parties in all our countries, and
scoring them according to absolute left-right extremes that
cut across party systems. To simplify the scoring task, we
do not attempt to capture and express the full range of
variation between the most extreme positions possible on
each issue. Instead, we limit our scoring to the
subcategories "weak," ''moderate,'' and ''strong'' within
each of the pro-con categories. Allowing for a zero or
"neutral" point in this scale, we thus develop a basic
seven-point scale, ranging from ''strong negative'' to
''strong positive" issue orientations. Later we will see how
this scale unfolds into an eleven-point scale after
introducing the distinction between party program and party
practice.
4. Distinguishing between
issue "consensus" and issue 'irrelevancy." A
political issue can be defined as a social problem for
which a vigorous division of opinion exists on the nature
or appropriateness of government action toward solving
the problem. A proposal for a given governmental policy
which is routinely accepted in one country, however, may
generate intense controversy in another. While such a
proposal constitutes a political issue in the latter
country, it may be judged "irrelevant" to politics in the
former country. If we exclude issues that are judged
irrelevant to party politics in certain countries because
they elicit settled rather than divided opinion, we
introduce severe problems for comparative cross-national
analysis. For example, are the religious parties in a
two-party theocracy not to be coded as "clerical" because
there is no strong popular sentiment for the separation
of church and state? To avoid these problems and promote
cross-national comparisons, we interpret "division of
opinion" from an international rather than national
perspective. If the issue is pervasive enough to be
selected for study, then we have established that
sufficient division of international opinion exists to
make the issue relevant to all countries, even
though opinion on it is firmly settled within given
countries and the issue is not significant for national
politics. Instead of treating this issue as irrelevant"
to the country, we treat it as one that features a
consensus. Therefore, we strive to score every
party on every issue.
5. Handling discrepancies
between party "program" and party "practice."
Discrepancies between party program and party
practice are commonplace in American politics, because
our national parties, once in power, often fail to enact
legislation that is promised in party platforms. One
could argue that parties ought to be scored on
performance and not promise, but strict reliance on this
approach presents both practical problems of
comparability across parties and conceptual problems in
establishing the purpose of identifying a party's issue
orientation. At the practical level, one can best detect
differences between program and practice for governmental
parties, which are given the opportunity to practice what
they preach. Because smaller nongovernmental parties may
not assume responsibility for formulating governmental
policy, their programs need not be so constrained by
worldly matters. As a result, tests for issue orientation
prove to be more severe for governmental parties (more
properly, Duverger's "majority bent" parties) because we
contrast what they say to what they do, when given the
opportunity.
At the conceptual level, we ask
ourselves the purposes of identifying a
party's issue orientation. One purpose is to analyze public
policy outputs according to different party inputs,
including issue orientation. A second is to analyze bases of
support according to issue orientation. Both of these
purposes appear to be served by scoring parties primarily on
their programs. Discrepancies between the issue orientation
of a governing party and its policy output can be isolated
and analyzed more effectively when the practice is not
hopelessly confounded in its issue orientation score. The
second purpose also seems to be better served by scoring
parties primarily on their programs, for this is the face
that parties present in seeking popular support.
While these arguments favor program
over performance in determining issue orientation, it seems
appropriate to temper a party's score on issue orientation
with knowledge of discordant practices, when these are
known--which is similar to the procedure used by Meisel in
scoring the issue orientations of Canadian parties (1967).
We thus treat party program as being equal in importance
with party practice in our operationalization. of issue
orientation, allowing for inconsistencies between program
and practice to average into an intermediate score. Scores
are assigned to parties as they are positively or negatively
oriented toward (favor or oppose) the issue in question (see
Table 6.1).
If the literature refers to either the
program or the practice of the party and it notes no
difference between the two, they are assumed to be
equivalent and the party is scored along the diagonal
(± 1, ±3, or ±5). Given a stated discrepancy
between the two, the party is scored from the appropriate
cell off the diagonal. In the extreme case of a difference
in sign between program and practice, the party is
assigned the mean score, observing negative and positive
signs.
TABLE 6.1: Scheme for Coding Party
Program and Practice
|
|
Party's Position as Stated in Its Program
Is
|
Party's Position as Shown in Practice Is
|
Weak
|
Moderate
|
Strong
|
Weak
|
±1
|
±2
|
±3
|
Moderate
|
±2
|
±3
|
±4
|
Strong
|
±3
|
±4
|
±5
|
|