Die Bedeutung des regionalen Kontexts für die programmatische Positionierung von Schweizer Kantonalparteien1

Political parties acting in multilevel system are confronted with electorates that differ substantially in the socio-structural composition. As party competition – especially in federal countries – is foremost structured within the regions, parties are well advised to offer tailor-made policy offers to these electorates. We evaluate these arguments for the Swiss case as a multilevel system with a highly heterogonous linguistic, confessional and socioeconomic structure where the electorates differ a lot from canton to canton. We analyze election manifestos at the subnational level to estimate cantonal party positions. Cantonal party manifestos are an optimal source for extracting party positions, which has not been used often in the Swiss case but which has a high potential in our view. The findings indicate that the socio structural characteristics of the cantonal electorates are indeed reflected in the programmatic positioning of the parties. Parties in the French speaking part of Switzerland take tentatively more leftist positions on economic issues whereas parties in rural cantons have more conservative positions in questions on the societal policy dimension.