The voter base and issue orientation of these voters also have strong implica- tions for movement platform parties’ electoral success in relation to their behav- ior in governments. Theoretically we can distinguish between two dimensions of gains parties on which can deliver (cf. Kitschelt (2006b, pp. 283-284).12 First,
whether they can become part of the executive, i.e. procedural gains. Second, whether they are able to deliver the policy change they advocate, i.e. substantive gains. As discussed in chapter 2 and empirically demonstrated in the previous section of this chapter the issue-oriented core electorates of movement platform parties should value substantive gains significantly more than procedural gains.
However, while substantive gains are likely to be more important in the eyes of movement platform party supporters, they are unlikely to operate indepen- dent of procedural gains, since the latter determine whether substantive gains are the result of direct action taken by a movement platform party in govern- ment or of other parties acting on movement demands, while the movement platform party itself remains in opposition. In this latter case, where the estab- lishment makes clear concessions to the issues highlighted by the movement and movement platform party it spawned, we can expect the latter’s appeal to the electorate to shrink. In the face of policy success a significant number of issue-voters will not see the necessity for a dedicated party, since their concerns are addressed (even if that is partially the result of the government acting only to preempt losing votes to the movement platform party).13 Where, however, the
12With this distinction Kitschelt (2006b) builds on Gamson’s seminal work on social move- ment success (Gamson 1990).
demands are not addressed the necessity for a (new) political actor that aims to provide these changes remains obvious and has electoral appeal.
Thus movement platform parties that make no procedural gains, defined in terms of government participation, should be more successful if the government refuses to make policy concessions towards the movement. The most success- ful type of movement platform party, however, should be a party that makes inroads both on the procedural and substantial level. A governing movement platform party that delivers on its policy promises has proven that it is a suc- cessful vehicle for accomplishing the movement’s programmatic goals. Finally, a party that cannot deliver on the substantive level, but has achieved govern- ment participation (i.e. procedural gains) should have the least appeal. Its rep- resentatives in parliament and government will be perceived as sell-outs who are willing to give up on the movement’s goals for the purpose of personal gain in the form of material payoffs and (personal) influence through holding (gov- ernment) office.
Figure 5.4 below summarizes the expectations generated by the discussion of substantive and procedural gains above with respect to the success of move- ment platform parties at the ballot box.
Figure 5.4: Predicted Rank-Order of Success of Movement Platform Par- ties Depending on Procedural and Substantive Gains
Substantive Gains
Yes No
Procedural Gains
Yes Most Successful (1) Least Successful (4) No Third Most Successful (3) Second Most Successful (2) that established parties can prevent new parties from becoming relevant players by accepting their policy demands (Hug 2001).
The hypotheses laid out above expect movement platform parties to be linked to their voters not by clientelist promises or through charismatic leaders but through the specific policy programs that they advocate (cf. Kitschelt (2000, pp. 847-851)). Voters will lend and (re)evaluate their support for a movement platform party in the expectation of policy change on core issues, but are unin- terested in specific (material) payoffs, e.g. in the form of patronage networks.
As described the following section, I will test these hypotheses using data on Green party success across Europe. The Green family of movement platform parties is an ideal candidate for investigating the relationship between party behavior in government and electoral success, because these parties have been represented in a number of governments and their existence since the late 1970s and early 1980s provides a wealth of time-series data.14 Since these parties were
founded at similar times across the European continent, they have also gone through their evolutionary steps in a similar time-frame and international con- text, which ensures the comparability across countries.
Moreover, the plentiful research on Green parties has investigated their emergence (see for instance Kitschelt (1988) and Redding & Viterna (1999)), the social structure and attitudinal basis for Green party support (e.g., Dolezal (2010)), and the role of center-left parties and their adaptive strategies (cf., Rohrschneider (1993b) and Kitschelt (1994)). Systematic research on the govern- ment experience of these parties, however, is much more rare and often limited to (collections of) country-specific studies (see for example the contributions of
14The radical right has had fewer periods of government participation, while the Pirates had none. A discussion of regionalist parties with respect to procedural and substantive gains is beyond the scope of this project, since it is greatly complicated by the fact that many of these parties want to break away from the country in which they might achieve policy success or participate in governments. See Lublin (2012) for an example of the research agenda on the relationship between substantive gains in the form of decentralization and the electoral success of regionalist parties.
Deschouwer (2008) and M ¨uller-Rommel & Poguntke (2012)) and a systematic analysis of the relationship between electoral success, substantive gains, and the parties’ (policy-seeking) behavior over time is so far lacking. Accordingly this section makes a contribution to the study of Green parties as well as movement platform parties more generally.