Manifesto Functions: How Party Candidates View and Use Their Party’s Central Policy Document

Autor(en)

Nikolaus Eder, Marcelo Jenny, Wolfgang Claudius Müller

Abstrakt

Electoral manifestos play a crucial role in visions of party democracy and political science analyses of party competition. While research has focused on the contents of manifestos, we know much less about how parties produce manifestos and the roles they take in campaigns. This paper identifies three campaign-related functions of manifestos: they provide a compendium of valid party positions, streamline the campaign, and are used as campaign material. Based on the characteristics of the candidates, the parties and the campaign, the paper then derives expectations of how party candidates may differ in attributing importance to their party's manifesto. Based on a candidate survey after the 2013 Austrian general election, the paper shows that the key user-group of parliamentary candidates considers manifestos generally important and useful documents. Candidates' policy-centred campaigning and left–right distance from their own party are important in explaining individual differences. While the manifesto's service functions of providing a summary of valid party positions for the candidates and as a campaign means to be handed out to voters are widely appreciated, campaign streamlining is more divisive when it results in constraining candidates.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Journal

Electoral Studies

Band

45

Seiten

75-87

Anzahl der Seiten

13

ISSN

0261-3794

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.11.011

Publikationsdatum

01-2016

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506012 Politische Systeme

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeine Sozialwissenschaften

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/7ccb46dc-b62b-4068-b0ee-5a264aaee27b