Disentangling Blurring - Duke University

Disentangling BlurringParty strategy in a multidimensional environment

Jelle KoedamUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract

Theories of party competition are typically based on the assumption that parties’policy positions are a given. In a multidimensional environment, however, partiesmay occasionally have an incentive to obscure their stances. This paper expands on agrowing literature about so-called position blurring, and studies what strategies partiesadopt, and when, to achieve this end. I argue that parties can blur by either avoidingan issue altogether or by taking up conflicting positions, but that the effectivenessof either strategy varies by party and ideological dimension. Using a combination ofexpert and manifesto data across fourteen Western European countries from 1999-2014, I find partial evidence to support my hypotheses. This paper has importantimplications for our theories of political contestation and representation.

Paper prepared for the workshop “Radical Party Challenges and Realignment in AdvancedDemocracies”, Durham, NC, April 20-21, 2018. Please do not cite or circulate without theauthor’s permission.

Disentangling Blurring Jelle Koedam

The policy positions of political parties are a crucial component of democratic representation.

Voters and scholars alike use parties’ ideological programs to evaluate what is on offer during

an election campaign, and to assess the extent to which parties live up to their promises after

being elected into office. Recently, however, a number of studies has come out that challenges

one of the most fundamental assumptions of the party competition literature, namely that

party positions are always objectively given and observable (Elias, Szocsik and Zuber 2015,

Rovny 2012, 2013). Rather, parties may have an incentive to blur their policy positions, for

instance to alleviate disagreement among internal party factions or supporters. Given its

implications for the comparative study of party politics, and democratic representation in

general, it is crucial to understand what position blurring entails. Yet, we do not know which

specific strategies are employed by parties, and under what conditions, to obfuscate their

ideological positions. This paper disentangles the concept of position blurring and studies

when and how a party decides to adopt a particular strategy.

I argue that a party looking to blur its policy positions can choose between two distinct

strategies. First, a party can simply try to create uncertainty about its stance on an issue by

not addressing it at all. This is arguably the way in which scholars typically conceptualize

position blurring. Alternatively, a party can decide to take up conflicting policy positions on

an issue or dimension. In this case, uncertainty about a party’s agenda does not stem from

a lack of information but from the absence of a coherent platform. Although both strategies

aim to produce blurred positions, each requires a different course of action and is more (or

less) suited for a specific type of party and context.

I analyze position blurring across three ideological divides—the economic left-right, cul-

tural GAL-TAN, and European integration dimensions1—and study which of the above

strategies is employed, successfully, on each dimension. In line with Rovny (2012, 2013),

I use expert uncertainty about party positions, taken from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey

(Bakker et al. 2015, Polk et al. 2017), as a proxy for obfuscated positions. The two blur-

1GAL-TAN is a composite dimension that contrasts Green/Alternative/Libertarian and Tradi-tional/Authoritarian/Nationalist issue positions (Hooghe, Marks and Wilson 2002).

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ring strategies are mapped using manifesto data (Volkens et al. 2015). My analysis covers

fourteen countries in Western Europe from 1999-20142, and includes hundreds of party-year

observations.

My results show that considerable variation exists in the extent to which different blur-

ring strategies are used. An avoiding strategy is employed more on left-right and when a

dimension’s salience is low. A conflicting strategy, on the other hand, seems more appro-

priate on GAL-TAN and when salience is high, while both strategies appear effective on

the issue of European integration. Finally, I find partial evidence for the notion that older,

larger, or governing parties—who might be expected to have more established issue repu-

tations that are more difficult to mute—are constrained in their ability to adopt blurring

strategies. While certainly still a work in progress, these preliminary findings have impor-

tant implications for our understanding of democratic representation, and shed light on the

ways in which parties attempt to manipulate the structure of party competition in Western

Europe.

Position blurring as a party strategy

Much of the academic literature on party competition follows a Downsian framework (Downs

1957). Spatial theory assumes that individual policy issues can be aggregated into ideological

dimensions on which parties compete for the public’s vote. Such models, much like Downs’

original work (for an overview, see Grofman 2004), rely on an extensive set of theoretical

assumptions, for instance on the type of heuristic voters use when deciding whom to vote

for.

While contemporary models have become increasingly sophisticated and comprehensive,

crucially, many established theories continue to assume that political contestation takes place

in a policy space that consists of a single dimension.3 This is perhaps not surprising, given

2The included countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

3This contradicts cleavage theory (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) and its more recent successors, which do assume

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the fundamental complications that come with the assumption of multidimensionality. That

is, its existence is incommensurable with both the emergence of positional equilibria (De Sio

and Weber 2014) and uniformity in party strategies (Koedam nd.), as parties are expected to

behave differently across the constituent ideological dimensions. More importantly, however,

the main theoretical critiques of such approaches no longer see the policy space in which

parties compete as fixed. It opens the door to the very dimensionality of political contestation

becoming part of the competitive struggle between parties. In other words, both agency and

structure are contested. A growing literature studies which political actors, and under what

conditions, have an incentive to manipulate the dimensional structure of party competition,

such as niche and/or opposition parties that are losing under the current status quo (Hobolt

and De Vries 2015, Rovny and Edwards 2012, Van de Wardt, De Vries and Hobolt 2014).

One such method to challenge the existing structure of party competition is position blur-

ring (Rovny 2012, 2013). Acknowledging the multidimensional nature of political conflict, a

party may strategically opt to engage only those issues on which it enjoys a competitive edge

over its rivals, while muting the salience of secondary issues. Consequently, and in line with

Meguid’s work (2005, 2008), salience and position become intrinsically linked. Although the

notion of blurring runs counter to the expected costs of position avoidance in a unidimen-

sional context (e.g. Bartels 1986, Shepsle 1972), parties are assumed to have a clear incentive

to adopt such a strategy when confronted with more than one axis of contestation. When

a party ventures out beyond the core agenda that binds it to its voters, it runs the risk of

alienating current supporters and, in addition, potentially compromises future attempts to

broaden its electoral appeals (Rovny 2013). Equally important, new, or secondary, issues

could produce a rift within a party’s ranks, as described by Riker (1986). Consequently,

a party may have an unequivocal goal to focus on its primary dimension and avoid any

temptation to engage in policy debates in which it stands to lose out.

that the European policy space is multidimensional, identifying an economic and a cultural dimension(Hooghe, Marks and Wilson 2002, Inglehart 1990, Kitschelt 1994, Kriesi et al. 2012). Bakker, Jolly andPolk (2012) even abstract a third dimension that bifurcates parties on the basis of their respective attitudestoward European integration.

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Blurring, disentangled

But what does it actually mean for a party to blur its position? In this context, a party’s

ideological profile may best be conceived as a reputation—this is, in fact, how expert evalu-

ations of party positions are often described in the literature; as the continuous updating of

a party’s reputation (e.g. McDonald, Mendes and Kim 2007). If we assume that voters and

experts do not know, or at the very least do not necessarily use, a party’s policy position on

each individual issue, it logically follows that a party label or reputation might be used as a

shorthand to determine where a party ‘should’ stand on a given topic (Downs 1957, McKelvey

and Ordeshook 1986). If this is indeed the case, position blurring entails the distortion of

one’s reputation on a dimension or set of issues with the specific intent to create uncertainty.

Although a degree of uncertainty is inevitable when assessing a party’s position, espe-

cially on an aggregate level across multiple experts, the key assumption of the position

blurring literature is that not all of this variation is random error. Rather, part of that un-

certainty is structural and purposively produced by the parties themselves. Confronted with

a policy space that consists of multiple dimensions, uncertainty—and the blurring strategies

that produce it—should be relatively more likely on issues and dimensions that are of lesser

salience to a party. After all, why would a party obscure its position on a topic it deems most

important? Indeed, existing research has already shown, for instance, that party change is

relatively more common on parties’ secondary dimension (Koedam nd.). Figure 1 shows the

level of expert uncertainty on the economic left-right, cultural GAL-TAN, and European in-

tegration dimensions by party-level salience (2014).4 I include the third, European dimension

in order to study position blurring on a divide that is simpler and less composite in nature

than the other two cleavages. As expected, on the whole, expert uncertainty decreases as a

dimension becomes more salient (see solid lines).5

4Data on the degree of uncertainty in expert evaluations of party positions and dimensional salience (2014only) are taken from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker et al. 2015, Polk et al. 2017).

5One might expect that expert uncertainty should be higher on GAL-TAN given that this is a less coherentdimension, but the plots show that the standard deviations are highly comparable across the board.

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Figure 1: Expert uncertainty by dimensional salience (2014)0

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3Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(a) Left-Right

01

23

Expe

rt un

certa

inty

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(b) GAL-TAN

01

23

Expe

rt un

certa

inty

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(c) Europe

In general, this finding is in line with Rovny’s (2013) work, although the phenomenon of

position blurring might be more widespread than he originally assumed. Given the preva-

lence of multidimensionality in European politics and its ensuing salience differential across

different issues, it seems questionable that position blurring is unique to the populist radical

right alone. In fact, Elias, Szocsik and Zuber (2015) find that regionalist parties, but also

their mainstream competitors, adopt blurring strategies, too. As such, we need to theorize

about the different strategies that are available to a party looking to blur its positions, and

develop specific hypotheses about who blurs, when, and how.

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One can conceive of multiple strategies that a party might adopt. In the words of Rovny,

position blurring can “appear as either a lack of a position, as concurrent multiplicity of

positions, or as positional instability over time” (2013, 6). All would produce the same

outcome, namely uncertainty about where a party stands. I focus on the first two strate-

gies, however, as party change in a multidimensional environment has already been studied

elsewhere (Koedam nd.) and, arguably, is not necessarily aimed at producing uncertainty.

Rather, parties may have strategic incentives to change their policy positions on their sec-

ondary dimension over time, for instance to reach out to potential voters, and this can be

done explicitly without the goal of creating confusion. Thus, I argue that parties can blur

their ideological reputation either by attempting to never develop one in the first place or by

diluting it with mixed, conflicting messages so that no coherent, unambivalent reputation is

established.

First, a party can simply try to avoid any issues that it considers too contentious.

This is arguably the way in which most of the literature has approached position blur-

ring. Methodologically, this also seems to be the way in which Rovny approaches this

phenomenon. He concludes that most established parties are unfit to adopt this particular

strategy, as their “long-standing histories, organizational apparatuses, core constituencies,

and well-entrenched ideological images” prevent them from doing so (Rovny 2013, 6). Pop-

ulist radical right parties, on the other hand, are perfectly able to follow this course of action,

Rovny argues, as they lack both the established reputation of most mainstream parties and

are typically not obstructed by the hold of activists over the party’s agenda-setting process.

Second, position blurring can be achieved by taking up conflicting positions. Parties

may choose to send out mixed signals in an attempt to keep all factions of its organization

on board and/or to reach out to new voters. This approach is reminiscent of a strategy

identified by Budge (1994), who acknowledged the value of ideological zigzagging to placate

the various internal factions fighting for dominance within a party.

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Hypotheses

Having outlined that positional uncertainty can be produced by means of two distinct blur-

ring strategies, I now develop several hypotheses about parties’ blurring behavior.

First, I argue that position blurring efforts will not be uniform across the board, as the

three dimensions identified here—left-right, GAL-TAN, and European integration—are not

identical. In particular, the economic left-right dimension is far more ubiquitous and coherent

than the other divides, especially GAL-TAN, which should make a conflicting strategy less

effective and, thus, less likely. Once a party has an established reputation on this dimension,

taking up conflicting positions would do little to confuse experts and voters. As a result,

parties will rely primarily on avoidance when trying to blur their position on left-right. This

is different for GAL-TAN, which encompasses a vast range of policy issues, or the issue of

European integration. Taken together, my first hypothesis can be formulated:

Hypothesis 1: A conflicting strategy is less likely to be adopted on left-right com-

pared to the GAL-TAN and European integration dimensions.

Second, a number of factors need to be accounted for that could strongly constrain the use

and feasibility of position blurring strategies. As noted above, a conflicting strategy might

be less appropriate on the left-right dimension, but that does not mean that avoidance is

always the optimal strategy. Certainly, the type of dimension is expected to matter, but

so do certain party-level characteristics in determining what strategy is to be preferred.

Specifically, a party’s age, size, and participation in government dramatically increase its

overall exposure, which should limit the extent to which position blurring is even possible.

Older parties have had more time to build an explicit and broader platform; larger, more

successful parties typically receive more attention from opponents, the media, and voters

alike, and will find it harder to prevent clear position taking; and government parties need

to formally propose, support, and implement a policy agenda, which makes position blurring

far more difficult, if not impossible. This leads to my second hypothesis:

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Hypothesis 2: As a party becomes older, larger, or gains government experience,

position blurring becomes less likely and effective.

Finally, Figure 1 showed that expert uncertainty is, logically, more common on a party’s less

salient issues. The story does not end there, however, as the distinction between a party’s

primary and secondary dimension is neither a perfect dichotomy (see Koedam nd.), nor do

parties necessarily have an incentive to blur exclusively on their least salient dimension.

Occasionally, it might be worthwhile for a party to obfuscate its policy positions on a more

salient issue, too. I hypothesize that the preferred, or optimal, blurring strategy for a party

does depend on the level of a dimension’s salience. Specifically, I expect that an avoiding

strategy will be increasingly less likely, let alone desirable, as a dimension becomes more

salient to a party. It will have a more established reputation on the issues it cares about,

thus making it harder to avoid them altogether. A conflicting strategy is still possible but,

conversely, is unlikely to be adopted on a dimension with little salience. Position blurring

requires a deliberate effort to send out mixed signals in this case, which would be too straining

on a dimension that a party has little investment in. As such, my final hypothesis can be

introduced:

Hypothesis 3: As a dimension’s salience increases, the use of an avoiding strategy

becomes less likely, while a conflicting strategy becomes more likely.

Data & Measurement

To analyze position blurring strategies, I combine expert and manifesto data from the Chapel

Hill Expert Survey, or CHES (Bakker et al. 2015, Polk et al. 2017), and the MARPOR man-

ifesto project (Volkens et al. 2015), respectively. This provides me with data on hundreds of

party-year observations from 1999-2014 across the following fourteen democracies in Western

Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the

Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

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I follow Rovny (2012, 2013) by employing the standard deviation in expert placements of

political parties to measure uncertainty about their positions. CHES asks experts to position

each party in their respective countries on multiple ideological dimensions, including left-

right and GAL-TAN, and then uses the average score as a party’s position (from 0-10). In

addition, experts place parties on a series of specific items concerning the European Union,

such as their overall attitude towards European integration or the powers of the European

Parliament. While not a perfect measure, the degree of uncertainty—or disagreement—

among experts provides a valid proxy of position blurring’s effectiveness. Figure 2 shows the

density plots of this measure for the two dimensions, as well as for the issue of European in-

tegration. As one might expect, experts are most certain about parties’ stances on left-right,

as this is the most coherent and universal dimension of party competition in Europe. Expert

uncertainty is relatively higher on GAL-TAN and European integration.6 For GAL-TAN

this makes sense, as this dimension encapsulates a variety of issues, such as the environment

and immigration. Either way, there is considerable variation in expert uncertainty across

the included parties that warrants further exploration and explanation.

Figure 2: Expert uncertainty by dimension

0.5

11.

5D

ensi

ty

0 1 2 3 4Expert uncertainty

Left-RightGAL-TANEurope

6It should be noted that parties’ attitudes toward European integration were originally measured on a 7-pointscale. These responses were subsequently recoded to the same 0-10 scale as for the other two dimensions.

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Both of my key independent variables are measured using data from the comparative mani-

festo project, or MARPOR, which codes quasi-sentences of party platforms using a total of

56 issue categories (Volkens et al. 2015). First, to gauge the extent to which a party devotes

attention to certain issues, or avoids them altogether, I directly use the MARPOR coding

scores. These provide me with an indication of the various issues that a party covers in its

manifesto (as a percentage of the whole document). I aggregate these categories to mea-

sure whether the left-right, GAL-TAN and European integration dimensions are addressed.7

Finally, I use an inverted scale, ranging from 0 to 100, so that higher scores indicate more

avoidance.

The second blurring strategy, which concerns a party taking up conflicting issue positions,

is not as easily operationalized. Yet, by focusing on the fourteen MARPOR issue clusters for

which both a positive and a negative category is available, I can evaluate whether a party

mentions both sides of a given policy area. Specifically, I employ a weighted ratio of the

positive and negative categories of an issue, using the following formula:

conflictx =xpos

xneg

×∑

x (1)

where x is an issue cluster consisting of a positive and a negative category, such as pro-

tectionism or internationalism, and both xpos and xneg are positive—the variable is set at

0, otherwise. If xpos > xneg, the numerator and denominator are switched to ensure that

the ratio runs from 0-1. This score is then multiplied by the combined sum of the issue

cluster, which means that it is only weighted fully when the positive and negative categories

are mentioned equally. Thus, the conflict score for issue cluster x increases when the ratio

between positive and negative mentions is closer to 1, when the sum of their percentages

is high, and especially when both conditions are present. I then add up all the conflict

7Left-right = (per401+per402+per403+per404+per405+per406+per407+per408+per409+per410+per411+per412+per413+per414+per415+per504+per505+per506+per507+per701+per702);GAL-TAN = (per104+per105+per106+per107+per108+per109+per110+per201+per202+per305+per416+per501+per601+per602+per603+per604+per605+per606+per607+per608+per705);Europe = (per108+per110).

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scores for the issue clusters on left-right, GAL-TAN, and European integration to calculate

the degree of position blurring per dimension.8 Theoretically, this variable can run from 0

to 100 (i.e. when the positive and negative category of a given issue cluster each take up

exactly 50% of a party’s manifesto), but the vast majority of my party-year observations fall

between 0-5, with higher scores indicating that a party has more conflicting statements and,

thus, has employed relateively more position blurring behavior. Lastly, exactly because its

distribution is skewed, I use the log of this variable in my upcoming analyses.

Finally, party age, size, and government participation need to be operationalized. A

party’s age is simply the number of years since it was formally founded, as included in

CHES. Size is based on a party’s vote share in the most recent national election. I follow

Hobolt and De Vries (2015) in distinguishing between parties with and without government

experience, as regular access to executive power is seen as the defining distinction between

mainstream and challenger parties. I use a dichotomous indicator variable (0 or 1), with a

party scoring a 1 from the moment it has government experience onward.

Results

My analysis starts by straightforwardly looking at the two blurring strategies across the dif-

ferent ideological dimensions. Table 1 presents the results of a pooled Ordinary Least Squares

(OLS) regression analysis that explores to what extent the avoiding and conflicting strate-

gies, in isolation, explain expert uncertainty on each dimension. While the overall results are

relatively weak—which is perhaps understandable, given the simple model specification—

I do find that, in line with my first hypothesis, avoidance works on left-right but not on

GAL-TAN, while the reverse holds for a conflicting strategy. On the issue of European

8Both left-right and GAL-TAN consist of five issue clusters, while European integration is measured usinga single positive-negative combination (MARPOR codes shown in parentheses):Left-Right : protectionism (406, 407), Keynesianism (409, 414), welfare state expansion (504, 505), education(506, 507), and labor groups (701, 702); GAL-TAN : military (104, 105), internationalism (107, 109),national way of life (601, 602), traditional morality (603, 604), and multiculturalism (607, 608); Europe:European community (108, 110).

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integration, however, both strategies produce the desired outcome, as exemplified by the

statistically significant results, substantively larger coefficients, and increased R2.

Table 1: Simple regression analyis of blurring strategies

Avoid ConflictLeft-Right GAL-TAN Europe Left-Right GAL-TAN Europe

Avoid 0.01† -0.00 0.03∗

(0.00) (0.00) (0.01)Conflict -0.02 0.07∗ 0.12∗

(0.02) (0.03) (0.04)

Constant 0.85∗ 1.68∗ -1.81† 1.07∗ 1.35∗ 1.55∗

(0.10) (0.21) (1.03) (0.04) (0.05) (0.07)

N 418 418 418 224 270 178R2 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.02 0.06OLS regression with clustered standard errors (in parentheses).∗ and † indicate significance at p < 0.05 and p < 0.10, respectively.

Figure 3: Blurring strategies by dimension

01

23

4Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

10 40 70 100Avoid

(a) Left-Right

01

23

4Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

10 40 70 100Avoid

(b) GAL-TAN

01

23

4Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

70 80 90 100Avoid

(c) Europe

01

23

4Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

-4 -2 0 2 4Conflict

(d) Left-Right

01

23

4Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

-4 -2 0 2 4Conflict

(e) GAL-TAN

01

23

4Ex

pert

unce

rtain

ty

-4 -2 0 2 4Conflict

(f) Europe

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A similar conclusion can be drawn from Figure 3, which shows the prominence of each strat-

egy per dimension. Starting with the issue of European integration, again, both strategies

are effective in producing expert uncertainty, as indicated by the solid, positive lines (see

panels (c) and (f)). The story for the other two dimensions is more complicated. Taking up

conflicting positions is associated with more position blurring on GAL-TAN (panel (e)) but

not on left-right (panel (d)), whereas avoidance does not work for a party looking to blur its

position on GAL-TAN (see dashed lines, panel (b)).

Next, to test my second hypothesis, I conduct a more inclusive regression analysis. Table

2 presents the results of an extension of the simple model introduced above and includes

the independent variables for both strategies, the control variables that are theorized to

strengthen a party’s reputation (party age, vote share, and government experience), and

their respective interaction terms. Now, none of the coefficient estimates for conflict are sta-

tistically significant, and for avoid only on the issue of European integration (the coefficient

for GAL-TAN is in the wrong direction).

While the presented coefficient estimates provide some information, given that interaction

terms are included here, the best way to interpret these results is by means of marginal effects

plots. Figure 4 presents the marginal effect of avoid for each of the three control variables

on left-right uncertainty. Although the effect of age is opposite from what I expected, the

marginal effect of an avoidance strategy is, indeed, no longer statistically significant for larger

and government parties. A conflict strategy does not work on left-right (see Appendix II).

Figure 4: Marginal effects of avoid for left-right

-.02

0.0

2.0

4.0

6M

argi

nal e

ffect

of a

void

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140Age

(a) Age

-.02

0.0

2.0

4M

argi

nal e

ffect

of a

void

0 10 20 30 40 50Vote

(b) Vote

-.01

0.0

1.0

2.0

3M

argi

nal e

ffect

of a

void

0 1Government

(c) Government

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Table 2: Regression analyis of blurring strategies

Left-Right GAL-TAN EuropeAvoid 0.01 -0.01∗ 0.11∗

(0.01) (0.00) (0.03)Conflict 0.05 -0.02 0.12

(0.04) (0.06) (0.07)Age -0.01∗ -0.01∗ 0.01

(0.00) (0.01) (0.05)Vote share 0.00 0.02 0.36

(0.02) (0.02) (0.19)Government 0.89 0.09 1.64

(0.50) (0.52) (3.01)Avoid × age 0.00∗ 0.00∗ -0.00

(0.00) (0.00) (0.00)Avoid × vote -0.00 -0.00 -0.00

(0.00) (0.00) (0.00)Avoid × govt. -0.01 -0.00 -0.02

(0.01) (0.01) (0.03)Conflict × age 0.00 0.00 -0.00

(0.00) (0.00) (0.00)Conflict × vote 0.00 -0.00 0.00

(0.00) (0.00) (0.00)Conflict × govt. 0.00∗ 0.10 -0.03

(0.06) (0.08) (0.08)

Constant 0.72∗ 2.02∗ -9.01∗

(0.36) (0.28) (2.85)

N 216 258 177R2 0.07 0.07 0.39OLS regression with standard errors (in parentheses).∗ indicates significance at p < 0.05.

On GAL-TAN none of the marginal effects are statistically significant (see Appendix II), but

on European integration we do find some meaningful results. Specifically, the marginal effects

for avoid are all three in line with my expectations (see Figure 5), and conflict also produces

the hypothesized positive effect on expert uncertainty for younger parties (see Appendix II).

Thus, on the whole, an avoidance strategy seems effective on both left-right and European

integration, whereas position blurring in general has little effect on GAL-TAN.

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Figure 5: Marginal effects of avoid for European integration-.1

0.1

.2M

argi

nal e

ffect

of a

void

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140Age

(a) Age

-.3-.2

-.10

.1.2

Mar

gina

l effe

ct o

f avo

id

0 10 20 30 40 50Vote

(b) Vote

0.0

5.1

Mar

gina

l effe

ct o

f avo

id

0 1Government

(c) Government

Finally, I investigate the relationship between a dimension’s party-level salience and the type

of blurring strategy used by a party. I employ a salience measure taken from CHES to avoid

overlap between its operationalization and that of the two blurring strategies, which are

based on manifesto data. Unfortunately, because the salience items for left-right and GAL-

TAN were only included in the 2014 wave of CHES, I am left with too few observations to

conduct a reliable regression analysis. I therefore opt to explore hypothesis 3 visually.

Figure 6 plots the two blurring strategies by party-level salience for each ideological di-

mension. Overall, and in line with my expectations (Hypothesis 3), the plots suggest that

an avoiding strategy becomes increasingly less likely as a dimension’s salience grows (pan-

els (a-c)), because it is difficult—if not impossible—to avoid an issue or dimension if it is

salient to a party. By contrast, a conflicting strategy only becomes more prominent as a

dimension’s salience increases (panels (d-e)). As avoidance is no longer an option to a party,

it now tries to produce uncertainty about its position by taking up conflicting stances on a

dimension. The only exception to this pattern is that a conflicting strategy is less likely when

European integration is highly salient (panel (f)), which could be due to the fact that it is

harder to send out mixed signals when this—relatively straightforward—issue is important

to a party. Nevertheless, Figure 6, as well as the earlier analyses, show that the two posi-

tion blurring strategies are, indeed, appropriate for different parties and in different contexts.

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Figure 6: Blurring strategies by salience10

4070

100

Avoid

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(a) Left-Right

1040

70100

Avoid

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(b) GAL-TAN

7080

90100

Avoid

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(c) Europe

-4-2

02

4Conflict

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(d) Left-Right

-4-2

02

4Conflict

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(e) GAL-TAN

-4-2

02

4Conflict

2 4 6 8 10Salience

(f) Europe

Discussion

This paper aimed to disentagle the concept of position blurring; a concept that has received

increased attention in the field of party politics. Defining position blurring as a conscious

party strategy to create uncertainty about its policy stances, I found that (1) there is consid-

erable variation in the degree of uncertainty about party positions among experts, both across

parties and ideological dimensions; (2) position blurring is predominantly adopted when a

dimension’s salience is low; and (3) two distinct strategies can be identified—avoiding and

conflicting—that are means to the same end. Although preliminary, my subsequent analyses

suggested that both strategies are effective on the issue of European integration, avoidance is

particularly employed on left-right and/or when a dimension’s salience is relatively low, and

taking up conflicting issue positions seems to be a more appropriate strategy on GAL-TAN

and/or when salience is relatively high. Finally, there is reason to believe that party age,

size, and government participation could constrain a party’s position blurring behavior.

16


These findings suggest that party positions are not always a given, as is typically as-

sumed in the party competition literature, which could have important implications for our

understanding of political contestation and representation. Nevertheless, the observed pat-

terns in party behavior do not necessarily mean that position blurring is an effective tool to

alleviate discord among party members or supporters. Future research will need to study

whether internal party disagreement and party switching by disgruntled voters can actually

be assuaged, if not prevented, by position blurring strategies.

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Appendices

I. Correlation matrix for all included variables

Table 3: Correlation matrix

Avoid Conf. Avoid Conf. Avoid Conf. Age Vote Govt.L-R L-R G-T G-T EU EU

Avoid L-R 1.00Conflict L-R -0.23 1.00Avoid G-T -0.77 -0.06 1.00Conflict G-T 0.05 0.34 -0.21 1.00Avoid EU -0.12 0.04 0.19 0.10 1.00Conflict EU 0.10 0.13 -0.21 -0.02 -0.28 1.00Age -0.17 0.24 0.10 0.05 0.07 0.05 1.00Vote -0.37 0.09 0.33 -0.06 -0.00 -0.14 0.45 1.00Government -0.41 0.32 0.28 0.13 -0.03 -0.08 0.32 0.52 1.00

II. Marginal effects plots

Figure 7: Marginal effects of conflict for left-right

-.10

.1.2

.3M

argi

nal e

ffect

of c

onfli

ct

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140Age

(a) Age

-.10

.1.2

.3M

argi

nal e

ffect

of c

onfli

ct

0 10 20 30 40 50Vote

(b) Vote

-.2-.1

0.1

.2M

argi

nal e

ffect

of c

onfli

ct

0 1Government

(c) Government

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Figure 8: Marginal effects of avoid for GAL-TAN-.0

4-.0

20

.02

.04

Mar

gina

l effe

ct o

f avo

id

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140Age

(a) Age

-.06

-.04

-.02

0.0

2M

argi

nal e

ffect

of a

void

0 10 20 30 40 50Vote

(b) Vote

-.02

-.015

-.01

-.005

0.0

05M

argi

nal e

ffect

of a

void

0 1Government

(c) Government

Figure 9: Marginal effects of conflict for GAL-TAN

-.2-.1

0.1

.2M

argi

nal e

ffect

of c

onfli

ct

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140Age

(a) Age

-.4-.3

-.2-.1

0.1

Mar

gina

l effe

ct o

f con

flict

0 10 20 30 40 50Vote

(b) Vote

-.2-.1

0.1

.2M

argi

nal e

ffect

of c

onfli

ct0 1

Government

(c) Government

Figure 10: Marginal effects of conflict for European integration

-.2-.1

0.1

.2.3

Mar

gina

l effe

ct o

f con

flict

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140Age

(a) Age

0.2

.4.6

Mar

gina

l effe

ct o

f con

flict

0 10 20 30 40 50Vote

(b) Vote

0.0

5.1

.15

.2.2

5M

argi

nal e

ffect

of c

onfli

ct

0 1Government

(c) Government

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Disentangling Blurring - Duke University

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