Despite being a consolidated democracy with free and fair elections and having a political system with intense party competition, a relatively vibrant civil society, and a functioning federal set-up, India still ranks poorly in terms of the coverage, generosity, efficiency, and quality of its...

This article investigates how the success of radical right parties affects the policy positions of mainstream parties. We do this using a regression discontinuity approach that allows us to causally attribute mainstream parties’ positional changes to radical right strength independent of...

Japan's ruling party is a prime example of a dominant party. While dominant parties in other democracies around the world have lost their grip on power or have even disappeared altogether, the LDP is still going strong. What explains the success of the party? How did the LDP acquire its dominant...

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly...

While the structure of party competition evolves slowly, crisis-like events can induce short-term change to the political agenda. This may be facilitated by challenger parties who might benefit from increased attention to issues they own. We study the dynamic of such shifts through mainstream...

When mainstream parties accommodate radical-right parties, do citizens grow more concerned about immigration? Based on a rich literature, we argue that challenger parties’ ability to affect mainstream party positions, particularly on immigration, is associated with greater public salience of...

Party competition during the German federal election campaign 2021 was marked by major external events and remarkable shifts in poll ratings. Existing literature argues that parties adjust their communication to such changing contexts and proposes three strategies: parties can respond to other...

Das komplexer gewordene bundesdeutsche Parteiensystem und die Angleichung in der Stärke der Parteien bei Wahlen führt zu einem ebenfalls komplexeren Koalitions- und Regierungsbildungsprozess auf Bundes- wie Landesebene. Diese Kurzanalyse präsentiert die programmatischen Profile der im...