Social Democratic Party exceptionalism and transnational policy linkages

Journal article

Political parties learn from successful foreign parties. But does the scope of this crossnational policy diffusion vary with party family? We use a heuristics framework to argue that party family conditions transnational policy learning when it makes information on the positions of sister parties more readily available and relevant. Both conditions apply to social democracy, which, unlike other party families, faced major competitive challenges from the 1970s in the context of exceptionally strong transnational organizations – factors that, as we contend, uniquely facilitate cross-national policy learning from successful parties within the family. We analyze parties’ policy positions using spatial methods and find that social democratic parties are indeed exceptional as they emulate one another across borders more than other families. These findings have important implications for our understanding of political representation and of social democratic parties’ election strategies over the last forty years.

Authors: Schleiter, P; Bohmelt, T; Ezrow, L; Lehrer, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: World Politics
• Volume: 73
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 512 - 544
• Publication date: 2021-06-07
• Acceptance date: 2021-06-07
• DOI: 10.1017/S0043887121000022
• EISSN: 1086-3338
• ISSN: 0043-8871
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR