Partitocracy and intra-party ideological agreement

In this chapter we analyze the internal ideological homogeneity of Belgian parties and we compare it with that of parties in three other countries: Germany, Switzerland and Canada. None of these other countries is considered to be a partitocracy; the Swiss case is sometimes even described as the exact opposite, namely a system that does not entail party government and with relatively weak parties. We employ novel data drawn from a survey of 851 politicians-MPs, ministers and party leaders-in these four countries. Our questionnaire included eight (or nine in Switzerland) policy proposals that p... Mehr ...