My PhD dissertation evaluates parties’ group appeals to voters as representational claims, understood to be the first step in the process of political representation. Using a novel dataset built from party manifestos, printed campaign advertisements, and parties’ names of parties in Israel and the Netherlands between 1977-2015, the dissertation also examines how these appeals impact the processes of coalition formation and choice of candidate selection method. The first article based on the monograph dissertation chapters titled “Parties’ group appeals across time, countries and communication channels—examining appeals to social groups via the Parties’ Group Appeals Dataset” was published in 2022 in Party Politics.
During my MA in Political Science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I worked as the primary research assistant to Prof. Gideon Rahat on the first round of The Political Party Database Project.
In my ongoing research I continue to focus on how political parties as collective bodies of representation go about shaping their relationship with society. I use computational text analysis methods to examine patterns of group-based appeals in parties’ election materials over time and across countries. Within this research agenda, I am currently developing a new, large-scale dataset on parties’ group-based appeals and a conceptual framework linking group-based appeals to representative claims to expand our understanding of the party-voter representative relationship. In addition, in my work with WP6 of the OPTED Project, I examine different aspects of available approaches to multilingual computational text analysis.
Pre-Prints
Dolinsky, A.O., and Huber, L.M. 2023. Political Parties and Representational Claims—A political representation approach to group appeals
Huber, L.M., and Dolinsky, A.O. 2023. How parties shape their relationship with social groups: A roadmap to the study of group-based appeals
Public Engagement
In this Political Studies Association blog post: The State of Israeli Politics: Elections and Group Appeals, I discuss the current state of Israeli politics as the country heads for its fourth general election in 24 months and the concept of group appeals, reflecting on its usefullness for understanding politics.
In this LSE Government blog post: What do parties say and who do they say it to? Election campaigns as more than just policy appeals, I lay out the argument for considering not just parties’ policy positions but also who they direct messages towards when they campaign
Alona O. Dolinsky 