Introduction

Party competition is a process that in practice lies at the heart of almost every functioning democracy. Understanding this process involves understanding both why particular voters choose to support particular political parties, and why these parties do what they do once the votes have been counted and the election is over. The link between public needs and wants and policy outputs to satisfy these needs and wants, in other words, lies in the realm of policy positions adopted and acted upon by political parties. This book, therefore, is about the policy positions of political parties, measured in 47 countries. There are many reasons why we might want to have systematic information about these positions, and many different ways to gather this information.