Parteide poliitiliste vaadete roll valitsuskoalitsioonide moodustamisel: Eesti ja Slovakkia näited
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
The main aim of this thesis is to assess the possible role of parties policy preferences in
coalition formation. Author will assume that coalition will be ideologically coherent
around formateur. Author will test this assumption on the cases of Estonia and
Slovakia. The role of policy will be assessed on the basis of the data of the Manifesto
Project (MP).
The Manifesto Project (formerly known as Comparative Manifesto Project) is
the most comprehensive and arguably the best available source of information on the
policy positions of parties. The project consists of a content analysis of election
manifestos whereby the content of manifestos (political statements) is categorized
across categories. The proportion of each category for a manifesto is calculated and
thus the final data for each party manifesto is the proportions of the manifesto devoted
to each of these 57 categories.
Almost all previous reserch on this topic has been based on left-right scale.
Instead of using left-right scale, author of this thesis will suggest that better way to
assess parties ideological proximity is to compare relevant parties election manifestos.
Methodology of this thesis is based on two steps. The first thing, which should
be done, is to determine the formateur on each case.The second, the Manifesto Project
database would be updated and restructured from around elections to around coalition
governments, which have actually formed. Also, the policy difference between pairs of
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political parties will be calculated as the total sum of differences across all the 56
substantive dimensions of the Manifesto Project dataset, which will be used to assess
the difference between parties instead of the left-right scale. This would, among other
things, allow to create a measure of policy proximity for each coalition by considering
the differences between the formateur and its coalition partners versus other
parliamentary parties.
Results from Estonia and Slovakia show that although policy plays somewhat
important role in coalition formation, it is hard to assess is it the main preference when
parties choose their government partners.