Party competition and strategic responses to change in the electoral environment: The German broad-base parties after reunification.

Abstract

Democracy rests on the hope that representation will emerge from the process of parties competing for support from the electorate. I offer a priming model of party competition which states that broad-based parties are likely to make strategic responses in their campaign communication to change in their electoral environment. Parties do this by changing the priming content, i.e. the mix of issue and candidate oriented appeals, and the priming form of their communication, i.e. the degree of attack, issue differentiation technique, and temporal reference. The communication of a party determines the kind of mandate a party receives if it takes office: a specific-issue mandate, dimensional-direction issue mandate, or party leader independence. I investigate the model by an empirical analysis of the response of the German broad-based parties to the change in their electoral environment after reunification. The study uses survey research to analyze differences in the Western and Eastern electorate; the Eastern electorate is further to the Left economically and less socially progressive, the pattern of cleavage voting is different, and has more late-deciders. A content and visual analysis of the campaign television commercials of the CDU and SPD indicates the response of the parties to these and other changes in the electoral environment. The SPD after reunification emphasized Left economic and deemphasized progressive social value appeals in an effort to integrate the working class in the East into its core constituencies. CDU moved toward an emphasis on conservative social value appeals in an attempt to avoid alienating voters from diverse economic classes. The SPD has made a large increase in appeals related to its chancellor candidate. The SPD has also changed its priming form, decreasing its degree of attack and changing its issue differentiation technique from sharp-positional to diffuse-directional. The study compares the communicated issue emphasis of the parties with their historical issue emphasis presented in their party platforms and finds a high degree of correspondence. Finally, the study conducted interviews with the party campaign strategists of the 1994 election campaign.