The Impact of the Socio-Economic Context on the Länder Parties' Policy Positions

Like father, unlike sons: German parties at the state level (Länder parties) not only differ with regard to their roots, their membership structure and their electoral successes, they also exhibit remarkably varied policy preferences. Although several case studies of parties and party systems in the Länder offer important insights, we still lack systematic knowledge about the causes of this variation in policy. This article seeks to fill that void by examining the ways in which socio-economic variables influence a party's policy positions. Based on a comprehensive dataset representing the policy positions of 77 parties over several electoral terms, I test hypotheses related to the cleavage theory and to the concept of the politicised social structure. The policy positions are estimated using the wordscore method. The results show that the proportion of Catholics, rurality and economic situation affect the parties' policy positions.