[{"id":1165,"title":"Weak Link Theory of U.S. Political Party Platforms","sha":"de8409ed01bf61d82b4a4718b0878b88","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Why do Republicans no longer support free trade? Neoliberal trade policy was a hallmark of the  Regan years (Wilson, 1993).  The Trump administration ended this decades-long consensus.  Per Ehrlich \u0026 Gahagan (2023), an ANES survey found only 33.1% of Republicans favor free trade.  How can a political party change a policy position it has held for decades? One potential antecedent engendering this shift has been the decline in “principled partisanship”. The trend since the Progressive Era has been American voters favoring a candidate’s personality over their conformity to political philosophy (Postell, 2018). Political labels serve more as a social identity than indicators of principled philosophical affiliation. (Barber \u0026 Pope, 2018).\r\n\r\nThe Weak Link Theory of U.S. Political Party Platforms suggests the pivot from political principles to candidate personalities, improving the ease of adding and removing planks from a party’s platform. When policy positions become unmoored by a decline in ideological commitment, the policies binding the party’s platform are weakened. Analogous to an eroded piece of chain link, enabling enterprising political actors to break it off from the rest of the chain.","created_at":"2023-10-09T21:30:28.557Z","updated_at":"2023-10-10T06:00:56.048Z","zenodo_id":8423526,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8423526","subject":null,"tags":["political parties","party platform","ideology","principled partisanship","free trade"],"vote_count":0,"view_count":1,"score":0.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":290,"title":"The End of the Party: A New Approach to Parliamentary Democracy","sha":"a3434d93b3ca29a526c03e6a2fdce309","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Today’s party democracy suffers from two issues. First, members of parliament (MPs) should represent voters’ opinions. Yet their free mandate often suffers from obligations to vote in accordance with party interests and is therefore overridden by the group ([Cohen, 2003](http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2003-09138-003)). Second, due to selection processes, alignment with party policy facilitates success within that party ([Cox \u0026 McCubbins, 2007](https://books.google.de/books?id=gc1LkxwQtPIC)). However, those in power are not necessarily competent to solve current issues. Given the complexity of political issues, pooling expertise across party boundaries (similar to problem-oriented interdisciplinary science projects) therefore promises to be more fruitful.\r\n\r\nDecreasing membership figures point to voters’ disidentification with parties ([Van Biezen et al., 2012](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.01995.x/abstract)). Furthermore, the amount of data necessary to cast informed votes overwhelms many individuals. Voting advice applications (VAA) matching voters’ opinions to parties increase voter turnout and voters' propensity to seek political information ([Ladner \u0026 Pianzola, 2010](https://hal.inria.fr/file/index/docid/1059097/filename/62290207.pdf)).\r\n\r\nVoters’ interests may be represented more accurately by extending the VAA approach such that, like on dating platforms, voters obtain a “matching index” for individual candidates (rather than entire parties) who represent their values, opinions, and political priorities best. Once elected, MPs can be flexibly grouped by their expertise for given tasks and issues, regardless of party boundaries. This approach may increase voters’ identification with politics, ensure independence of political representatives and, eventually, enhance the quality of political work.","created_at":"2016-03-15T16:36:10.287Z","updated_at":"2016-05-14T04:36:20.428Z","zenodo_id":102098,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.47699","subject":null,"tags":["politics","matching algorithms","participation","elections","vaa","voting advice applications","political parties","democracy"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null}]