) Party Organizations A Data Handbook London

Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1994) How Parties Organize Change and Adaption in Party

Organizations in Western Democracies London Sage Publications

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1995) lsquoChanging Models of Party Organization and Party

Democracy The Emergence of the Cartel Partyrsquo Party Politics 11 5ndash28

Katz Richard S and Peter Mair (1996) lsquoCadre Catch-All or Cartel A Rejoinderrsquo Party

Politics 24 525ndash34

Kirchheimer Otto (1966) lsquoThe Transformation of the Western European Party Systemsrsquo in

Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds) How Parties Organise Change and Adaption

in Party Organisation in Western Democracies London Sage 177ndash200

Laver Michael and W Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party CompetitionNew York Routledge

Laver Michael and Norman Schofield (1990)Multiparty Government The Politics of Coalition

in Europe Oxford Oxford University Press

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1990) lsquoGovernment coalitions and intraparty politicsrsquo

British Journal of Political Science 20 489ndash507

Policy versus Office 909

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13

Laver Michael and Kenneth A Shepsle (1996) Making and Breaking Governments Cabinets

and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Mazzoleni Martino (2009) lsquoThe Saliency of Regionalization in Party Systems A Comparative

Analysis of Regional Decentralization in Party Manifestosrsquo Party Politics 152 199ndash218

Michels Robert (1966 [1915]) Political Parties New York Free Press

Muller Wolfgang C and Kaare Stroslashm eds (1999) Policy Office or Votes How Political

Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Pedersen Helene H (2010a) lsquoHow Intra-Party Power Relations Affect the Coalition Behaviour

of Political Partiesrsquo Party Politics 166 737ndash55

Pedersen Helene H (2010b) lsquoDifferences and Changes in Danish Party Organisations Central

Party Organization versus Parliamentary Party Group Powerrsquo Journal of Legislative Studies

162 233ndash51

Riker William H (1962) The Theory of Political Coalitions New Haven CT Yale University

Press 77ndash102

Sanchez-Cuenca Ignacio (2004) lsquoParty Moderation and Politiciansrsquo Ideological Rigidityrsquo

Party Politics 103 325ndash42

Sened Itai (1996) lsquoA Model of Coalition Formation Theory and Evidencersquo The Journal of

Politics 582 350ndash72

Shikano Susumu and Eric Linhart (2010) lsquoCoalition-Formation as a Result of Policy and

Office Motivations in the German Federal Statesrsquo Party Politics 161 111ndash30

Smith Gordon (1989) lsquoA System Perspective on Party System Changersquo Journal of Theoretical

Politics 13 349ndash63

Stroslashm Kaare (1990) lsquoA Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Partiesrsquo American Journal

of Political Science 342 565ndash98

Van Roozendaal P (1990) lsquoCentre Parties and Coalition Cabinet Formation A Game

Theoretic Approachrsquo European Journal of Political Research 18 325ndash48

Von Beyme Klaus (1983) lsquoGovernments Parliaments and the Structure of Power in Political

Partiesrsquo in Hans Daadler and Peter Mair (eds) Western European Party Systems Continuity

and Change London Sage 341ndash67

Von Neumann John and Oskar Morgenstern (1953) Theory of Games and Economic

Behaviour Princeton NJ Princeton University Press

Warwick Paul V (2005) lsquoWhen Far Apart Becomes Too Far Apart Evidence for a Threshold

Effect in Coalition Formationrsquo British Journal of Political Science 353 383ndash401

Warwick Paul V (2006) Policy Horizons and Parliamentary Government New York Palgrave

Macmillan

Webb Paul David M Farrell and Ian Holliday eds (2002) Political Parties in Advanced

Industrial Democracies Oxford Oxford University Press

910 H H Pedersen

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rget

own

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

517

27

Apr

il 20

13