Replication Data for: \"Moderate as Necessary. The Role of Electoral Competitiveness and Party Size in Explaining Parties' Policy Shifts.\"

We provide data on a new measure of electoral competitiveness at the party level for parties that gained parliamentary representation in 11 countries from 1970 to 2014. The countries covered are Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The replication material contains all code necessary to compute the competitiveness measure as well as code to replicate all findings reported in the paper. The paper investigates how the degree of electoral competition affects parties' policy positions. It follows a growing body of research on party positioning in multi-party competition that regards elections as signals for parties that have to choose their positions and issue strategies. In this article we argue that previous elections provide information about the competitiveness of the upcoming election. The expected degree of electoral competition affects parties' future policy positions since with increasing competitiveness of an election, parties have higher incentives to move towards a vote-maximizing position. However, what constitutes a vote-maximizing strategy varies between parties. While large mainstream parties have an incentive to moderate their positions, small and niche parties choose more extreme positions to distinguish themselves from their mainstream competitors. Applying a novel measure of electoral competitiveness, we find that the degree of electoral competition, indeed, determines parties' policy shifts, but that this effect is moderated by party size.本数据集提供了1970年至2014年间，11个国家中所有获得议会席位的政党的政党层面选举竞争力（electoral competitiveness）新测度数据。涉及的国家包括奥地利、加拿大、丹麦、芬兰、德国、荷兰、挪威、西班牙、瑞典、瑞士与英国。本复现材料包含计算该竞争力测度所需的全部代码，以及复现论文中所有研究结果的代码。本论文探讨了选举竞争程度对政党政策立场的影响机制。本研究呼应了近年来日益增多的多党竞争下政党立场选择相关研究脉络，这类研究将选举视为政党用以抉择自身立场与议题策略的信号。本文提出，过往选举能够为政党提供有关即将举行的选举的竞争程度信息。选举竞争的预期程度会影响政党未来的政策立场，原因在于，随着一场选举的竞争程度提升，政党将有更强动机向选票最大化（vote-maximizing）立场靠拢。不过，不同政党的选票最大化策略存在差异。大型主流政党有动机缓和自身立场，而小型小众政党则会选择更为极端的立场，以区别于其主流竞争对手。本研究采用全新的选举竞争力测度方法，发现选举竞争程度确实会影响政党的政策转向（policy shifts），但这一效应会受到政党规模的调节。