ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the loosening of the ties between citizens and political parties. Most research assessing the different dimensions of the relationship between political parties and the electorate focuses on turnout, electoral cohesion, party membership and party identification. Research examining party competition, polarization and the policy positions of parties in electoral campaigns focuses on party manifestos to assess changes in party competition and polarization of party systems. To assess the influence that party governments have on policy outputs, existing research usually focuses on examining the impact of government partisanship on various macro-economic policy measures such as public spending. The empirical analysis is based on an original data set consisting of the policy positions of budgetary and social policy laws from fifteen Irish governments. The chapter examines how the legislative output of fifteen consecutive Irish coalition governments has changed; in particular, whether or not policy output is consistent with the positions of parties.
