The Value of a Platform

As the two major parties’ conventions get wrapped up this week, there has been some attention in the media to the parties’ platforms. Political parties use their conventions to adopt platforms, or manifestos, that outline the major policy positions and priorities of their organizations.  The 2012 Democratic platform is here, and the Republicans’ is here. If Americans spend some time wondering why we still have party conventions, when the nomination of the major candidates’ is accomplished through localized primary contests, they are likely even more bewildered about the purpose of party platforms.

In some other countries, platforms serve as a mechanism by which voters learn about candidates.  Candidates are actually beholden to their parties’ platforms, and voters have confidence that candidates will adopt policy positions consistent with their parties’ platforms. But in the U.S. candidates have no such responsibility. Candidates run candidate-centered campaigns, where the candidate is free to mold policy positions to the shape (s)he believe is consistent with constituents’ preferences. Political parties in the U.S. have incentives to allow candidates to do their own thing, because more than anything, the party wants its candidates to get (re)elected.

So, if candidates are not beholden to the parties’ platforms, what purpose do they serve? Hundreds of organized interests groups spend incredible resources to try to influence the content of the platforms, but why? It can’t be because they think it will affect candidates’ policy positions. Rather, if an interest group successfully can influence the content of a party platform, it’s a national victory that the group can point to. It may not be a policy victory. But it’s an organizational victory for the group. The group can claim a victory to its membership. In a political world where policy victories are few, far between, and diluted, groups need victories of other sorts to demonstrate their efficacy, leadership, and worth to their membership. Victories that aid in group organization and maintenance are not unimportant victories.

So it makes sense that groups would fight hard to get “their” language in a platform. And while party leaders understand that the platform is not really about candidates, or winning over voters, they have a great responsibility in crafting the platform. Since the audience of platforms is the organized groups that associate with the parties (think unions and social rights organizations for Democrats, and business and civil liberties advocates for Republicans), rather than the average voter, we expect that platforms tend to be more ideologically extreme  than the median of the party.

As groups jostle with each other for a plank on a platform, the party leaders are in charge of drafting the language. When should we expect a group to successfully get its language on a platform?  Gina Reinhardt and I conducted research to answer this question. You can find the paper here. We look at the Democratic platforms of 1996, 2000, and 2004 and conduct content analysis on the transcripts of the testimony that interest groups gave to the platform writing committee.  By comparing what groups asked for to what they got (i.e., the final platform), we can determine the conditions under which groups are able to successfully influence the platform. At the outset we hypothesize that group with more resources, with greater party loyalty, and that are ideologically closer to the party will be more likely to influence the platform. Our results show that loyal and ideologically similar groups can influence platform language, but that groups’ resources have no effect. Groups are not “buying” their way into the Democrats’ platforms, and Democrats are not using their platforms to “pander” to big groups. We attempted to conduct this research on Republican platforms as well, but we were unable to get the testimony and transcripts.

Party platforms are insider politics. But that doesn’t make them an unimportant part of the political process.