2013/01/30 by Thomas M. Meyer, Bernhard Miller · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1177/1354068812472582
openalex publication_date 2013/01/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The concept of the niche party has become increasingly popular in analyses of party competition. Yet, existing approaches vary in their definitions and their measurement approaches. We propose using a minimal definition that allows us to compare political parties in terms of their 'nicheness'. We argue that the conceptual core of the niche party concept is based on issue emphasis and that a niche party emphasizes policy areas neglected by its rivals. Based on this definition, we propose a continuous measure that allows for more fine-grained measurement of a party's 'nicheness' than the dominant, dichotomous approaches and thereby limits the risk of measurement error. Drawing on data collected by the Comparative Manifesto Project, we show that (1) our measure has high face validity and (2) exposes differences among parties that are not captured by alternative, static or dichotomous measures.