Adams (2012)

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Theoretical Results and
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Empirical Evidence
James Adams
Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616;
email: jfadams@ucdavis.edu
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2012. 15:401–19 Keywords

The Annual Review of Political Science is online at spatial modeling; representation, voting behavior, valence issues
polisci.annualreviews.org
This article’s doi: Abstract

10.1146/annurev-polisci-031710-101450
The spatial model of elections identifies factors that motivate party elites to
Copyright c 2012 by Annual Reviews. shift their policy positions, including changes in voters’ policy preferences,
All rights reserved
rival parties’ policy shifts, past election results, and changes in party elites’
1094-2939/12/0615-0401$20.00 valence images with respect to dimensions of evaluation such as competence
and integrity. I review empirical studies on multiparty elections, i.e., elec-
tions involving three or more major parties, that evaluate party elites’ policy
responses to these factors, along with empirical studies on the electoral con-
sequences of parties’ policy shifts. This review reveals a paradox: on the one
hand, empirical studies conclude that parties systematically shift their policy
positions in response to the factors that spatial modelers have identified. On
the other hand, there is only weak and inconsistent empirical evidence that
voters actually perceive parties’ policy shifts, and/or that these shifts have
significant electoral consequences. Thus the predictions of spatial theory
are largely verified, whereas the assumptions that underpin spatial theory
are called into question.
401
INTRODUCTION
In their influential book Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, published in 1994, Donald Green and
Ian Shapiro argued that although the spatial model of elections was well developed theoretically,
there was a shortage of empirical studies that evaluated the hypotheses on candidate and party
strategies that the spatial model had generated. Although the Green & Shapiro (1994) critique
was directed primarily at studies of two-party and two-candidate elections, it was also true that
in 1994, there was a shortage of empirical studies analyzing propositions derived from spatial
models of multiparty competition, i.e., elections involving three or more major parties. However,
this shortage of empirical multiparty studies was understandable, given that in 1994, the field of
spatial models of multiparty competition was (with important exceptions to be noted later) quite
undeveloped. Quite simply, in 1994, there were few hypotheses on multiparty competition derived
from spatial modeling research that were available to be tested.
The years since the publication of Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory have witnessed dramatic
advances in formal theoretical research on multiparty spatial competition, along with similar
advances in empirical studies analyzing real-world political parties’ policy offerings in multiparty
systems. Some of these empirical studies specifically evaluate the propositions deduced from spatial
models, whereas others bear on these spatial models even if they do not explicitly invoke formal
theory. The purpose of this article is, first, to review the empirical studies that pertain to the
propositions on multiparty competition derived from the spatial modeling literature, in order to
answer the following questions: In what ways do the policy positions taken by real-world political
parties conform to the predictions derived from spatial models of multiparty competition, and
in what ways do real-world parties’ policy promises diverge from these predictions? Second, I
extend this enquiry to review empirical studies on the consequences of real-world parties’ policy
behavior, to evaluate whether these consequences support the predictions generated by spatial
modeling research.
In this review I focus primarily on empirical studies of comparative statics related to parties’
Left-Right policy positioning in multiparty systems, namely, the factors that motivate parties to
shift their Left-Right positions (along with studies on the consequences of parties’ Left-Right
shifts), rather than on the factors that motivated political parties’ long-term policy emphases (i.e.,
left-, center, or right-wing) in the first place. I confine my attention to the comparative statics
of parties’ positions—along with the electoral consequences of parties’ policy shifts—because it
is manageable to review empirical studies on these topics in a single article, and also because the
spatial modeling literature on party policy positioning revolves largely around such comparative
statics. In particular, the concept of a Nash equilibrium in parties’ policy positions—namely, a
configuration of policy positions such that no party is motivated to unilaterally shift its position,
given the policy strategies of its competitors—relates to party elites’ beliefs about the likely conse-
quences of shifting their policies. I review studies on multiparty elections because there are already
many excellent extant studies that review empirical applications of spatial models to two-candidate
and two-party elections (for excellent reviews of these studies, see Grofman 2004 and Jesse 2012).
And, I focus primarily on parties’ Left-Right policy shifts—as opposed to their shifts on more spe-
cific policy dimensions—because, as I discuss below, most of the empirical literature on parties’
policy shifts in multiparty systems focuses on the Left-Right dimension, the one dimension that
arguably allows for meaningful cross-national comparisons.
A central theme of this review is that there is a striking disconnect between empirical findings
on the causes of party policy shifts in multiparty systems and findings on the electoral consequences
of these shifts. On the one hand, there is extensive empirical evidence that political parties sys-
tematically shift their policy positions in response to the factors that spatial modelers emphasize,
402 Adams
including changes in the mean or median voter position; shifts in the policy preferences of parties’
core supporters; rival parties’ policy shifts; past election results; and changes in party elites’ “va-
lence” images with respect to dimensions of evaluation such as competence and integrity. On the
other hand, empirical studies that analyze the consequences of parties’ policy shifts identify only
weak and inconsistent evidence of voter reactions to these shifts, or even that citizens perceive that
the focal party or parties have actually shifted their policy positions—empirical findings that are
at odds with a central assumption of the spatial model of elections, namely, that citizens perceive
and react to parties’ policy shifts. At the conclusion of this article, I discuss possible explanations
for this paradox.
SHOULD WE EXPECT REAL-WORLD PARTIES’ POLICY

SHIFTS TO SUPPORT THE PREDICTIONS GENERATED
BY SPATIAL MODELING STUDIES?
Spatial models of party competition employ simplifying assumptions both about the characteristics
of the political parties that present policy promises to the electorate and about the decision rules
of the rank-and-file voters that react to these policy promises. At the level of the political party,
virtually all spatial models specify parties as unitary actors that announce their policy intentions to
the electorate, and that can instantly—and costlessly—update these policy promises in response
to changes in the political environment. With respect to voters, spatial modelers typically assume
that all voters have identical perceptions of each party’s policy positions, and that voters instantly
update these perceptions—along with their party evaluations—in response to changes in the policy
statements issued by the party’s elites. And, with respect to the relationship between parties and
voters, spatial modelers assume that political parties completely control their policy images, i.e.,
that voters’ perceptions of each party’s policy position correspond exactly with the policy promises
the party elites issue to the public (see, e.g., Hinich & Munger 1994, Roemer 2001).
Of course, the simplifying assumptions listed above abstract away from the constraints that
real-world party elites confront, including the fact that parties’ organizational features constrain
elites’ abilities to adjust their policies in response to changes in the political environment (see, e.g.,
Duverger 1959, Kircheimer 1966, Kitschelt 1994; G. Schumacher, C. de Vries, B. Vis, unpublished
study), and that rapid and/or dramatic policy change may prompt internal divisions that damage
the party (e.g., Przeworski & Sprague 1986). And, spatial modelers’ assumptions about voters
do not necessarily square with empirical findings on rank-and-file citizens’ political capacities,
along with the effects of their political biases. Dating back at least to the publication of The
American Voter (Campbell et al. 1960) and to Converse’s (1964) famous essay on the nature of
belief systems in mass publics (see also Zaller 1992), scholars have advanced evidence that many
citizens are only dimly aware of parties’ policy positions on important issues, and still more
reason to question whether citizens accurately perceive parties’ policy shifts (I review some of
this evidence below). And, even to the extent that party elites have the leeway to unilaterally shift
the party’s policy stances, that these shifts do not fracture the party, and that rank-and-file voters
recognize that the party’s current policy statements and/or behavior diverge from its previous
positions, voters may not update their perceptions of parties’ policy positions in the ways specified
in spatial models. First, when parties shift their positions voters may become confused about the
party’s policy intentions as they attempt to balance the party’s current promises against its past
promises (and behavior), and to the extent that voters are risk-averse, this uncertainty may depress
voters’ evaluations of the focal party. Second, and related, voters may discount the party’s new
policy promises as being motivated by political opportunism or pandering, inferences that may
damage the party’s electoral appeal; certainly the charge of being a flip-flopper is one that rival
www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 403

politicians are likely to lodge against parties that dramatically change their policy positions, and
to the extent that voters take parties’ announced policy changes as evidence that the party’s elites
are opportunistic or lack core convictions, this may hamper the party’s efforts to secure electoral
support (see, e.g., Tavits 2007).1 This problem may be especially severe for opposition parties,
who must change their policy images primarily via the policy statements they issue in their election
manifestos, in speeches and parliamentary debates, and in media interviews because opposition
parties have at best modest opportunities to influence actual government policy outputs. A related
factor is the well-known tendency for citizens to seek out information that supports their prior
beliefs and/or political allegiances, while discounting information that clashes with these prior
beliefs, tendencies that may motivate citizens to discount elite policy statements that imply a new
policy direction (see, e.g., Bartels 2002, Achen & Bartels 2006, Goren et al. 2009). Furthermore,
when parties shift their policy promises, members of the news media are likely to weigh in with
commentary about whether the focal party’s new policy initiatives represent a tactical change
in strategy as opposed to a fundamental change in policy direction; whether the policy shift is
permanent or whether it merely represents a temporary victory for one of the party’s factions; and
whether, in the event the party enters the government, the party’s leaders will have the resolve to
actually push through the policy reforms they have advocated while in opposition (see, e.g., Stokes
2001). In addition, during national election campaigns both the media and opposing parties may
emphasize aspects of the focal party’s policy program that differ from the planks that the party itself
prefers to emphasize, i.e., parties cannot unilaterally set the terms of the debate for the election
campaign via their policy statements. Thus as rank-and-file voters attempt to estimate where the
party really stands on the important policy issues of the day, they must weigh the party’s current
policy statements against the party’s past policy promises and behavior, the counter-claims of rival
party elites, the media’s commentary, and so on. In this confusing informational environment,
even well-informed citizens might discount the party’s recent policy promises and instead rely on
the myriad alternative indicators of the party’s policy intentions (Adams et al. 2011).
The point of the considerations listed above is not to question the utility of spatial models
of elections as a vehicle for understanding party policy change. It is simply to emphasize that
it is far from obvious that changes in the political environment will in fact prompt real-world
parties to shift their policy positions in a manner consistent with the predictions generated by
these spatial models and, in addition, that the electoral consequences of real-world parties’ policy
shifts may diverge from the outcomes that these spatial models predict. The next section reviews
that fit between empirical studies on party policy shifts in multiparty systems and the hypotheses
generated by spatial models.
DO SPATIAL MODELS OF ELECTIONS PREDICT REAL-WORLD

PARTIES’ POLICY SHIFTS?
As noted above, the spatial model of elections identifies several factors that motivate party elites
to shift their policy positions, including changes in voters’ policy preferences, rival parties’ policy
shifts, past election results, and changes in party elites’ valence images with respect to dimensions
1
Of course, forward-looking considerations give party elites incentives to follow through on their policy promises, in order
to develop a reputation for policy credibility that may enhance their electoral appeal in future elections (see, e.g., Alesina &
Rosenthal 1995). At the same time there are many real-world examples of elected officials who renege on their pre-election
policy promises (see, e.g., Stokes 2001), so that this possibility may be salient to citizens as they weigh parties’ policy appeals
(see Budge 1994 for an interesting discussion). I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
404 Adams
of evaluation such as competence and integrity.2 Here, I review empirical studies on multiparty
elections, i.e., elections involving three or more major parties, that evaluate party elites’ policy
responses to these factors. I note that many of these studies either explicitly or implicitly posit
that party elites shift their policies in order to attract additional electoral support, a perspective
that implies that party elites—in common with spatial modelers—believe that rank-and-file voters
perceive and react to parties’ policy shifts.
Do Parties Change Their Positions in Response to Public Opinion Shifts?

A central prediction arising from the spatial modeling literature is that political parties’ policy
strategies are constrained by the distribution of citizens’ policy preferences, so that when the
voter distribution changes, we should expect party elites to respond by updating their party’s
policy strategy.3 I note that this expectation is consistent with spatial modeling results both for
vote-seeking parties, i.e., those that seek to maximize their share of the popular vote, along with
policy-seeking parties that maximize their expectations on likely government policy outputs.4 With
respect to multiparty spatial models with vote-seeking parties, studies by Lin et al. (1999) and by
Schofield (2007) that employ probabilistic models of voting behavior—in which voters’ decisions
are influenced by policy considerations but also by non-policy-related motivations that party
elites cannot directly observe—conclude that, under specified conditions, parties’ policy strategies
will be calibrated against the position of the mean or median voter in the electorate. (Roughly
speaking, the condition is that voters’ non-policy-related considerations are sufficiently salient
relative to their policy-related motivations.) Adams & Merrill (2009) derive a similar dynamic for
a multiparty spatial model with policy-seeking parties, i.e., parties that seek office in the desire to
implement desired policies rather than to propose policies in a single-minded pursuit of office or
votes (see, e.g., Wittman 1990). These theoretical results thereby imply that when the center of
the distribution of the public’s policy preferences shifts to the Left or the Right, we should observe,
ceterus paribus, that real-world parties will shift their policy positions in the same direction that
public opinion has shifted.
Empirical studies on party policy shifts report consistent support for the above proposition,
although these studies find that parties’ responses to public opinion are mediated by the party’s
2
Empirical studies identify additional factors that can motivate real-world parties to shift their positions, notably domestic
and global economic conditions (e.g., Haupt 2010, Ward et al. 2011) and whether the party is currently in government or in
opposition (G. Schumacher, C. de Vries, B. Vis, unpublished study). Because spatial models of multiparty competition rarely
consider these factors, I do not review these empirical studies here. Another strand of empirical research, much of which builds
on Cox’s (1990) seminal spatial modeling study, evaluates how party positioning responds to incentives associated with the
voting system (see, e.g., Dow 2001, 2011; Ezrow 2008, 2011; Calvo & Hellwig 2011). However, these studies are primarily
cross-sectional analyses as opposed to the comparative statics analyses that I review here.
3
An alternative perspective, one associated with the research of Przeworski & Sprague (1986; see also Iversen 1994), is that
vote-seeking parties need not respond to public opinion, because party elites can instead shape public opinion by cueing
voters to adopt the party’s policy viewpoints. Although studies on American politics report consistent evidence of policy
cueing by party elites (see, e.g., Goren 2005, Carsey & Layman 2006), research on European politics uncovers only weak and
inconsistent evidence that parties can persuade voters to shift their opinions on policy issues associated with the Left-Right
dimension (Adams et al. 2011, Milazzo et al. 2012), although there is stronger evidence of party policy cueing with respect to
the European integration issue (see, e.g., Ray 2003, Steenbergen et al. 2007). I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this
point.
4
An additional party motivation spatial modelers emphasize is that of the office-seeking party that seeks to maximize its prob-
ability of attaining office, which in parliamentary democracies is typically defined as attaining membership in the government
(see, e.g., Müller & Strom 1999). In the case of multiparty democracies with coalition governments, maximization of votes
(or seats) may not be equivalent to maximizing the probability of being included in the governing coalition (see, e.g., Laver
& Schofield 1990, Warwick 2001, Martin & Stevenson 2010).

characteristics. Thus Adams et al. (2004, 2006) and Ezrow et al. (2011) report empirical analyses
indicating that political parties in western European party systems tended to shift the Left-Right
tone of their policy manifestos in response to shifts in public opinion, but that these tendencies were
only substantively significant in the case of mainstream parties such as Labour, Social Democratic,
Liberal, Christian Democratic, and Conservative parties (see Green 2011 for relevant analyses on
the British Conservative party); by contrast, the authors identified no substantively significant
relationship between public opinion shifts and shifts in the Left-Right tone of niche parties’
election manifestos, where niche parties were defined as small parties with ideological clienteles
including green, communist, and radical right parties. The authors present arguments that niche
parties’ policy stability in the face of public opinion shifts reflects the niche party elites’ belief that
their core supporters are more ideologically oriented than are the supporters of mainstream parties
and will react badly to policy shifts in their party’s election program because these supporters view
such shifts—especially those that moderate the niche party’s policies—as a betrayal of the party’s
core values. [I note that empirical research by McDonald & Budge (2005) also supports the
hypothesis that political parties adjust the Left-Right tone of their policy manifestos in response
to public opinion shifts.]
A second strand of research on spatial models of multiparty elections focuses attention on
parties’ strategic responses to the subconstituency of the party’s current supporters. In particular,
Schofield and his coauthors (see Schofield & Sened 2005a,b; Schofield & Cataife 2007; Miller &
Schofield 2003) present remarkable theoretical arguments that party elites have electoral incentives
to appeal on policy grounds to their current supporters, in order to motivate these supporters to
provide scarce campaign resources (such as financial donations and unpaid labor on behalf of the
party), that can benefit the party independently of the votes these supporters cast on election
day. And, Adams et al. (2005; see also Merrill & Adams 2002) present theoretical results that
political parties contesting multiparty elections benefit by appealing on policy grounds to voters
who are biased toward the party for nonpolicy reasons, a finding that implies that—to the extent
that voters’ partisanship constitutes an affective orientation that is not primarily determined by
the party’s current policy positions (e.g., Campbell et al. 1960)—party elites have incentives to
respond disproportionately to their partisans’ policy preferences. The empirical research of Ezrow
et al. (2011) provides some support for this hypothesis: These authors’ analyses of shifts in the
policy positions of 15 western European political parties over the period 1973–2002 suggest that
niche party elites—where niche parties were again defined as green, communist, and radical right
parties—were disproportionately responsive to the policy preferences of their current supporters,
in the sense that when their supporters’ policy preferences shifted in a direction that differed from
the direction of opinion shifts in the wider electorate, these niche parties tended to follow their
supporters as opposed to the public as a whole. And the research of G. Schumacher, C. de Vries,
B. Vis (unpublished study) identifies a related dynamic: namely, that activist-dominated political
parties—i.e., parties that feature more democratic organizational structures—tend to shift their
positions in response to changes in their supporters’ policy preferences, whereas leader-dominated
political parties tend to respond to changes in the electorate as a whole (see also Adams et al.
2009).5
5
Adams & Ezrow (2009) provide an alternative perspective on this issue, presenting theoretical arguments and empirical
evidence from western European party systems that parties will be disproportionately responsive to opinion leaders, i.e.,
citizens who regularly discuss politics and who attempt to persuade others to change their policy viewpoints. See also Ezrow
(2007) for empirical analyses that suggest that parties respond not only to directional shifts in the voter distribution but also
to changes in the dispersion of voters’ policy preferences.
406 Adams
Do Parties Shift Their Left-Right Positions in Response

to Past Election Results?
The role of past election results in shaping party policy strategies is related to the effect of public
opinion, because party elites plausibly use past election results to infer voters’ policy preferences.
This proposition was explicitly advanced by Budge (1994) in his influential study of party policy
shifts, where he posited that parties that had gained votes at the previous election, compared with
the election before that, would shift their Left-Right positions in the same direction as they had
shifted at the previous election, and in the opposite direction if they had lost votes at the previous
election [see also Laver (2005) and Kollman et al. (1992), who analyze related party decision rules
in their spatial models of adaptive parties who compete under conditions of uncertainty about
the voter distribution]. Budge (1994; see also Budge et al. 2010) finds empirical support for this
decision rule, whereas studies by Adams et al. (2004, 2006, 2009) and Ezrow et al. (2011) uncover
only weak and inconsistent evidence that parties respond in this way to past election results.
Somer-Topcu (2009) provides an ingenious solution to this puzzle, arguing that parties respond
to past election results when the previous election was close in time to the current election, but
not otherwise, because in the latter case party elites believe that the passage of time renders the
previous election result an unreliable indicator of the current state of public opinion.6
Do Parties Shift Their Left-Right Positions in Response

to Policy Shifts by Rival Parties?
Spatial modelers’ focus on Nash equilibrium—namely, a configuration of party policy strategies
such that no party can improve its expected outcome by unilaterally shifting its position, given the
positions of its opponents—focuses attention on rival parties’ policy positions as an influence on
a focal party’s policy strategy. In this regard the research of Budge (1994), along with the spatial
modeling studies of McGann (2002) and Aldrich (1995), suggests reasons why political parties may
be responsive to rival parties’ policy shifts, in particular to the shifts of rival parties whose policies
are similar to those of the focal party. Budge (1994) proposes that political parties may calibrate
their policy positions against those of an ideologically proximate marker party, because the focal
party’s elites believe their party must differentiate its policies vis-à-vis those of the marker party.
In the Aldrich and McGann models, party positions respond to the policy preferences of party
activists, so that if an ideologically proximate party A converges toward the position of the focal
party B, some of B’s activists will defect to party A, and therefore the center of gravity of party B’s
remaining activists will shift away from party A’s position—i.e., that as party A shifts toward (away
from) party B, party B will shift away from (toward) party A, so that both parties shift in the same
direction over time. The spatial logic of the Budge, Aldrich, and McGann approaches implies
that a focal party will shift its policy positions in the same direction as its ideologically proximate
competitors. To our knowledge, the only article to systematically evaluate this prediction is that
of Adams & Somer-Topcu (2009b), who find empirical support for this hypothesis in an empirical
study of party policy shifts in 25 postwar democracies.7
6
An innovative empirical study by Nagel & Wlezien (2010) is also relevant here and finds that during the post–World War
II period the British Labour and Conservative parties tended to adjust their Left-Right positions in the current election in
response to the electoral support that the centrist Liberal Party (and in later periods, the Liberal Democrats) received in the
previous election.
7
Budge (1994) presents spatial arguments that political parties will respond to their own previous policy shifts, by shifting
their policies in the opposite direction compared with their previous policy shifts, in order to satisfy competing factions within
the party (see also McDonald & Budge 2005, pp. 62–73; Klingemann et al. 2006, pp. 67–74; Budge et al. 2010). Budge finds

Do Political Parties Shift Their Positions in Response

to Changes in Their Valence Images?
In the past decade spatial modelers increasingly have emphasized the strategic importance of va-
lence dimensions of voters’ political evaluations. Valence dimensions, a term first coined by Stokes
(1963, 1992), refer to dimensions “on which parties or candidates are differentiated not by what
they advocate, but by the degree to which they are linked in the public’s mind with conditions,
goals, or symbols of which almost everyone approves or disapproves” (1992, p. 143). Valence
dimensions include such factors as parties’ and candidates’ images with respect to honesty, com-
petence, dedication to public service, charisma, and more generally, the ability to effectively govern
the country. These dimensions contrast with positional dimensions such as income redistribution,
foreign policy, and debates over immigration controls and abortion policy, on which “parties or
leaders are differentiated by their advocacy of alternative positions” (Stokes 1992, p. 143). Political
parties or candidates that are widely viewed as competent, trustworthy, and charismatic may enjoy
election advantages that are not tied directly to the current positions they stake out on positional
dimensions, and indeed extensive empirical research documents the crucial importance of valence
dimensions in shaping election outcomes (Pierce 2000, Clark 2009). Several recent studies explore
how the introduction of valence dimensions affects the positional strategies of office- or policy-
seeking politicians (Ansolabehere & Snyder 2000; Groseclose 2001; Roemer 2001; Aragones &
Palfrey 2002; Schofield & Sened 2005a,b, 2006; Adams & Merrill 2009; Bruter et al. 2010; Serra
2010, 2011; Laver & Sergenti 2012). Although these models make varying predictions based in
part on alternative sets of assumptions about the institutional environment and party elites’ mo-
tivations, a seminal article on this topic by Schofield (2003) concludes that political parties with
weak valence images will tend to shift their positions away from those of high-valence parties,
because if low-valence parties match the policy offerings of high-valence parties, the low-valence
parties will then suffer electoral catastrophe because voters will choose parties strictly on the basis
of valence considerations.
Despite the increasing theoretical and empirical interest in the implications of valence dimen-
sions for spatial modeling, few extant empirical studies on multiparty systems evaluate the key
propositions derived from this strand of research, and moreover, we are unaware of any empirical
studies on comparative statics associated with parties’ valence images.8 However, one study that
bears on this issue is that of Spoon (2011, Chapter 2), who presents evidence that small, niche
parties—which presumably suffer from valence disadvantages vis-à-vis their large, mainstream,
competitors—tend to differentiate their positions from those of the mainstream parties (see also
M. Clark, unpublished study). This prediction accords with Schofield’s (2003) argument that po-
litical parties with weak valence images will tend to shift their positions away from those of parties
that benefit from stronger valence images.
In summary, there is extensive empirical evidence that political parties shift their policy
positions in response to the diverse factors that spatial modelers have emphasized, including public
opinion shifts in the mass electorate; opinion shifts among the focal party’s core supporters; past
empirical support for this hypothesis, as do Adams et al. (2004, 2006) and Ezrow et al. (2011). See Burt (1997) for an alternative
interpretation of these findings.
8
However, the remarkable research of Schofield and his coauthors (Schofield & Sened 2005a,b, 2006; Schofield & Caitafe
2007) suggests that spatial models with valence can account well for the configurations of party policy positions in diverse
electorates, including Britain, Israel, and Argentina. In addition, Somer-Topcu & Williams (2011) evaluate how opposition
parties adjust their Left-Right positions in response to economic conditions and to no-confidence motions, which the authors
use as indicators of governing parties’ valence images.
408 Adams
election results; rival parties’ policy shifts; and changes in parties’ valence images. In some cases
these empirical findings directly support formal propositions derived from spatial models, notably
the findings that parties tend to shift their positions in response to position shifts by ideologically
proximate competitors, and that parties respond in predictable ways to changes in their valence
images. In other cases empirical studies suggest that spatial theory can illuminate real-world
parties’ policy shifts provided that researchers extend the standard spatial theory in sensible
ways: in particular, that parties’ tendencies to react to public opinion as a whole, as opposed to
privileging the views of their current supporters, are mediated by the party’s type (niche versus
mainstream) and its organizational structure (i.e., activist-led versus leadership-dominated), and
that parties’ reactions to past election results are mediated by the length of time that has elapsed
since the previous election.
WHAT ARE THE ELECTORAL CONSEQUENCES

OF PARTY POLICY SHIFTS?

To the extent that spatial logic—which emphasizes the likely electoral consequences of parties’
policy offerings—can be used to predict and/or explain shifts in parties’ positions in multiparty
democracies, this suggests that the central assumptions of spatial modeling, namely, that party elites
have the leeway to update their parties’ policy positions and that policy-oriented voters perceive and
react to parties’ policy shifts, are satisfied. And, indeed, many of the empirical studies summarized
above explicitly invoke spatial arguments, which suggests that the authors of these studies believe
that the spatial perspective captures important dynamics of real-world party competition—or, at
the least, that these authors believe that party elites subscribe to this spatial perspective! However,
as discussed above, there are reasons to doubt whether real-world voters will react to parties’ policy
shifts in the manner prescribed by spatial theory, because inattentive citizens may not notice that
party elites have shifted their policy statements/behavior; because citizens may have difficulty
reconciling the party’s new policy positions with its previous positions; because voters tend to
reject new information that clashes with their pre-existing beliefs about parties’ policy positions;
or because voters make negative inferences about party elites’ motives for shifting their policies,
i.e., citizens infer that these new policy promises represent insincere pandering to the electorate
(certainly, rival parties’ elites may encourage voters in such inferences).
A striking feature of empirical research on multiparty systems is that in contrast to the abundant
studies summarized above that analyze the causes of party policy shifts, there are relatively few
studies that evaluate the electoral consequences of such shifts.9 To be sure, there are numerous
cross-sectional studies that analyze citizens’ perceptions of parties’ policy positions, and these
studies generally conclude that citizens hold reasonably accurate perceptions of parties’ long-term
policies, in the sense that voters’ party perceptions match experts’ party placements along with
the Left-Right codings of party policy manifestos (see, e.g., Marks et al. 2007), and also that
voters tend to support parties whose policy positions match these voters’ policy preferences, i.e.,
9
A strand of literature associated with the research of Erikson & Romero (1990), Alvarez & Nagler (1995; see also Alvarez et al.
2000), Adams et al. (2005), Schofield & Sened (2005a,b, 2006), and Calvo & Hellwig (2011) reports computations on election
survey data that bear on the likely electoral consequences of parties’ policy shifts. In these computations, the authors typically
perform counterfactual simulations where they vary survey respondents’ perceptions of the focal party’s policy positions while
holding all other factors constant, and the authors then recompute each respondent’s voting probabilities for alternative voter
perceptions of party positions. These computations are arguably useful, but they do not account for the possibilities that I
emphasize here, namely, that voters fail to perceive parties’ policy shifts, become confused by these shifts, or make negative
inferences about the motivations and the core values of the party elites who announce these policy shifts.

that left-wing voters tend to support left-wing parties whereas right-wing voters support right-
wing parties (see, e.g., Dalton 1985, Iverson 1994). Note, however, that these cross-sectional
patterns—encouraging as they are—do not bear directly on the issue of whether voters perceive
and react to parties’ policy shifts. Suppose, for instance, that voters hold fixed (and reasonably
accurate) perceptions of parties’ long-term policy orientations, but that citizens also consistently
fail to update these perceptions in response to short-term changes in party positions, for one
or more of the reasons highlighted above. In this case citizens may perceive and react to par-
ties’ long-term images but nevertheless fail to perceive and react to parties’ short-term policy
shifts.
Do Voters Perceive Party Policy Shifts?

Leaving aside a number of interesting single-country studies (see, e.g., Green 2007, Milazzo et al.
2012), I am aware of only two cross-national studies that directly evaluate the issue of whether
citizens systematically update their perceptions of parties’ policy positions in response to shifts
in parties’ policy statements.10 In an analysis of five western European democracies, Adams et al.
(2011a) find no substantively or statistically significant relationship between longitudinal shifts
in the Left-Right tone of parties’ election manifestos (as coded by the Comparative Manifesto
Project, or CMP) and shifts in survey respondents’ mean Left-Right party placements. Sim-
ply put, when the CMP codings imply that a focal party has become significantly more left-
or right-wing, compared with its previous policy positions, the authors detect no tendency for
rank-and-file voters to perceive the party’s Left-Right orientation as shifting correspondingly to
the Left or the Right over the same time period (or, for citizens’ perceptions to exhibit lagged
responses to parties’ Left-Right shifts). In follow-up research (2011b) on 14 European multiparty
democracies, the same set of authors report similar findings with respect to the issue of European
integration.
Do Voters React to Shifts in Parties’ Policy Statements?

The empirical finding that voters do not systematically update their perceptions of parties’ pol-
icy/ideological positions in response to changes in the parties’ published policy programs, strongly
implies that citizens will not systematically react to these stated policy shifts—as it seems implausi-
ble that citizens react to party policy shifts that they do not perceive. At the same time, the Adams
et al. (2011a,b) studies summarized above cover only a limited set of countries over a limited time
period, so that they arguably do not convincingly refute the hypothesis that citizens in multiparty
democracies perceive and react to parties’ policy shifts. However, empirical research on this issue
identifies at best weak and inconsistent evidence that citizens do in fact react to parties’ policy
shifts. In particular, Adams et al. (2011a,b) report no significant association between parties’ shifts
on either the Left-Right dimension or on support for European integration, on the one hand, and
10
My focus here on party positional shifts does not encompass other types of changes in parties’ statements that may prompt
voter reactions. Tavits (2007), for instance, presents theoretical and empirical analyses showing that voters may react negatively
when shifts in parties’ policy statements imply that they have abandoned their core principles, but that voters may accept
pragmatic party policy shifts that involve changes in the means party elites will employ to achieve desired outcomes. Meguid
(2005, 2008), in her ground-breaking analysis of political competition between mainstream and niche parties, argues that
political parties’ policy statements can enhance/depress the electoral salience of a given policy dimension, even when these
policy statements do not connote a significant shift in the party’s position on the dimension (see also Milazzo et al. 2012). And
Hobolt & Klemmensen (2008) raise the possibility that European party elites can shape citizens’ policy priorities (as opposed
to their positions) via their policy statements.
410 Adams
shifts in the mean (current or lagged) positions of their supporters on the other, i.e., the authors
find no evidence of partisan sorting along the Left-Right and the European integration dimensions
(see, e.g., Carmines & Stimson 1989, Erikson et al. 2002), in response to parties’ shifts along these
dimensions. And, to the extent that citizens perceive and react to shifts in parties’ stated policy
positions, we should expect to observe such partisan sorting in the electorate.11
A second approach to this issue is provided by Adams & Somer-Topcu (2009a), who report
empirical analyses of the relationship between parties’ Left-Right shifts as measured by the CMP
codings, and changes in parties’ vote shares, in 25 postwar democracies. The authors conclude
that, contra the spatial modeling–based prediction that parties increase their support when they
moderate their policies, i.e., when they shift their Left-Right positions toward the center of the
distribution of voters’ policy preferences,12 there is little net tendency for parties to gain or lose
votes when they shift to more moderate Left-Right positions, compared with when they shift
toward more radical positions.13
To our knowledge, the only empirical studies to identify substantively significant electoral
effects relating to parties’ policy shifts in multiparty democracies are those of Adams et al. (2006)
and Spoon (2011, Chapter 2), both of which identify effects relating to niche parties’ policy shifts
but do not identify systematic electoral effects of mainstream parties’ shifts. Adams et al. (2006)
report empirical analyses of eight European multiparty democracies over the period 1976–1998
that suggest that niche parties—i.e., green, communist, and radical right parties—systematically
lose votes when they moderate their Left-Right positions. The authors argue that this finding is
due to the fact that—as discussed above—niche parties’ supporters tend to be more ideological
than the supporters of mainstream parties, and that these ideological supporters dislike policy
moderation because they interpret this as a betrayal of their party’s core values. By contrast,
Adams et al. (2006) conclude that mainstream parties neither systematically gain nor lose votes
(on average) when they moderate their positions. Spoon’s (2011, Chapter 2) remarkable analyses
identify a curvilinear relationship between niche party support and the policy distance between
the niche party and spatially proximate mainstream parties: namely, that niche parties fare best
when their policy positions are clearly differentiated from those of the relevant mainstream party,
but that niche parties fare poorly when they shift to a position that is either too near or too far
from the position of the most proximate mainstream party.
11
The authors emphasize that even if party supporters’ policy preferences shift in concert with their preferred party’s policy
shifts, this would not prove that voters react to parties’ policy shifts, as an alternative explanation is that party elites shift their
policy statements in response to changes in their supporters’ policy preferences. (Alternatively, both political elites and their
supporters might react to some outside influence or condition.) However, the lack of a relationship between parties’ policy
shifts and shifts in their supporters’ positions constitutes strong evidence that voters do not react to their party’s policy shifts.
12
The prediction that party policy moderation—in the sense of shifting toward the center of the distribution of voters’ policy
preferences—will enhance the party’s support is most closely associated with Downs’ (1957) famous analysis of two-party
competition. However, Adams & Somer-Topcu (2009a) argue that this prediction should extend to multiparty elections
provided that the voter distribution is single-peaked, i.e., that the density of the voter distribution near its center is greater
than the density of the distribution away from the center. The authors’ analysis of survey data on respondents’ Left-Right
self-placements in 15 European democracies suggests that the single-peakedness condition is (approximately) satisfied in each
country.
13
Specifically, the authors find that parties that moderate their Left-Right positions at the current election will (on average)
gain no additional support at the current election and will only modestly increase their expected vote share at the subsequent
election, i.e., parties gain lagged electoral benefits from policy moderation. However, the authors’ computations suggest that
these expected vote gains are very small, in that parties increase their vote shares by less then 1% (on average) at the next
election, even if they significantly moderate their Left-Right positions at the current election. See Bawn & Somer-Topcu
(2012) for interesting empirical analyses on how the electoral effects of Left-Right shifts differ for opposition parties as opposed
to governing parties.

RECONCILING EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE CAUSES VERSUS

THE CONSEQUENCES OF PARTY POLICY SHIFTS
In toto, the empirical research summarized above suggests the following puzzle. On the one hand,
there is extensive evidence that political parties in multiparty systems consistently adjust their
policy promises in response to shifts (either of the entire electorate or of their supporters) in
citizens’ policy preferences, to shifts in rival parties’ policy positions, to past election results, and
to changes in parties’ valence images. On the other hand, there is only weak and inconsistent
empirical evidence that citizens in multiparty systems systematically react to parties’ policy shifts.
In particular, we are unaware of any evidence that citizens significantly update their perceptions of
party policy positions in response to shifts in the policy statements that parties issue during election
campaigns. Further, empirical studies on aggregate-level changes in voter behavior in response to
party policy shifts—in terms of shifts in the positions of parties’ supporters (i.e., partisan sorting)
or changes in parties’ vote shares—uncover only weak and inconsistent effects, and these only with
respect to niche parties. This raises the question, How can the empirical evidence that voters in
multiparty systems react to parties’ policy shifts be so weak when there is strong empirical evidence
that political parties in these systems shift their positions in response to the factors that spatial
modelers emphasize, including public opinion shifts, rival parties’ policy shifts, valence issues, and
past election results?
The above is partly a rhetorical question. In particular, I emphasize that the evidence that
political parties update their policy statements in response to the factors that spatial modelers
emphasize is far stronger than is the evidence that voters subsequently perceive and react to shifts
in parties’ policy statements. And, I believe this represents an important puzzle in the study of
mass-elite policy linkages.
One possible explanation for this puzzle is to argue that it highlights problems in the measure-
ment of parties’ policy orientations, specifically in the CMP Left-Right codings of parties’ election
manifestos (Budge et al. 2001), which are the basis for most of the empirical studies summarized
above. Over the past 10 years a lively debate has emerged over whether the CMP codings capture
the Left-Right tone of parties’ manifestos, and critics of the CMP coding procedures may interpret
the disconnect between parties’ policy shifts as coded by the CMP, and the lack of evidence that
citizens perceive and react to these shifts, as supporting their arguments that the CMP codings are
unreliable (see, e.g., Janda et al. 1995; Gabel & Huber 2000; Benoit & Laver 2006, 2007; Benoit
et al. 2009). Although it is beyond the scope of this review to summarize the wide-ranging, often
heated debate over the merits of the CMP codings, in my view this explanation cannot account
for the puzzle of why—if the CMP codings are so flawed that they cannot be used to identify the
electoral consequences of party policy shifts in multiparty democracies—studies that employ the
CMP codings nevertheless consistently identify factors that cause party policy shifts (including
public opinion shifts, rival parties’ policy shifts, valence issues, and past election results).14
Here, I propose three alternative explanations, all of which take as their starting points the
assumption that the studies summarized above capture mass-elite policy linkages in multiparty
democracies, i.e., that political parties in multiparty systems do indeed systematically adjust their
policy positions in response to factors such as public opinion, past election results, valence issues,
and rival parties’ policy shifts, but that rank-and-file voters by and large fail to perceive and react to
party elites’ policy shifts. One potential explanation for this puzzle is that rank-and-file voters are
14
Adams & Somer-Topcu (2009a) and Adams et al. (2011a) have conducted analyses using some of the corrections urged by
the critics of the CMP coding procedures, and these analyses continue to support the substantive conclusion that voters by
and large fail to perceive or react to shifts in the statements published in parties’ policy manifestos.
412 Adams
often inattentive to politics (see, e.g., Converse 1964, Zaller 1992) and thus are largely oblivious
when party elites shift the Left-Right tone of their policy rhetoric, but that party elites—even those
who recognize the limited political capacities of many members of the mass public—nevertheless
adjust their policy promises in response to public opinion shifts, past election results, etc. They do
so because they value the marginal electoral benefits they can achieve by responding to the small
subconstituency of politically engaged voters. Alternatively, party elites may project that although
the mass media and the public will likely ignore, misconstrue, or dismiss any given policy statement
these party elites put forward, in unusual circumstances—which cannot necessarily be forecast
in advance—politicians’ policy statements will actually receive widespread publicity and thus will
register with large segments of the electorate. Accordingly, elites reliably respond to public opinion
as insurance against those (infrequent) occasions when the public perceives and responds to parties’
policy promises. If this explanation captures mass-elite linkages in multiparty democracies, then
we should observe that real-world parties systematically shift their policy positions in response
to the factors that spatial modelers emphasize (public opinion, rival parties’ policy strategies, past
election results, etc.), but that citizens display only weak and inconsistent reactions to parties’
policy shifts.
The second explanation is that many rank-and-file voters update their perceptions of parties’
policy positions based on parties’ actions, but not based on changes in parties’ policy statements
(such as those in the election manifestos that are the basis of the CMP codings of party posi-
tions). According to this perceptive, it is difficult for parties to dramatically change their policy
images when they are outside the government, because opposition parties are largely limited to
criticizing government policy and to outlining their alternative policy agenda—but as these oppo-
sition strategies involve words, not deeds, they may not move citizens’ perceptions of opposition
parties’ policy positions. Furthermore, given that the policies that governing parties implement
may diverge sharply from their pre-election policy promises (see, e.g., Imbeau et al. 2001, Blais
et al. 1993; but see Soroka & Wlezien 2005, 2010 and McDonald & Budge 2005, Chapter 9,
for an alternative perspective), either because new circumstances arise that shift governing elites’
policy preferences (such as changes in social or economic conditions), or because these elites
face persistent obstacles to implementing their policy agendas (such as push-back from public
opinion, resistance from organized labor or business interests, etc.), we should also expect that
outcome-oriented citizens’ perceptions will respond to government actions and thereby diverge
from governing parties’ policy promises.15 In this regard, remarkable recent research by Fortunato
& Stevenson (2012) demonstrates that when controlling for the CMP codings of parties’ elec-
tion manifestos, survey respondents’ perceptions of parties’ Left-Right positions in parliamentary
democracies are significantly influenced by these parties’ coalition arrangements, in that citizens
perceive governing coalition partners’ Left-Right positions as being more similar than is implied
by their policy manifestos alone. This supports the hypothesis that citizens respond to political
parties’ behavior in addition to their policy statements.16 This appears to be a promising topic for
follow-up research.
15
This explanation may illuminate an interesting disconnect between (a) empirical research on US congressional elections using
dynamic, weighted, nominal three-step estimation (DW-NOMINATE) scores (Poole & Rosenthal 1997), which identifies
persistent electoral effects relating to the moderation/extremity of House members’ policy positions (see, e.g., Canes-Wrone
et al. 2002), and (b) the CMP-based research on multiparty elections summarized above, which identifies weak and inconsistent
electoral effects associated with party policy shifts: namely, that the American-based research relies on congresspersons’ actual
legislative behavior, whereas the CMP-based research relies on party elites’ policy statements. See Fortunato & Stevenson
(forthcoming) for a discussion of this issue.
16
A related strand of empirical research evaluates whether public opinion responds thermostatically to government policy
outputs, in the sense that when policy increases (decreases) the public’s preference for more policy decreases (increases) over

A third potential explanation, one which to my knowledge has not been systematically stud-
ied, is that voters do in fact respond to shifts in party elites’ policy statements, but that political
parties—which are complex organizations composed of disparate factions with conflicting policy
agendas, and politicians who possess varying degrees of political judgment and skill—tend to step
on their own message because different party members issue contradictory or confusing policy
statements that undercut the effect of the carefully crafted, authoritative policy statements the
parties present in their manifestos. Certainly, the memoirs of political leaders and their advisors
suggest that party elites are concerned—even obsessed—with the possibility that some promi-
nent party representative will go off message and thereby undermine the policy image the party
leadership seeks to convey (see, e.g., Campbell 2007, Blair 2010). This explanation is eminently
testable, because it simply requires that scholars extend their codings of parties’ policy manifestos
to analyze additional party statements such as those published in party policy documents along
with party elites’ interviews and speeches (see Benoit et al. 2009 for a discussion of this issue). It
seems plausible that political parties that manage to stay on message, in the sense that the tone
of the policy statements the party issues in its manifesto matches the tone of the statements party
representatives issue in other venues, have better prospects of controlling their policy images than
do parties that issue contradictory policy statements. Perhaps what we will discover is that most
parties, most of the time, fail to stay on message—but that the small minority of parties that do
manage to speak with one voice can dramatically change their policy images over time.
It also seems plausible that parties’ abilities to convey policy shifts to the public are mediated by
the charisma of their leaders, along with the skills that rival parties’ elites display as they attempt to
raise doubts about the focal party’s policy positions. In this regard, one promising case study is that
of the British Labour Party during the first several years of Tony Blair’s leadership (Blair became
Labour leader in 1994), a time period when Blair unquestionably succeeded in his objective of
shifting his party’s policy image sharply toward the center (see, e.g., Green 2007, Milazzo et al.
2012)—a policy shift that is captured by the CMP codings of Labour’s manifestos. The first
several years of New Labour under Blair represents the unusual case of an extremely talented and
disciplined political leader who succeeded in uniting his party; in portraying a decisive, competent,
and trustworthy image to the British electorate; in focusing media attention upon the party’s new
policy initiatives; and in devising arresting and persuasive language to frame these initiatives (see
Campbell 2007). In so doing, Blair convinced voters that his party had truly changed (see, e.g., Seyd
1998). Blair, moreover, benefited from that fact that the rival Conservative Party suffered from
a series of highly publicized political scandals and internal divisions during this period, which
prevented them from effectively raising questions about the sincerity of Labour’s new policy
direction. I suspect that this perfect storm of variables—namely, the advent of a preternaturally
talented Labour Party leader at a time when the party’s chief rival was at low ebb—accounts for
Blair’s success in dramatically shifting Labour’s policy image (Adams et al. 2011a). However, the
empirical studies I have reviewed in this article suggest that Blair’s success in communicating his
party’s policy shifts to the public represents the exception, not the rule.
For now, we are left with a puzzle. There is abundant empirical evidence that political parties
in multiparty systems shift their policy statements in response to the factors that spatial model-
ers emphasize, including public opinion, past election results, rival parties’ policy strategies, and
parties’ valence images. These findings imply that spatial models of multiparty competition en-
hance our understanding of the evolution of real-world parties’ policy positions, which suggests
time. These studies uncover evidence of such thermostatic patterns in Britain (Soroka & Wlezien 2005) and the United States
(e.g., Wlezien 1995).
414 Adams
in turn that the assumptions about voters that underpin the spatial model of elections—namely,
that voters perceive and react to parties’ policy shifts—provide a reasonable starting point for the
analysis of real-world elections. Yet, there is little empirical evidence that rank-and-file voters in
multiparty systems actually update their perceptions of parties’ policy positions when parties shift
their policy promises, and there is at best weak and inconsistent evidence that voters change their
party allegiances in response to parties’ policy shifts (and this supporting evidence applies almost
entirely to voters’ reactions to niche parties, whereas politics in most contemporary democracies
remains dominated by mainstream parties). I have suggested some possible solutions to this para-
dox, but it is a task for future research to sort through these issues in search of a solution, one that
should enhance our understanding of parties’ policy strategies and of political representation.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might
be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Bonnie Meguid, Ernesto Calvo, Catherine de Vries, Lawrence Ezrow, Leslie-Anne
Fitzpatrick, Jane Green, and Zeynep Somer-Topcu for valuable comments on an earlier version
of this review. I am solely responsible for any remaining errors.
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Annual Review of
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Contents Volume 15, 2012
A Conversation with Kenneth Waltz

Kenneth Waltz and James Fearon p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1
How (and Why) Is This Time Different? The Politics of Economic
Crisis in Western Europe and the United States

Jonas Pontusson and Damian Raess p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p13

The Consequences of the Internet for Politics
Henry Farrell p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p35
What (If Anything) Does East Asia Tell Us About International
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Using Roll Call Estimates to Test Models of Politics
Joshua D. Clinton p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p79
Global Civil Society: The Progress of Post-Westphalian Politics
John S. Dryzek p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 101
Global Distributive Justice: Why Political Philosophy Needs
Political Science
Michael Blake p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 121
Varieties of Capitalism: Trajectories of Liberalization and the New
Politics of Social Solidarity
Kathleen Thelen p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 137
Domestic Explanations of International Relations
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 161
Electoral Accountability: Recent Theoretical and Empirical Work
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International Influences on Elections in New Multiparty States
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Formal Models of International Institutions
Michael J. Gilligan and Leslie Johns p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 221
v
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In From the Cold: Institutions and Causal Inference

in Postcommunist Studies
Timothy Frye p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 245
International Regimes for Human Rights
Emilie M. Hafner-Burton p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 265
Is Health Politics Different?
Daniel Carpenter p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 287
LGBT Politics and American Political Development
Richard M. Valelly p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 313
Policy Makes Mass Politics
Andrea Louise Campbell p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 333
Formal Models of Bureaucracy

Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 353
Studying Organizational Advocacy and Influence: Reexamining
Interest Group Research
Marie Hojnacki, David C. Kimball, Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry,
and Beth L. Leech p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 379
Causes and Electoral Consequences of Party Policy Shifts in
Multiparty Elections: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence
James Adams p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 401
Why Comparative Politics Should Take Religion (More) Seriously
Anna Grzymala-Busse p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 421
Geographic Information Systems and the Spatial Dimensions
of American Politics
Wendy K. Tam Cho and James G. Gimpel p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 443
Richardson in the Information Age: Geographic Information Systems
and Spatial Data in International Studies
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch and Nils B. Weidmann p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 461
Indexes
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 11–15 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 483

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 11–15 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 485
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Political Science articles may be found
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Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2012. 15:401–19 Keywords

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SHOULD WE EXPECT REAL-WORLD PARTIES’ POLICY

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 403

DO SPATIAL MODELS OF ELECTIONS PREDICT REAL-WORLD

Do Parties Change Their Positions in Response to Public Opinion Shifts?

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 405

Do Parties Shift Their Left-Right Positions in Response

Do Parties Shift Their Left-Right Positions in Response

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 407

Do Political Parties Shift Their Positions in Response

WHAT ARE THE ELECTORAL CONSEQUENCES

OF PARTY POLICY SHIFTS?

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 409

Do Voters Perceive Party Policy Shifts?

Do Voters React to Shifts in Parties’ Policy Statements?

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 411

RECONCILING EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE CAUSES VERSUS

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 413

be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 415

impact of policy positions. Am. J. Polit. Sci. In press

Benoit K, Laver M. 2006. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 417

www.annualreviews.org • Party Policy Shifts 419

A Conversation with Kenneth Waltz

Crisis in Western Europe and the United States

Jonas Pontusson and Damian Raess p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p13

In From the Cold: Institutions and Causal Inference

Formal Models of Bureaucracy

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 11–15 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 483

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