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WHY ARE NICHE PARTIES LESS RESPONSIVE TO PUBLIC OPINION SHIFTS?
A landmark finding in recent research on party competition is that parties differ in how they react to public opinion shifts. 1 In their influential study, Adams et al. 2 find that niche parties – which they define as communist, green and radical-right parties – fail to track changes in the median voter position, while other (mainstream) parties do respond to such changes. They do not argue that something inherent to these three party families makes them less likely to follow changes in the median voter position. Instead, they suggest that these party families tend to prioritize policy over office and tend to be activist led, which explains why they do not track the median voter. In this research note, we replicate and extend their analysis but replace their simple dichotomy based on party families with the party differences that they argue drive the pattern they find: party goals and party organization. We also add a third aspect of niche parties not alluded to by Adams et al., 3 party ideology, specifically the extent to which parties focus on niche issues. All three of these mechanisms may contribute to the pattern they found. Our analysis examines how these three aspects of parties act as mechanisms connecting median voter change to party policy change and thereby contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate over which party characteristics drive party responsiveness to voters.
Following Adams et al., 4 the first mechanism that explains why some parties fail to track the median voter is that they are more policy seeking than others: they prioritize their policy objectives over winning votes or gaining office. Adams et al. 5 suggest that this mechanism represents an underlying difference between niche parties and other parties. They also argue that niche parties have a longer time horizon concerning the goals they wish to achieve, as their aim is to build the party up over the long term rather than maximize support in the next election. The policy focus of some parties explains why they do not respond to voter shifts, since their aim is not to increase support per se, but to increase support for implementing their policy goals. Prioritizing electoral gains over...