Minor Party's Political Power and Policy Outcomes - Evidence from European Green Parties and Environmental Policies
Abstract: This paper studies the role played by a minor party in parliamentary politics, by assessing both theoretically and empirically how changes in the minor party's policy positions affect its political power and through that ideological policy outcomes. By adopting socio-economically a more moderate overall policy position, the minor party increases its role as an attractive coalition party for the major parties, thereby increasing its political power. First, I show the importance of agenda-setting in a two-dimensional policy framework, where policy outcomes are determined at the post-election stage. Then, I calculate parties' political power based on their left-right positions to empirically test the hypothesis with data of green parties and environmental policies from 9 European countries for a period of twenty years. Results support the hypothesis that front-line policy positions play a role through determining parties' political power, whereas changes in the green party's environmental policy position have an insignificant impact on policy outcomes.
