The dissertation starts from the premise that for democratic representation to be functional, political parties must clearly communicate their positions to the electorate.
However, scholars and observers have observed that political parties frequently conceal their ideological positions on a wide range of issues. The goal of this dissertation is to look into how positional ambiguity affects voter perceptions and democratic representation. It accomplishes this task through four empirical papers, each of which examines the impact of ambiguity on one fundamental aspect of democratic representation.
The first study investigates the implications of ambiguity for parties’ left-right ideologies. It shows that political parties can fashion the policy content underlying their left-right ideological labels by avoiding or blurring their positions on specific issues by speaking vaguely or endorsing ambivalent positions. The second study investigates the implications of ambiguity for voter-party proximity; in particular, it examines how voters evaluate their proximity to political parties when they lack clear information about their stances. It reveals that when voters lack sure knowledge about political parties’ issue positions, they rely on simpler cues, one of which is their feelings toward political parties. The empirical analysis reveals that voters exaggerate or underestimate the ideological distance to parties to the extent that their positions are ambiguous. The third study examines the implications of ambiguity for voter-party policy linkage. The empirical analysis finds that voter perceptions closely follow party platforms, but the association weakens when party positions are uncertain. Finally, the fourth paper examines the implications of varieties of ambiguous rhetoric for voters perceptions and evaluations of political parties. Based on large-scale survey experiments from 14 European countries, it reveals that the actual tactic that the party adopts to conceal its positions can be crucial in determining its electoral effects.