Magyar, Agnes and Wagner, Sarah and Zur, Roi (2023) Party strategies: Valence versus position. In: The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties. Routledge International Handbooks (1). Routledge, London. ISBN 9780367208745. Official URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.432...
Magyar, Agnes and Wagner, Sarah and Zur, Roi (2023) Party strategies: Valence versus position. In: The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties. Routledge International Handbooks (1). Routledge, London. ISBN 9780367208745. Official URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.432...
Magyar, Agnes and Wagner, Sarah and Zur, Roi (2023) Party strategies: Valence versus position. In: The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties. Routledge International Handbooks (1). Routledge, London. ISBN 9780367208745. Official URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.432...
Abstract
This chapter reviews theories and empirical implications of party strategies. We begin with a review of parties’ positional strategies, building on Downs’s (1957) seminal work and the developments of his spatial model of party competition. Positional strategies are policies that parties advocate along a continuum of voters’ preferences. We discuss party strategies in single- and multi-dimensional party competition, and two- and multi-party elections. We then survey a second type of party strategies. We examine Stokes’s (1963) valence model of party competition which postulates that voting is based on attributes of parties of which all voters approve, such as competence, integrity and party unity. Combining these models, we discuss methodological problems in the study of valence politics, the effect of parties’ valence image on their positional strategies, and parties’ choice between emphasising their valence image and policy positions.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Government, Department of |
| SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
| Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Dec 2025 14:13 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Dec 2025 14:13 |
| URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/36119 |
Available files
Filename: Party strategies Valence versus position_final_version.pdf