Convergence of government ideology in an era of global competition : an empirical analysis using comparative manifesto data

One of the tenets of the competition state and globalisation efficiency theses has been that the end of Keynesian demand-led policies triggered a convergence of partisan and government policy positions in regard to the market economy, government efficiency and the welfare state. For instance, Cerny (1997; 1999, p 3) saw ‘the recasting of party ideology’ – which they understand as ‘accepting the imperatives of international competitiveness and consumer choice as having a higher ideological status than domestic social solidarity’ – as a key dimension of the competition state. This key dimension of competition ‘stateness’ has, however, proved extremely difficult to operationalise. For instance, Horsfall (2010, pp 59–60; see also: Horsfall, 2013a), in the most serious attempt to empirically test the competition state thesis to date, bemoans the complexity of quantifying government ideological shifts and cautions against simplistic dichotomous, unsystematic, naïve or subjective attempts to capture convergence of partisan and government ideology in an era of global competition. As a result, Horsfall (2010; 2013a,b) refrains from including any such indicator in his analysis altogether.