Blurring the Issue: Competing Through Positional Ambiguity in Multiparty Democracies

Political scientists, together with analysts, pundits and voters, continuously assess where political parties stand. This analytical approach to party politics stems from the overwhelming influence of spatial theory, which has dominated the conceptualization of ideological preference, as well as partisan strategic action. By addressing the calculus as parties chose their policy positions over continuums of issue preferences, spatial theory has elevated the politicalstance to special status in the study of both party ideology and party strategy. Although frequently rewarding, this positional approach overlooks the possibility that political parties may not always have clear political stances. In fact, some parties may deliberately avoid clear positioning on some political issues for a number of ideological or strategic reasons. The intuitive proposition that blurry commitments on some issues may be strategically beneficial, suggests the necessity to review the theoretical assumptions associated with party positioning. This article argues that political parties are invested in some political issues over others. Consequently, they aim to compete over their primary issues, while downplaying those issues that are secondary to them. In order to attract broader coalitions of voters on the secondary dimensions, parties present vague or duplicitous positions on them -- a strategy we call position blurring. This allows parties to misrepresent their placement and thus obscure the distance from their voters. The theoretical propositions are tested on quantitative positional data of political parties that have been authorized by party leaderships in two multiparty systems -- the Netherlands and Sweden.