New survey method reveals EU political parties' socio-cultural and European integration positions are surprisingly comparable across nations.

Anchoring VignettesChapel Hill Expert SurveySocio-Cultural DimensionEUropean Integration ScaleEuropean Politics PSR&M 2 R files 6 Stata files 6 datasets Dataverse

Previous studies found that economic ideology is consistent among EU parties, but questioned the comparability of socio-cultural views. A novel approach using anchoring vignettes from a new dataset offers solutions.

Data & Methods:

Survey Technique: The 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey included anchoring vignettes ("bridge votes") to compare party positions across countries.
Analysis Method: Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey technique used to estimate interval-level scales for socio-cultural and European integration dimensions.

Key Findings:

✅ Scales successfully measure both socio-cultural stance and EU position, despite country-specific variations in core issues.

✅ Positions are quantifiable at an interval level across all participating nations.

Why It Matters:

This breakthrough technique allows for systematic cross-national analysis of complex ideological dimensions previously difficult to compare.

Article card for article: Analyzing the Cross-National Comparability of Party Positions on the Socio-cultural and EU Dimensions in Europe

Analyzing the Cross-National Comparability of Party Positions on the Socio-cultural and EU Dimensions in Europe was authored by Seth Jolly, Ryan Bakker and Jonathan Polk. It was published by Cambridge in PSR&M in 2022.