Keeping the team together: how intra-party divisions shape party behavior across issues
研究党内意识形态分歧如何影响政党在八个关键议题上的行为，发现政党会回避内部分歧大的议题并模糊立场，对理解政党本质有重要意义。
Ideological disagreements and infighting are nearly universal for political parties. Left unaddressed, they can have major adverse consequences. Yet, most research on party competition still assumes that parties are unitary actors. This article advances the emerging literature, which moves beyond this simplistic assumption, in several significant ways. I develop a theoretical framework of party behaviour that integrates salience, spatial, and blurring approaches. Based on this, I offer a comprehensive empirical assessment of how intra-party divisions shape party behaviour across eight key issues. I draw on expert and candidate surveys to measure different levels of intra-party divisions. The extensive empirical analysis of up to 260 parties in 28 European countries between 1999 and 2024 highlights how divisions shape many facets of party behaviour. I find consistent evidence that parties avoid internally divisive issues and blur their positions. I find some evidence that parties change positions on divisive issues. The findings have important implications for our understanding of the nature of political parties.