Old Programs vs New Ideas: Why Party Policies Stick (or Don't) Across Borders

policy diffusion European Politics @BJPS 1 R file Dataverse

Text-as-data methods reveal mixed success in party policy diffusion across Western democracies. This study examines nineteen countries from 1960-2016, finding that successful parties resist changing their manifestos when borrowing occurs. However, regional cultural reference groups significantly influence adoption patterns within European Parliament factions regardless of election outcomes.

➡️ Key Findings:

Success breeds resistance to change
Regional alignment trumps national context in EP settings
Anchoring effects persist despite electoral success/loss

💡 Methodology Highlights:

Manifesto similarity analysis (1960-2016)
Machine translation for text comparison
Quantitative approach tracking policy dyads across time

This work illuminates the complex conditions shaping political adaptation and borrowing.

Article card for article: The Ties that Bind: Text Similarities and the Conditional Diffusion of Party Policies

The Ties that Bind: Text Similarities and the Conditional Diffusion of Party Policies was authored by Nils DÃ¼pont and Martin Rachuj. It was published by Cambridge in BJPS in 2022.