This book examines how parties voice voter preferences in plenary debates—an often-overlooked dimension of parliamentary politics. Combining theoretical insights with an innovative process model of representation, the book empirically tests how party positions shift between elections and legislative action. Using machine learning to analyse manifestos and speeches, it provides new data and methods for assessing substantive representation. This work will appeal to theorists of representation, comparativists exploring party competition and legislative behaviour, and methodologists employing text-as-data approaches in political research.
Part I Representation in Challenging Times:
Chapter 1 - Introduction.-
Part II The Representation Process:
Chapter 2 - RepresentationA
Multi-Stage Process.
Chapter 3 - Preference Expression in Parliament.-
Chapter 4 - Putting Theory to WorkTest Case Germany.- Part III Measuring
Parties Domain-Specific Policy Positions:
Chapter 5 - How to Measure them?
Selecting the Method.
Chapter 6 - What Are They Talking about? Classifying
Texts into Policy Domains.
Chapter 7 - How Are They Talking about It?
Predicting Policy Positions from Texts.- Part IV Representation in
ParliamentVoter Preferences and Compromise:
Chapter 8 - Changed Positions?
Parties in the Electoral Arena and the Parliamentary Arena.
Chapter 9 -
Convergence through Compromise? An Explanation for Party Position Change.-
Chapter 10 - Betrayal of the Voters? The Impact of Position Change on
Representation.- Part V Representation and CompromiseFrom Science to
Politics:
Chapter 11 - Conclusion.
Pola Lehmann is a senior researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany, where she co-leads the internationally renowned Manifesto Project, which holds the worlds most comprehensive collection of election manifestos and party positions. She studied public policy at the Universities of Potsdam and Copenhagen and earned her PhD summa cum laude from Humboldt University of Berlin, receiving the Leibniz Dissertation Award. In 2024, she was a Thomas Mann House Fellow in Los Angeles. She is co-author of Die Ampelkoalition (2022), and her research has appeared in leading journals, including the European Journal of Political Research and Government and Opposition.
