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Voters' Party Preferences in Multiparty Systems and Their Coalitional and Spatial Implications: Germany after Unification

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  • Pappi, Franz Urban
  • Eckstein, Gabriele

Abstract

How should party preferences of voters in a multiparty system be measured, compared and aggregated? The authors use city block metric of distances between the pairwise comparisons of the five German parties (1995 survey data for West and East Germany). Neither in West nor in East Germany, a party gains the absolute majority of voters' preferences. They derive coalition preferences from the party rankings; the governing coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP is not the winner, compared with other feasible coalitions of the German party system. But the party rankings of the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition leaners are more homogeneous than other groups of coalition leaners. In the second part of the article, the authors analyze the common structure of all consistent party rankings. Do voters apply the same criteria to evaluate the political parties? Although only a slight majority of individual rankings fit the often used ideological left-right scale, there does not exist a competing one-dimensional order of the parties that would capture more voters. The joint scale of individual party rankings is interpreted as the collective order which facilitates political orientation of voters. This collective order is more pronounced in West than in East Germany where individuals are almost as consistent in their party rankings but where the rankings fit the collective order less well than in West Germany. Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Pappi, Franz Urban & Eckstein, Gabriele, 1998. "Voters' Party Preferences in Multiparty Systems and Their Coalitional and Spatial Implications: Germany after Unification," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 229-255, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:97:y:1998:i:3:p:229-55
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    Cited by:

    1. Freier, Ronny & Odendahl, Christian, 2015. "Do parties matter? Estimating the effect of political power in multi-party systems," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 310-328.
    2. Gschwend, Thomas, 2004. "Ticket-Splitting and Strategic Voting," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 05-06, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    3. Achuthankutty, Gopakumar & Roy, Souvik, 2017. "Strategy-proof Rules on Partially Single-peaked Domains," MPRA Paper 82267, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Ronny Freier & Christian Odendahl, 2012. "Do Parties Matter?: Estimating the Effect of Political Power in Multi-party Systems," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1205, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Achuthankutty, Gopakumar & Roy, Souvik, 2017. "On Top-connected Single-peaked and Partially Single-peaked Domains," MPRA Paper 78102, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Gschwend, Thomas, 2005. "Tickel-splitting and strategic voting under mixed electoral rules : evidence from Germany," Papers 05-06, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    7. Reffgen, Alexander, 2015. "Strategy-proof social choice on multiple and multi-dimensional single-peaked domains," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 349-383.

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