Leaders, Factions and the Game of Intra-Party Politics by Ceron Andrea;

Author:Ceron, Andrea;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

Factional constraints on party positions in Italy

Let us move to testing the hypotheses discussed above using Italian data. The dependent variable is Party Position (PP), estimated applying the vanilla method to ILSD. Right-wing parties retain positive values, while PP is negative for parties located on the extreme-left of the scale. The independent variables are the following. Gamsonian Agreement Position (GAP) is the mean of the faction’s position weighted by the share of seats in the party body of each faction per each party congress; positive values indicate that the weighted average of factions is on the right; the more GAP is on the right, the more PP is expected to be there (and vice versa). Years Before Elections (YBE) is the number of years remaining before the next general elections. It is analyzed in interaction with GAP: as YBE shrinks, the marginal effect of GAP on PP should increase (and vice versa). The variable Median Faction records the influence of the median faction above and beyond its contribution to GAP; it has been measured as the distance between the median faction and the weighted mean of all factions (which corresponds to the inter-factional agreement).12 The ability of the median faction to attract PP toward its ideal point is caught by a positive significant value of this variable. Direct Election is a dummy variable that accounts for the autonomy of the party leader; it takes the value of 1 when the leader is directly elected (by delegates during party congress or by party members or supporters through “primary election”), and the value of 0 when the party leader is indirectly nominated by a less inclusive selectorate (i.e., a small committee, such as the party’s National Council or Central Committee).13 This variable is tested in interaction with GAP; the expected effect of GAP on PP should be lower or not statistically different from zero in parties that directly select the leader. Finally, Parliamentary Centre of Gravity is a proxy for the center of the political space and corresponds to the mean of the parties’ positions weighted by their share of seats in Parliament; if parties are attracted by the political center, one should find a positive significant value of this variable.

Figure 4.1 provides a first visual analysis of my general claims. For each party congress, the picture shows the value of GAP along with all the PP values measured until the next congress. Parties in which the leader is directly elected (black) are differentiated from parties that elected their leader in smoke-filled rooms (gray). Accordingly, two dotted lines with the fitted value of the regression for the two contexts are plotted.

Figure 4.1 Party position and weighted mean of factions’ position in Italy.

Note

The dotted lines express the fitted value of the regression when the party leader is directly (black) or indirectly (gray) elected.

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