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Measuring Centre–PeripheryPreferences: The RegionalManifestos ProjectSonia Alonso a , Braulio GÓmez b & Laura Cabeza ba Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Berlin,Germanyb Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Deusto,Bilbao, SpainVersion of record first published: 27 Feb 2013.
To cite this article: Sonia Alonso , Braulio GÓmez & Laura Cabeza (2013): MeasuringCentre–Periphery Preferences: The Regional Manifestos Project, Regional & FederalStudies, DOI:10.1080/13597566.2012.754351
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Measuring Centre–PeripheryPreferences: The Regional ManifestosProject
SONIA ALONSO∗, BRAULIO GOMEZ∗∗
& LAURA CABEZA∗∗
∗Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Berlin, Germany, ∗∗Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain
ABSTRACT We propose a methodology for measuring political parties’ centre–peripherypreferences and positions. The proposal is based on an extension of the Manifesto Project’smethodology that allows us to analyse manifestos in multi-level settings (i.e. manifestos writtenfor sub- and supra-state electoral arenas). This adaptation requires extending the Manifestoclassification scheme to include territorial preferences together with policy preferences specific toeach electoral level. It has two major objectives: on the one hand, it allows us to apply contentanalysis to manifestos written for all possible electoral levels; on the other, it measures parties’centre–periphery preferences beyond the widely used and uninformative categories of‘centralization/decentralization’ and ‘nationalism’. We have applied our methodology to Spanishstate-level and regional-level manifestos between 2009 and 2012 with encouraging results.
KEY WORDS: Centre–periphery cleavage, parties’ manifestos, positional scales, regionalelections
The Centre–Periphery Cleavage and its Measurement
The centre–periphery cleavage is about political control over a—peripheral—territory
inside the state. Historically, it emerged when particular groups within the distant, dis-
tinct, and dependent peripheries of a state opposed the state- and nation-building pro-
cesses initiated by central elites (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). Although Lipset and
Rokkan’s model concentrated attention on a particular historical period, that of the for-
mation of the European nation-states and of the democratic and industrial revolutions,
their analysis is applicable to more recent waves of peripheral mobilization. As a
matter of fact, the centre–periphery cleavage has been a constant of European societies
ever since. The periods when the centre–periphery cleavage seemed to fade away from
Europe are more “an aberration from the normal state of affairs than a culmination of a
process of national integration that suddenly collapsed” (Rokkan and Urwin, 1983: 120).
Correspondence Address: Sonia Alonso, Political Science, Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB),
Reichpietschufer 50, Berlin, 10625 Germany. Email: [email protected]
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
Regional and Federal Studies, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2012.754351
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In fact, during the 1990s and the 2000s, the centre–periphery cleavage has occu-
pied the centre stage of politics in several European countries. In the UK since
2007, the Scottish National Party has been the incumbent party of a devolved, demo-
cratically elected, Scottish government while the Irish separatist party Sinn Fein has
participated in a coalition government of the devolved Northern Ireland administration.
In Belgium, the 2007 general elections were won by the Flemish Christian Democrats
with a campaign based on flirting with separatism, leaving the country without govern-
ment for nine months, during and after which Belgium engaged on its sixth round of
negotiations over the state’s constitutional form. A repetition of these events has hap-
pened after the last Belgian elections of June 2010. In Italy, the impressive electoral
growth of the Lega Nord since the early 1990s, coinciding with the fall of the first
Republic, and its participation in successive coalition governments under the presi-
dency of Silvio Berlusconi, has put political decentralization and the North–South
divide back on the agenda of Italian politics. In the summer of 2000, Corsica finally
obtained wider devolved powers for its special autonomy status, granted in 1991 by
the Mitterrand government but initially limited in terms of self-rule. Spain intensely
debated its constitutional identity between 2004 and 2008, a result of which was the
upgrading of the Statutes of Autonomy of all those regions that were willing to
claim it, with the critical exception of the Basque Country. In November 2008, the citi-
zens of the devolved Danish territory of Greenland approved by a large majority a
wider degree of self-rule in a referendum.
Despite its centrality in theories so fundamental for political science as Lipset and
Rokkan’s theory of social cleavages, and despite its saliency in the everyday politics of
culturally heterogeneous parliamentary democracies, the centre–periphery cleavage is
strikingly absent from scholarly attempts to produce empirical models of the policy
space of political competition. We propose here a first step in this direction: a method-
ology for measuring parties’ centre–periphery preferences and positions based on the
content analysis of party manifestos.
The Centre–Periphery Issue Dimension
The term ‘periphery’ does not mean today what it meant when the centre–periphery
conflict developed for the first time. The ‘peripheries’ of the centre–periphery clea-
vage today are not necessarily backward, distant and dependent territories as they
were back then. In fact, there are many examples of peripheral territories that constitute
the economic vanguard in their respective states. Today the term ‘periphery’ is used to
designate “territorial units with a differentiated history within the state, territories that
are home to cultural minorities and that at the time of the state- and nation-building
processes were subject to the homogenization policies of the state’s central elites”
(Alonso, 2012: 24). Notwithstanding these differences between contemporary periph-
eral movements and their kin movements in the past, they all share, today as a hundred
years ago, the defence of the peripheral territory’s differentiation within the state, the
right to be and to remain different (Alonso, 2012: 25).
The centre–periphery cleavage is, therefore, intrinsically territorial; it is about who
has political authority over a peripheral territory, the central state or the territory itself
through self-governing arrangements. All peripheral mobilization represents an
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aspiration for self-government, a desire for the territorial differentiation of political
authority within the state. As Rokkan and Urwin (1983: 140) put it: “The aims of [per-
ipheral] mobilization can be summarized in a deceptively simple way: to live in one’s
own country, to speak one’s own language, and to be autonomous”.
Political authority over a peripheral territory comes in many shapes and colours.
For this reason, the centre–periphery cleavage has a complex issue structure. Cultural,
historical, socio-economic, institutional and constitutional issues are all part of the way
in which political authority is exercised over a territory. However, two basic elements
characterize the centre–periphery cleavage: on the one hand, the demand for the devo-
lution of political authority to the peripheral territory and, on the other, the rationale
behind this demand, namely the belief that the peripheral territory has the right to
self-government based on its historical, cultural and/or geographical distinctiveness.
Peripheries want to be autonomous in order to be able to preserve their distinctiveness
and central state elites resist peripheral demands in order to preserve the state’s hege-
mony over the totality of its territory.
Thus, the centre–periphery cleavage draws together at least two major issue
dimensions along which the preferences of the political actors that mobilize this clea-
vage are ordered: the competential dimension, which concerns the territorial distri-
bution of political authority between the state and the peripheral territory,1 and the
identitarian dimension, which refers to the processes of nation-building and nation-
preserving and, ultimately, to the rationale behind the demands for self-government.
Each of these dimensions can be defined as a continuum along which the preferences
of parties are ordered from those most enhancing of the periphery’s autonomy to those
most favourable to the central state’s hegemony.
The competential continuum orders the preferences of actors concerning how pol-
itical authority should be distributed between the state and the periphery (given that the
periphery, by definition, is not an independent state and, therefore, has at best shared
sovereignty with the state). Therefore, it refers to the delimitation of the competencies
that fall under the jurisdiction of the state and the periphery, their nature (legislative
versus executive, exclusive versus shared competencies), and about the constitutional
status of this distribution of competencies. The larger the number of exclusive legisla-
tive and executive competencies that fall under the jurisdiction of the peripheral terri-
tory, the higher the level of autonomy it enjoys. Therefore, the preference for a larger
number of competencies over an extended range of policy fields, for exclusive versus
shared competencies, and for legislative as well as executive competencies, belong to
the pro-periphery side of the competential dimension, whereas the preference for a
concentration of competencies at the centre belongs to the pro-centre (i.e. pro-state)
side of the continuum.
The identitarian continuum is about competitive claims to nationhood and national
identity within the state. It, therefore, deals with the processes of nation-building and
nation-preserving. As with the competential continuum, the identitarian one also has
two extremes: on the one side, peripheral nationalism or the belief that the peripheral
territory constitutes a nation and, as such, has the right to self-determination (i.e. seces-
sion); on the other side, state nationalism. In cultural terms, for example, peripheral
nationalism defends the protection and preservation of the peripheral minority’s
language and cultural symbols while state nationalism favours the preservation of
Measuring Centre–Periphery Preferences: The Regional Manifestos Project 3
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the state majority’s language and symbols inside the peripheral territory through the
assimilation of the minority culture into the majority one. Nation-building, however,
is not only based on language or cultural symbols. Historical traditions and institutions
are also an important component. Nationalist movements from peripheral territories
with a past history of either independent statehood or self-governing historical rights
make use of this past in their strategies of mobilization.
We do not claim any originality in this respect. Since Lipset and Rokkan, these two
broad components, even if diversely named and defined, have been recognized by the lit-
erature as inseparable parts of the centre–periphery cleavage (Connor, 1977; Esman,
1977; Safran, 1985; Tiryakian and Rogowski, 1985; Melucci and Diani, 1992;
Newman, 1994; De Winter and Tursan, 1998; Ishiyama and Breuning, 1998; De
Winter et al., 2006; Tronconi, 2006). Needless to say, the competential and identitarian
components are closely interconnected. However, they are not so interconnected as to
become equivalent. The same position along the centre–periphery cleavage can be
reached through different combinations of identitarian and competential preferences.
Thus, some peripheral parties may emphasize competential aims over identitarian ones
while others may do exactly the opposite and yet they are all peripheral parties
(Keating and Loughlin, 1997; Fabre and Martınez-Herrera, 2009). For example, not all
peripheral parties mobilize issues of culture and language (Hepburn, 2009). The diversity
of ‘packages’ that parties can offer the electorate along the centre–periphery cleavage is,
therefore, very large, as is the number of possibilities that this opens to strategizing parties.
The Inexistent Centre–Periphery Scale
No centre–periphery scale of measurement exists for common use among scholars.
The absence of a centre–periphery scale is, in turn, the result of the scarcity of com-
parative data to estimate the policy preferences and positions of political parties along
the centre–periphery dimension, in contrast to the relative abundance of comparative
data on the left–right divide.
There are three main sources of data on parties’ left–right preferences and pos-
itions: expert surveys, mass surveys, and parties’ electoral manifestos (Huber and
Inglehart, 1995; Laver and Garry, 2000; Laver et al., 2003; Benoit and Laver, 2006;
Klingemann et al., 2006; Slapin and Proksch, 2008). In theory, the same existing data-
bases could be used to analyse the centre–periphery dimension, given that the policy
categories for which data have been collected do not limit themselves to left–right
issues. In practice, however, this is not quite so easy for two main reasons which we
discuss independently in the following sections.
The Neglect of Centre–Periphery Categories
The first reason why existing datasets cannot be used to satisfactorily estimate parties’
policy preferences and positions along the centre–periphery dimension is that the
existing categorizations of issues in either individual and expert surveys or manifestos’
content analyses do not provide enough information for translating policy-specific
information into general centre–periphery positions. The centre–periphery dimension
is usually captured by just two categories, ‘centralization/decentralization’ and
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‘nationalism’, used alternatively (Laver and Hunt, 1992; Huber and Inglehart, 1995;
Laver et al., 2003; Benoit and Laver, 2006). In only a few cases both categories are
used simultaneously in order to account for the competential and identitarian com-
ponents of the centre–periphery conflict (Fabre and Martınez-Herrera, 2009;
Maddens and Libbrecht, 2009). In the expert surveys of Benoit and Laver (2006)
the centre–periphery dimension is further captured by country-specific categories:
the ‘Quebec question’ is used as a category or policy issue in Canada and the ‘Northern
Ireland’ question is used as a category in the UK. As Alonso (2012) has rightly pointed
out, Laver and Benoit should justify why the ‘Basque and Catalan questions’ are not
considered for Spain, the ‘Federation versus Confederation’ question is not taken
into account for Belgium, and the ‘North versus South’ question is ignored for Italy.
Protsyk and Garaz (2011) use a more nuanced approach but their main object of analy-
sis is ethno-cultural political rhetoric, which again represents just one component of the
centre–periphery cleavage.
The centre–periphery dimension is too complex to be captured with just one or two
all-embracing labels, such as ‘decentralization’ or ‘nationalism’. The position that a
party occupies along the centre–periphery dimension is the aggregate of the party’s
policy preferences in each of the dimension’s constituent components. Thus, some
parties may emphasize competential aims over identitarian ones while others may
do exactly the opposite. The implication is that the same position along the centre–per-
iphery dimension can be reached through different combinations of cultural, economic,
administrative, institutional and constitutional policy preferences. Moreover, there are
diverse rationales behind parties’ pro-periphery claims and these different rationales
cannot be captured by the catch-all categories ‘decentralization’ and ‘nationalism’.
To sum up, the diversity of ‘policy packages’ that parties can offer the electorate
along the centre–periphery dimension is very large and we need a classification
scheme that can capture centre–periphery preferences in all their diversity and
versatility.
The Central State Bias
The second reason why existing datasets cannot be used to satisfactorily estimate
parties’ preferences and positions along the centre–periphery dimension is because
the existing data have a clear central state bias. No comparative dataset of parties’
policy preferences and positions exists for the sub- or supra-state levels. Therefore,
existing categorizations do not distinguish between the levels of government to
which policy issues refer (Agasoster, 2001). Some initial studies are being published
that analyse the sub-state electoral level, but they all focus on a single country and
usually on a small set of parties (Agasoster, 2001; Pogorelis et al., 2005; Fabre
and Martınez-Herrera, 2009; Libbrecht et al., 2009), with few exceptions (Debus
and Muller, 2010).
In multi-level contexts local, regional and European party manifestos are expected
to differ from state-level ones in at least two respects. On the one hand, local, regional
and European manifestos may include, together with policy preferences, competential
preferences concerning the distribution of powers between levels of government. On
the other hand, local, regional and European manifestos may deal with preferences
Measuring Centre–Periphery Preferences: The Regional Manifestos Project 5
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that are specific to the level of government for which they are written. For these
reasons, the classification scheme that is valid for the content analysis of state-level
manifestos needs to be adapted to manifestos in multi-level settings in order to
retain its validity at different electoral levels. In the following sections we present
our proposal for such an adaptation.
Measuring Centre–Periphery Issues in Parties’ Manifestos
Our point of departure is the Manifesto Project’s methodology and dataset (Klinge-
mann et al., 2006). The first reason for choosing the Manifesto Project as our point
of departure is methodological. Since our objective was to develop a classification
scheme able to capture the centre–periphery cleavage in all its complexity, we
decided to use manual content-analysis. As much as computerized content-analysis
has advanced in the last years, it still is impossible for computers to understand
meaning, and this is precisely what we need2 (Krippendorff, 2004; Volkens et al.,
2009). Although slower and more expensive, we thought that the benefits of a
manual content-analysis compensated for its costs. The Manifesto Project uses
manual coding and has developed a classification scheme that is subtle enough for
our objectives, as we will explain in more detail later. Reliability is, of course, a per-
sistent problem, as is validity for computerized techniques. We deal with this problem
in a separate section at the end of this article.
The second reason for choosing the Manifesto Project has to do with the accumu-
lation of knowledge. The Manifesto Project has become the most used empirical refer-
ence in the study of political parties. There is no other dataset that allows us to measure
the evolution of political parties’ ideological positions and electoral competition since
the Second World War until the present. There are more than 100 academic publi-
cations that have made use of the Manifesto’s data in one way or another during the
last 30 years. By replicating its policy categories in the analysis of regional elections,
we make our respective data comparable,3 allowing us to provide answers to a wide
array of questions of multi-level governance.
The text unit of analysis of the Manifesto Project’s coding procedure is the quasi-
sentence, defined as an argument. An argument is the verbal expression of one political
idea or issue (Klingemann et al., 2006). All the sentences of a party’s manifesto are
coded into 56 policy categories which refer to a wide variety of questions including
external relations, democracy and the political system, the economy, welfare and
quality of life, the fabric of society and social groups (Klingemann et al., 2006).
The Manifesto team registers the number of sentences that a party manifesto dedicates
to each category and calculates this number as a percentage over the total number of
sentences in the manifesto. The saliency score of each category is, therefore, the
rate of mentions that this policy preference receives in a given party manifesto. A
high saliency score is an indication that the issue is relevant for the party. Most cat-
egories of the dataset allow, more or less clearly, for a positional interpretation,
despite the emphasis of the dataset on issue saliency.
The adaptation of the Manifesto Project’s methodology to multi-level settings has
been the endeavour of the ‘Regional Manifestos Project’ (RMP), which has started
its long-term research agenda by applying the newly developed multi-level
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classification scheme to regional elections in Spain (Alonso and Gomez, 2011;
Alonso et al., 2012). This adaptation to multi-level settings consists of: (a) introdu-
cing an additional code that captures competential preferences and/or claims; and (b)
creating sub-categories that capture policy preferences specific to the regional elec-
toral level (Alonso et al., 2012). This has two major advantages: on the one hand, it
allows us to apply content-analysis to manifestos written for all possible electoral
levels (local, regional, national, European); on the other hand, it allows us to
measure parties’ centre–periphery preferences beyond the all-embracing categories
of ‘centralization/decentralization’ and ‘nationalism’. The relevance of these objec-
tives is not to be underestimated, given the multitude of scholarly articles and books
being written about multi-level governance and its consequences for party compe-
tition and for state and sub-state party systems (Deschower, 2003; Roller and Van
Houten, 2003; Amoretti and Bermeo, 2004; Hough and Jeffery, 2006; Thorlakson,
2006; Van Biezen and Hopkin, 2006).
The novelty of this methodology is that it combines policy issues with territorial
levels of government. We get to know how parties link particular policy fields to
specific levels of administration and how they see the relations of power between
the levels. In sum, with this methodology we improve greatly the uninformative all-
embracing codes 301 (decentralization) and 302 (centralization) of the Manifesto Pro-
ject’s classification scheme by way of reaching out to the diversity and versatility of
parties’ multi-level preferences. In the rest of the article, we will discuss the adaptation
of the Manifesto Project’s classification scheme to the regional level; however, the
same methodology would be applicable to the local, the central state or the European
levels.
The Content Analysis of Parties’ Competential Preferences
The Manifesto Project’s classification scheme for state-level manifestos subsumes
everything that is related to the centralization–decentralization dimension (be it politi-
cal, financial or administrative to the regional or the local level) under codes 301
(decentralization: positive) and 302 (centralization: positive). All references to decen-
tralization are, therefore, captured by only one code. This is probably enough when the
research question is not concerned with the centre–periphery cleavage or when the
level of analysis is the central state, as is the case of the Manifesto Project.
However, when our research question is precisely the centre–periphery cleavage or
when our object of analysis is party platforms in regional (local or European) elections
we want to be able to enter into more detail. This is what our classification of compe-
tential preferences allows for.
Competential preferences in party manifestos refer to the level of government that
is addressed together with the policy preference (i.e. local, regional, national, European
or international) or, alternatively, to the relationships between the levels (co-
operation, subsidiary principle, exclusivity of competencies, etc.). Competential pre-
ferences do not necessarily reflect the real existing distribution of competencies
between the levels of government in the manifesto country at the time of the election.
They reflect only the party’s view about which level of administration should be con-
nected to which particular policy preference.
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Competential preferences as expressed in a party manifesto are coded using a two-
digit figure: the first digit indicates the level of government for which the policy pre-
ference is articulated and the second digit signals the preferred degree of authority
for that level (i.e. more/fewer competencies to be devolved/returned to the level of
government addressed in the first digit). When the sentence does not contain a claim
for more or for fewer competencies for a particular level of government, the second
digit is 0. This implies that the sentence is simply connecting a particular policy pre-
ference to a particular level of government (for example, the sentence says what the
regional government is going to do to help single-parent families).
Level of government (first digit):
1 the local level;
2 the regional level;
3 the state level;
8 the European level;
9 the international level.
Preferred degree of authority (second digit):
1 the quasi-sentence claims less authority for the respective level;
2 the quasi-sentence claims more authority for the respective level;
0 the quasi-sentence contains no authority claim. It states only the level of gov-
ernment addressed by the policy preference, without claiming more or fewer
competencies for that particular level of government in that policy area.
Table 1. Classification scheme of competential preferences
Code Explanation
11 Less authority for the local level12 More authority for the local level21 Less authority for the regional level22 More authority for the regional level31 Less authority for the national level32 More authority for the national level81 Less authority for the European level82 More authority for the European level91 Less authority for the international level92 More authority for the international level10/20/30/80/90 No explicit claim for more or less authority to the level of government
addressed.00 No competential preference is expressed (no level addressed, no direction)01 In favour of subsidiary principle02 In favour of clear (jurisdictional) distinction between levels (accountability)03 In favour of shared authority between levels, i.e. explicit calls for co-
operation or co-ordination between higher and lower levels (vertical co-operation)
09 More than one level addressed at the same time; all levels addressed at thesame time
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Alternatively, when more than one level of government is addressed simul-
taneously and the relationship between the levels is made explicit, one of the following
codes for competential preferences applies:
01 in favour of subsidiary principle;
02 in favour of clear jurisdictional distinction between levels (accountability);
03 in favour of shared authority, i.e. explicit calls for co-operation or co-ordi-
nation between higher and lower levels (vertical co-operation);4
09 more than one level addressed at the same time (including all levels
addressed at the same time: for example, a statement defending justice at
all levels of governance).
Therefore, the classification scheme of competential preferences is composed of 20
different codes (Table 1).
Table 2. Standard policy categories and regional sub-categories
Domain 1: External relations101 Foreign special relationships: positive1017 Interregional special relationships: positive102 Foreign special relationships: negative1027 Interregional special relationships: negative103 Anti-imperialism: positive104 Military: positive105 Military: negative106 Peace: positive107 Internationalism: positive108 European integration: positive109 Internationalism: negative110 European integration: negativeDomain 2: Freedom and democracy201 Freedom and human rights: positive202 Democracy: positive2024 Representative democracy: positive2025 Participatory democracy: positive203 Constitutionalism: positive204 Constitutionalism: negativeDomain 3: Political system301 Decentralization: positive3012 Regional finance: positive3013 Differential treatment among regions: negative3014 Differential treatment among regions: positive302 Centralization: positive303 Governmental and administrative efficiency: positive3031 Administration of justice304 Political corruption: negative305 Political authority: positiveDomain 4: Economy401 Free enterprise: positive402 Incentives: positive403 Market regulation: positive
(Continued)
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404 Economic planning: positive405 Corporatism: positive406 Protectionism: positive407 Protectionism: negative408 Economic goals409 Keynesian demand management: positive410 Productivity: positive411 Technology and infrastructure: positive4111 Management of natural resources412 Controlled economy: positive413 Nationalization: positive414 Economic orthodoxy: positive415 Marxist analysis: positive416 Anti-growth economy: positiveDomain 5: Welfare and quality of life501 Environmental protection: positive502 Culture: positive503 Social justice: positive5032 Equal treatment of immigrants504 Welfare state expansion5042 Welfare expansion for immigrants505 Welfare state limitation5051 Welfare limitations for immigrants506 Education expansion5062 Education expansion for immigrants507 Education limitation5071 Education limitation for immigrantsDomain 6: Fabric of society601 National way of life: positive6015 Promotion and protection of vernacular language(s)6016 Cultural links with diaspora6017 Bilingualism: positive602 National way of life: negative603 Traditional morality: positive604 Traditional morality: negative605 Law and order: positive6051 Immigrants’ negative impact on law and order606 Social harmony: positive607 Multiculturalism: positive608 Multiculturalism: negative6082 Immigrants: positiveDomain 7: Social groups701 Labour groups: positive702 Labour groups: negative703 Agriculture: positive704 Middle class and professional groups: positive705 Minority groups: positive7053 Immigrants: positive7054 Diaspora: positive706 Non-economic demographic groups: positive000 No meaningful category applies
The definitions can be found in (authors’ reference) or at our project’s website: authors’ webpage
www.regionalmanifestosproject.com.
Table 2. Continued
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The Content Analysis of Parties’ Preferences in Regional Elections
Based on the definition of the centre–periphery dimension presented in the second
section, and building on the already existing Manifesto Project’s classification
scheme,5 the list of standard categories (three digits) and sub-categories for the
regional level (four digits) is shown in Table 2.
Each quasi-sentence of a manifesto will be coded by assigning to it one and only
one of the 76 policy preference categories and one and only one of the 20 competential
preferences. The two codes are divided by a low rule: XX_YYY (competential code_-
policy preference code).
Centre–Periphery Saliency and Position in Parties’ Manifestos
Each of the 20 competential preferences (Table 1) and 76 policy preferences (Table 2)
that constitute the RMP classification scheme can be understood as an indicator of a
particular preference which a party is conveying to voters. They can be used profitably
to compare differences between parties or to study changes over time for the same
party. The selection of the concrete categories of analysis depends solely on the
research question. While looking at individual competential claims or policy prefer-
ences may suffice to answer some research questions, more often than not the object
of investigation involves combinations of competential and policy preferences as
well as the creation of scales.
The Saliency of the Centre–Periphery Cleavage
According to the definition presented in the second section, the centre–periphery clea-
vage has two main components, competential and identitarian.
Identitarian Issues
The identitarian component of the centre–periphery cleavage refers to the processes of
nation-building and nation-preserving, be it at the state or the regional level. Therefore,
policy categories connected with the protection of languages, with calls to patriotism
and/or nationalism, with the cultural assimilation of immigrants, etc., belong to the
cultural component. These policy categories can be combined with:
1) competential claims for more power to one of the levels (the region, if regional
nation-building; the state if state nation-building), represented by codes 22
and 32;
2) competential claims for less power to one of the two levels, represented by codes 21
and 31;
3) codes 20 (regional level) and 30 (state level), because regional and central govern-
ments can engage in the promotion of nation-building policies with the competen-
cies already at their disposal. When preceded by code 30, nation-building and
nationalism refer to the state; when preceded by code 20, nation-building and
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nationalism refer to the region (we could also think of it as regionalism or minority
nationalism).
The identitarian pro-periphery and pro-centre preferences of party manifestos are,
therefore, calculated by adding up the following saliency scores in the dataset:
Identitarian pro-periphery saliency ¼
(a) 22(601, 6015, 6016, 608) +(b) 20(601, 6015, 6016, 608) +(c) 31_602 + 30_602
where:
(a) more competencies to be devolved to the regional level (code 22) in order for the
regional administration to engage in [regional] nation-building policies (national-
ism 601, promotion of vernacular language 6015, cultural links with diaspora
6016, cultural assimilation 608);
(b) use the competencies already devolved to the regional administration (code 20) in
order to promote (regional) nation-building policies at this level (nationalism
601, promotion of vernacular language 6015, cultural links with diaspora 6016,
cultural assimilation 608);
(c) against state nationalism, state patriotism or against the existing nation-state
(nationalism negative: 602).
Identitarian pro-centre saliency ¼
(a) 32(601, 6015, 6016, 608) +(b) 30(601, 6015, 6016, 608) +(c) 20_602 + 21_602
where:
(a) the state should have more authority/competencies (code 32) in order to engage
in [state] nation-building policies;
(b) use the competencies at the disposal of the state administration (code 30) in order
to promote [state] nation-building policies at this level;
(c) statements against regional nation-building, against regionalism or minority
nationalism (nationalism negative: 602).
Competential Issues
The competential component of the centre–periphery cleavage refers to the relations
of authority between the levels of government. Within this component, as within the
identitarian one, a further differentiation can be established between pro-periphery
and pro-centre preferences. Pro-periphery are all those statements in the manifesto
that claim more competencies to be devolved to the regional level or less authority
to be left at the state level (codes 22 and 31) in all policy categories except the
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identitarian ones, which belong to the identitarian dimension. Pro-centre are those
statements that demand more competencies to remain at the state level or regional
competencies to be returned to the state (codes 32 and 21) in all policies except the
cultural ones.
Competential pro-periphery saliency ¼
(a) 22_YYY – (22_601 + 22_6015 + 22_ 6016 + 22_ 608) +(b) 31_YYY – (31_601 + 31_602 + 31_6015 + 31_ 6016 + 31_608) +(c) 20_(301, 3013, 3014) + 30_301
where:
(a) all policy preference categories that come with a 22 code (i.e. more competencies
for the peripheral territory) except the identitarian ones (601, 6015, 6016, 608);
(b) all policy preference categories that come with a 31 code (i.e. fewer competencies
for the central state) except the identitarian ones (601, 602, 6015, 6016, 608);
(c) general statements in favour of the level of decentralization achieved by the
regional administration (20_301, 20_3013, 20_3014) or in favour of the level
of decentralization achieved by the state as a whole (30_301). Let us remember
that 301 is the policy category ‘Decentralization: positive’.
Competential pro-centre saliency ¼
(a) 32_YYY – (32_601+ 32_6015 + 32_6016 + 32_ 608) 1(b) 21_YYY – (21_601 + 21_602 + 21_6015 + 21_6016 + 21_ 608) 1(c) 20_302 + 30_302
where:
(a) all policy preference categories that come with a 32 code (i.e. more competencies
for the state level) except the identitarian ones (601, 6015, 6016, 608);
(b) all policy preference categories that come with a 21 code (i.e. fewer competencies
for the peripheral territory) except the identitarian ones (601, 602, 6015, 6016,
608);
(c) general/abstract statements against decentralization, either the level of decentra-
lization achieved by the region (20_302), or that achieved by the state (30_302).
Let us remember that 302 is the policy category ‘Decentralization: negative’.
A combined identitarian and competential centre–periphery saliency score is
calculated by adding together these components in the following manner:
Centre–periphery saliency ¼ competential pro-periphery + identitarian
pro-periphery + competential pro-centre + identitarian pro-centre
Pro-periphery saliency ¼ competential pro-periphery + identitarian pro-periphery
Pro-centre saliency ¼ competential pro-centre + identitarian pro-centre
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Centre–Periphery Scales
The use of two opposite policy categories or the combination of several opposite cat-
egories that refer to one particular dimension of competition makes it possible to create
positional scales that order the parties’ positions along a continuum from positive to
negative or favourable to unfavourable. This is possible because, despite its emphasis
on issue salience, most of the categories of the Manifesto Project classification scheme
are, by definition, positional, such as for example ‘Decentralization Positive and Nega-
tive’, ‘Multiculturalism Positive and Negative’, ‘Constitutionalism Positive and Nega-
tive’, ‘Market Regulation’ (to be in favour of market regulation is a positional issue,
not just a neutral economic issue), etc. This means that adding together positional cat-
egories gives us not just a saliency score but also a positional one. Therefore, the pos-
itional score includes information about how relevant the position is in the manifesto.
If a party dedicates 20% of its sentences to ‘Decentralization Positive’, this is as much
a position as it is a saliency score. All we need to do to arrive at a final position score is
subtract the sentences dedicated to the opposite preference, ‘Decentralization Nega-
tive’. A manifesto that is consistent in its positions should not include simultaneously
opposite categories (i.e. sentences both in favour and against decentralization) but
manifestos are seldom totally consistent. This is the reason why we need to subtract
the saliency scores of opposite individual categories (or of opposite sets of categories).
In order to create a scale along which we can place parties’ centre–periphery pre-
ferences as reflected in their manifestos, we need to construct an indicator of position
using the centre- periphery saliency scores presented in the previous section. There are
two ways to do this. The first way is to subtract the saliency score (percentage) of pro-
centre sentences from the saliency score of pro-periphery ones (Budge et al., 2001):
Centre–periphery position ¼ Pro-periphery – Pro-centre
Theoretically, this variable ranges from –100 for a manifesto exclusively dedicated to
pro-centre categories to 100 for a manifesto totally devoted to pro-periphery issues;
empirically, however, it varies for each manifesto. The position scores so obtained
do not simply reflect the relative weight of pro-periphery categories with respect to
pro-centre ones but are also influenced by the total content of the manifesto (i.e. its
size), given that the two terms of the formula are saliency scores. In other words,
two manifestos may obtain the same result from subtracting the number of pro-
centre sentences from the number of pro-periphery ones and still obtain different pos-
ition scores if one of the manifestos is much longer in its total number of sentences than
the other. This would make the percentages of the larger manifesto different to those of
the smaller one, influencing the final score.
Some researchers claim that it is necessary to make the calculation of the position
score independent of the size of the manifesto. One such way was defined by Laver and
Garry (2000: 628) as the “relative balance of pro and con text units, taken as a pro-
portion of all text units conveying information on this matter”. This is an attempt to
separate position from saliency and create a ‘pure position’ score:
Centre–periphery pure position ¼ (pro-periphery – pro-centre)/ (pro-periphery
+ pro-centre)
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The position variable, so calculated, ranges from –1 for those manifestos that dedicate
all the sentences to pro-centre categories to 1 for those manifestos that dedicate all the
sentences to pro-periphery categories. The weakness of this formula is that it assumes
that one policy area has nothing to do with the others. This assumption, however,
seems unrealistic. Here we follow the Manifesto group when they argue that
[s]ubstantively, this implies that the authors of a programme present policy in
one area totally separately from policy in another area, never reviewing the
balance of the document as a whole. This seems unrealistic from what we
know of the writing of programmes, which are finely tuned and revised as a
whole not once but many times. (Budge et al., 2001: 89)
State Parties’ Centre–Periphery Preferences in Spanish Regional and State
Elections (2008–11)
The Dataset
We have applied our proposed multi-level classification scheme to the coding of
parties’ manifestos in Spain. We have coded three types of manifestos: first, the mani-
festos published by the regional branches of the two main state parties, the Socialist
Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, PSOE) and the Popular Party (Partido
Popular, PP), for the regional elections occurring between 2009 and 20126 in 16
Spanish regions (that is, all except one7), making a total of 32 manifestos; secondly,
the framework programmes8 published by the central leadership of PSOE and PP
for the regional elections of May 2011, which makes a total of two manifestos;
thirdly, we have coded the PSOE and PP manifestos for the state-level elections of
November 2011 (two manifestos). The total number of coded manifestos is 36.
The dataset has a total of 453 variables, of which 446 correspond to combinations
of competential claims and policy preferences. There are a total of 20 competential
claims and a total of 76 policy preferences, besides the category for uncoded sentences
(00_000). This means that, in theory, a total of 1520 combinations of competential and
policy codes are possible. However, depending on the electoral level, some combi-
nations are not to be expected. For example, in regional elections we do not expect
to find references to either the European or the international level, whereas we
expect to find few references to the state and local levels. The dataset also includes
the total number of quasi-sentences of the electoral programme. Together with the
codebook, it can be downloaded at: www.regionalmanifestosproject.com.
Data Validity
One basic check of the validity of our proposed classification scheme is the proportion
of quasi-sentences left uncoded. A classification scheme is not—or no longer—valid if
this proportion is high or if it increases considerably over time. In our dataset 38% of
the manifestos have no uncoded sentences. Among the rest, on average only 0.15% of
quasi-sentences are uncoded (with a maximum of 0.66%). The extremely low percen-
tage of uncoded quasi-sentences suggests that our classification scheme covers almost
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all the possible combinations of competential and policy claims that are addressed by
Spanish parties in their manifestos.
Another check of the validity of our data is the extent to which our classification
scheme produces results that make sense. Face validity is “the gatekeeper for all
other kinds of validity” (Krippendorff, 2004: 314). In Figures 1 and 2 we present a
small sample of the abundant results generated by our classification scheme. Figure
1 shows the centre–periphery position of PSOE and PP in the Spanish state elections
of 2011 and in the regional elections of 2009 to 2012, including the framework pro-
grammes elaborated by the parties’ central leaderships for the May 2011 regional elec-
tions. The results show that PSOE and PP defended pro-centre positions in state
elections, PSOE more mildly so, though neither dedicated much space to centre–per-
iphery sentences, PSOE even less than PP. These results make sense. Already at the
previous state elections, in 2008, the PSOE was willing to close the debate over
Spanish devolution. The territorial tensions were causing the party a rejection
among its voters, even in Catalonia and Andalusia. The 2011 electoral manifesto is,
therefore, consistent with this electoral turn. The nationalist PP, on the other hand,
is consistent with its historical pro-centre position.
Concerning regional elections, the regional branches of PSOE were, in a majority
of the regions, more pro-periphery than their PP counterparts, with some significant
exceptions—again something that fits what we know about PSOE and PP in the
regions. One interesting result is that the framework programme of the PP for the
Figure 1. Centre–periphery positions of PP and PSOE across Spanish regions (2009–12) andelectoral arenas
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2011 regional elections was pro-centre whereas the manifestos of most of its regional
branches were pro-periphery, in some cases conspicuously so (Valencia and Galicia).
Apparently, the PP has found a division of labour across electoral levels. The PP at the
centre is centralist and nationalist because this centralism and nationalism pays off
electorally. The PP in the regions, by contrast, follows a mainly regional agenda,
which can turn assertively pro-periphery at times, as happened during the reforms of
the Statutes of Autonomy between 2004 and 2008 in those regions in which the PP
is a hegemonic party.
In Figure 2 we present the levels of government addressed in the manifestos of PP
and PSOE according to the type of election for which the manifesto was written. It
comes as no surprise that state-level manifestos dedicate most of their sentences to dis-
cussing the state (national) level and regional manifestos the regional level. This
applies to both PSOE and PP, with only slight differences between them.
More interesting are the results of the framework programmes published for the
2011 regional elections. PSOE’s framework programme divided its attention into
three types of territorial interrelations: 30% of the sentences referred to the regional
level, most of it to the decentralized status quo (code 20), that is, to references
about what the regions do or could do with the competencies at their disposal.
Another 25% of the sentences were dedicated to the state level, all of it to code 30,
that is, to the point of view of the central government, either concerning policy priori-
ties or what the PSOE things are the state’s responsibilities and the state’s prerogatives
in connection with the State of the Autonomies. Finally, the largest saliency in PSOE’s
framework programme, 36%, belonged to sentences that talked about co-operation and
co-ordination of the regions with the state (vertical co-operation). In sum, PSOE’s fra-
mework programme territorialized the electoral campaign, focusing on regional issues
Figure 2. Governing levels addressed in manifestos, by manifesto type and by party.
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and on ways of making the State of the Autonomies more co-ordinated and co-
operative.
The PSOE’s regional branches, in contrast, focused their manifestos overwhel-
mingly on the regional level and ignored completely the willingness of the PSOE in
Madrid to increase co-ordination and co-operation between the regions and the state.
A majority of the space was dedicated to discussing what the party was going to do
if elected with the competencies that were already at the disposal of the regional
administrations (code 20).
PP’s framework programme was so overwhelmingly concentrated on the state level
that it is difficult to see how it could have been written as a framework for regional
elections: 80% of all sentences referred to the state level of administration. The
word ‘Spain’ was conspicuously present in the framework programme. Again, this
fits well with what we know from the electoral campaign. The PP wanted to nationa-
lize/centralize the campaign in order to win and take as much regional power away
from the PSOE as possible (which it finally did). The PP’s regional branches,
however, dedicated their manifestos to talking about what they were planning to do
with the competencies at their disposal if they won the elections (code 20).
In order to test whether the results of a content analysis method are valid in relation
to other measures of the same underlying phenomenon, it is necessary to compare the
two—or more—methods against one another. This is what is called correlative validity
or cross-validation. The main idea here is that validity “travels along high correlations”
(Krippendorff, 2004: 333) or, in other words, that the highest the correlation between
two measures—by two different methods—of the same underlying phenomenon, the
more valid these measurements are.
It is difficult to cross-validate our results since there are hardly any data with which
to compare them. We know of only one dataset with which some comparisons could be
attempted: the Expert Survey on Ethnonationalism compiled by Edina Szocsik and
Christina Zuber during 2011 and published in Party Politics in 2012. Szocsik and
Zuber have gathered cross-national data on the ‘ethnonationalist’ dimension of party
competition in multinational European democracies. They asked experts to place
parties’ positions on a scale that goes from 0 (pro-centre) to 10 (pro-periphery) and
parties’ saliencies on a scale from 0 (not at all important) to 10 (extremely important)
along 8 ‘ethnonationalism’ categories. Fortunately for us, Szocsik and Zuber’s dataset
includes Spain and the data are comparable given that they have data for PP and PSOE
in state elections for the same year as our data, 2011, and that some of their categories
have a similar counterpart in our classification scheme.
In order to compare the data, we have proceeded in the following manner. We have
compared the Szocsik and Zuber categories of ‘territorial autonomy’ and ‘cultural
autonomy’ with their counterparts in our dataset, ‘competential centre–periphery
dimension’ and ‘identitarian centre–periphery dimension’. Since these are not exact
equivalents, we have also added up all the ethnonationalist categories of Szocsik
and Zuber that have similar correspondents in our dataset (five in total: cultural auton-
omy, territorial autonomy, education in minority language, use of minority language,
ethnonationalist ideology) to create a new category called ‘the centre–periphery
dimension’, after which we have compared it with our own centre–periphery dimen-
sion. Szocsik and Zuber did not ask experts for the position of each regional branch of
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PSOE and PP individually but for a general overall position of these parties at the
regional level (i.e. “the [party name] at the level of the Autonomous Community”).
The assumption behind this is that the positions of Spanish state parties are the
same across all regions, something that needs to be proofed rather than assumed.
Nevertheless, in order to proceed with the comparison, the closest equivalent to this
overall regional position of Spanish state parties in our dataset is the framework pro-
gramme. As a last step, we have standardized all the scales to 0–1. The results are
shown in Table 3. The comparison tells us that the order of parties along the dimen-
sions generally coincides and the positions are not far from each other under the
two methodologies but, by contrast, the saliency scores are much higher in
the expert surveys than in the manifestos’ dataset. Experts, therefore, tend to judge
the issues of the centre–periphery dimension as much more relevant and salient
than is reflected in the parties’ manifestos.
Data Reliability
A research method is reliable if the same results are obtained whenever the method is
applied, irrespective of the circumstances of its implementation. Complete reliability is
impossible to achieve. There are always random errors that can be big or small. There-
fore, some degree of unreliability is always present. What we have to aim at is consist-
ency between measurements. The more consistent the results obtained from repeated
analyses, the higher the reliability of the method. Reliability is a critical component
of content analysis; without it, content analysis measures are useless.
In manual coding, abidance by coders to given instructions is of utmost importance
in order to get replicable results. Each and every properly trained coder should come to
the same conclusion about unitizing (i.e. choosing the coding unit) and scoring (i.e.
selecting the code for a text unit). As with any other research technique, in order to
reach a good level of reliability, learning and training is needed. All coders must
take part in training before they are allowed to start coding real manifestos. The train-
ing ensures that all coders have a sufficient understanding of the coding process which
enables them to create reliable and comparable data. Once the formation process
comes to an end, coders are asked to fill a reliability test. Only those coders whose
test results coincide at least in 85% with the correct codes (the master codes) are
then selected for coding.9
The selection of the coders was based on their reliability test results. After train-
ing, we selected two coders: Coder 1 achieved a reliability test score of 0.846 or 85%
and Coder 2 obtained a reliability test score of 0.886 or 89%. We split the set of mani-
festos into two sub-sets and gave each sub-set to one different coder for coding. The
dataset identifies the coder of each manifesto and provides also its test score. As of
now, we have been unable, for funding reasons, to hire more coders to repeat the codi-
fication of the same manifestos in order to be able to calculate inter-coder reliability.
However, in order to be able to have some degree of knowledge about the reliability of
our data, we asked Coder 2 to code four manifestos that had already been coded
by Coder 1. The results are encouraging. We obtained very high correlations in all
four cases:10 0.957, 0.987, 0.981 and 0.990 (all of them statistically significant at
0.01).
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Table 3. Szocsik and Zuber (S&Z) expert survey results in comparison to our Manifesto data results (RMP)
Territorialposition
Territorialsaliency
Culturalposition
Culturalsaliency
Centre-–peripheryposition
Centre-–peripherysaliency
S&Z RMP S&Z RMP S&Z RMP S&Z RMP S&Z RMP S&Z RMP
PSOE national 0.68 0.500 0.467 0.002 0.61 0.496 0.367 0.008 0.597 0.497 0.397 0.010PP national 0.50 0.497 0.555 0.009 0.36 0.492 0.344 0.016 0.397 0.489 0.502 0.024PSOE regional∗ 0.505 0.011 0.506 0.013 0.511 0.025PP regional∗ 0.503 0.010 0.501 0.015 0.505 0.025PSOE at regional level 0.771 0.545 0.517 0.091 0.671 0.503 0.5 0.006 0.64 0.548 0.53 0.096PP at regional level 0.587 0.494 0.528 0.032 0.487 0.492 0.4 0.022 0.436 0.486 0.537 0.054
∗Mean value of the 16 regional programmes.
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Conclusions
We have proposed here a methodology for coding parties’ centre–periphery prefer-
ences as reflected in their manifestos. Our methodology is an extension of the Mani-
festo Project’s content-analysis methodology. We have elaborated a multi-level
classification scheme for the codification of manifestos in multi-level settings that
can be used in combination with the one developed by the Manifesto team for state-
level elections in order to make the respective data comparable. Our data fill in a
double empirical gap within the field: on the one hand, the scarcity of data to estimate
the policy preferences and positions of political parties along the centre–periphery
dimension and the resulting absence of a centre–periphery scale for common use
among scholars; on the other, the scarcity of data on parties’ policy preferences and
positions at sub-state electoral levels.
We have applied our methodology to Spanish state-level and regional-level mani-
festos between 2009 and 2012. The results are encouraging, in terms of face validity,
cross-validation and reliability. Although our starting point has been Spain between
2009 and 2012, our multi-level classification scheme was designed with an aspiration
at cross-time and cross-country applicability. We believe that the multi-level classifi-
cation scheme here proposed can be profitably used to content-analyse manifestos from
other countries and from other historical periods. This is precisely the task of our future
research agenda.
Notes
1Alonso (2012) names this component of the centre–periphery dimension ‘territorial’. Here we have
decided to be more specific with the terminology because the label ‘territorial’ is, in this context,
equivocal. The centre–periphery dimension is inherently territorial; it is based on and defined by ter-
ritory. It would not exist without territory and, therefore, the centre–periphery dimension and the ter-
ritorial dimension are basically the same thing. One of its components, therefore, cannot be at the same
time the totality and one of its parts.2Moreover, fast-growing computerized techniques of content analysis for measuring party policy pos-
itions need the Manifesto data in order to test the validity of their findings.3This means that there is no need to recode all the manifestos of the Manifesto Project dataset according
to our classification scheme. Those who are exclusively interested in policy preferences (not in com-
petential claims or the centre–periphery cleavage) can merge the two levels of analysis (state and
regional) in one dataset. Those interested in the centre–periphery cleavage would have to insert the
competential codes to the already-coded manifestos, but this task is relatively fast with the availability
of manifestos in a machine-readable version and with the text already divided into quasi-sentences.4Horizontal (inter-regional) co-operation is captured by one sub-category: 1017.5This means that, for the sake of comparability, we are not free to create new coding categories beyond
the already 56 Manifesto categories; we have to limit ourselves to creating sub-categories, hierarchi-
cally nested into already existing categories.6The regions of Andalusia, Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia have an independent electoral calen-
dar from the rest of regions. The regional elections of May 2011 took place in 13 Autonomous Com-
munities, excluding Andalusia (2012), Basque Country (2009), Catalonia (2010) and Galicia (2009).7We do not have data for the PP and the PSOE’s manifestos in Castile-La Mancha. These parties did not
publish electoral programmes or, if they did, they were not willing to share them with us. When con-
tacted, they claimed that they presented their proposals in public campaign speeches and in summaries
printed in the press.
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8As part of their preparations for regional elections the central leaderships of state parties publish what
is called a ‘framework programme’ (programa marco). Although the regional leaders of each party are
invited to participate in the elaboration of the framework programme, this document is de facto
intended to serve as a demarcation of red lines that the regional leaders should not cross when elabor-
ating their regional manifestos.9For further details on our coders’ training please visit the project’s website: authors’ website
www.regionalmanifestosproject.com.10These manifestos are: Aragon PSOE 2011, La Rioja PP 2011, Asturias PSOE 2011, and Cantabria PP
2011.
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