The Specificity Space Model

This title provides an alternative model and method for extracting issue positions from political parties’ electoral programs, pioneered especially by the earlier works of the mandate theory as well as the saliency approach to locating parties in political space. The simple spatial model consists of a status quo at its center. The more specific political parties’ electoral promises, as stated in their electoral programs, the more these political parties deviate from that status quo. Based on this model, a method was developed in order to extract issue positions from electoral programs and to categorize them according to their specificity. An application of this model and method to the electoral programs of the major national Spanish parties from 2008 to 2019 and the analysis of this data provides some first tentative evidence that the method works and is capable of producing interesting insights into how parties adapt their behavior to changing strategic circumstances.