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The niche party concept and its measurement
[journal article]
Abstract The concept of the niche party has become increasingly popular in analyses of party competition. Yet, existing approaches vary in their definitions and their measurement approaches. We propose using a minimal definition that allows us to compare political parties in terms of their ‘nicheness’. We ar... view more
The concept of the niche party has become increasingly popular in analyses of party competition. Yet, existing approaches vary in their definitions and their measurement approaches. We propose using a minimal definition that allows us to compare political parties in terms of their ‘nicheness’. We argue that the conceptual core of the niche party concept is based on issue emphasis and that a niche party emphasizes policy areas neglected by its rivals. Based on this definition, we propose a continuous measure that allows for more fine-grained measurement of a party’s ‘nicheness’ than the dominant, dichotomous approaches and thereby limits the risk of measurement error. Drawing on data collected by the Comparative Manifesto Project, we show that (1) our measure has high face validity and (2) exposes differences among parties that are not captured by alternative, static or dichotomous measures.... view less
Keywords
people's party; political ideology; definition; party politics; classification; political program; measurement; validation
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Free Keywords
Issue competition; issue salience; mainstream parties; niche parties
Document language
English
Publication Year
2015
Page/Pages
p. 259-271
Journal
Party Politics, 21 (2015) 2
ISSN
1460-3683
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed