Marching to different drums: The consequences of intra-party divisions on party and voting behavior

Abstract

As complex organizations, political parties often internally disagree over key policy issues. These divisions have become increasingly relevant for European politics. Yet, dominant theoretical approaches to party competition still assume that parties are unitary actors. I posit that this assumption is empirically unfounded and limits our understanding of important political phenomena. By theorizing the effects of intra-party divisions, the dissertation helps us understand why parties and voters often behave in ways that go against the predictions of the dominant approaches. The first part of this dissertation theorizes and empirically tests how intra-party divisions shape party behavior. I find that parties generally avoid divisive issues but may also change or blur their divisive positions. External pressures exerted by niche rivals can, however, push mainstream parties towards issue engagement and accommodation of the niche party’s positions. These insights improve our understanding of why parties accommodate in the first place. The second part of the dissertation examines how intra-party divisions affect voting behavior. I argue that divisions condition the electoral success of party policy shifts. First, I offer an answer to the question of why mainstream party accommodation of niche rivals often backfires. I show that voters punish divided mainstream parties for accommodation, while united parties suffer no such penalty. Second, I answer the broader question of why observational research finds little evidence that voters reward parties for aligning with their policy preferences. I demonstrate that the intra-party contestation of policy shifts provides a partial explanation for this missing responsiveness reward.