Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernhard Weßels
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2009 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 102950097

The project Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR), a continuation of the Manifesto Research Group (MRG 1979-1989) and the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP 1989-2009), analyses parties' election programmes. MARPOR pursues four principal long-term goals. The project (1) updates, enhances, and extends the manifesto text and (2) content-analytical data collection on political preferences in order to (3) study parties as agents of programmatic representation across democracies. In addition, it (4) provides instant access to manifesto texts and content-analytical data. The project generates a dataset for the analysis of the policy preferences of over 1 000 parties between 1945 and 2018 on five continents. 10 881 users have registered on the Manifesto Project's website to access and download the data. During the third funding period MARPOR balanced two objectives: (1) improving the infrastructure for a better generation and usage of its dataset and (2) enhancing substantial research on political parties. Data collection has been expanded, and rapid inclusion of new data ensures that the dataset is consistently up-to-date. Access to and usage of the data collection has been improved. Internally, the coding process is now more efficient and the data more reliable. Early in 2018 MARPOR hosted a conference, and another is planned to take place within the current funding period. The project uses its own dataset for substantial research on programmatic representation of voters by parties throughout the entire chain of delegation. Focus lies with the following questions: 1) to what extent do media convey the party manifesto content to the voters, 2) how well do parties follow their programs once in parliament and 3) do they keep their pledges? In the subsequent project phase the data and document collection will be updated for elections occurring between 2019 and 2021. Further plans include the preparation of the infrastructure and data for migration to a new project framework. In order to secure the future of the project beyond the DFG-funding, we will work towards institutionalising MARPOR within a European-wide network involving ESFRI-funding. In the fourth funding phase MARPOR’s substantial research will focus on the analysis of changing patterns of party competition and its consequences.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Spain
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Merkel
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Cristina Ares Castro-Conde