Can (Inter-party) Politics “Disappear”?

Vol.13,No.1
The Disappearing of Politics

Abstract
Based on observational as well as experimental accounts, this meta-analytical article deals with the structure of opportunities and limitations that is encountered in party competition by political actors (especially parties, but, in more personalized contexts, also candidates) when they try to decide whether to prioritize between strategies based on the differentiation of positions on political issues and strategies based on factors that are not directly related to competing on issues. Further, the article outlines the mechanisms that serve to interconnect these two strategies and thus lead to a full-fledged political competition with sufficiently developed positional differentiation. In contrast, emphasizing the disappearance of “the politics of goals” in favour of “the politics of outcomes” is not, according to the current state of knowledge in the field, a rewarding strategy of political competition among parties.

Keywords:
politics; political parties; party competition; political space; position; valence; issue ownership
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