Policy & Internet
www.policyandinternet.org
Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 6 (2010)
Voting Advice Applications in
Lithuania: Promoting Programmatic
Competition or Breeding Populism?
Ainė Ramonaitė, Vilnius University
Abstract
This article analyses the effects of the voting assistance tool Manobalsas that was
developed for the Lithuanian parliamentary elections of 2008 by three leading
universities in Lithuania. Analytical voting assistance tools (or Voting Advice
Applications—VAAs) assist voters by offering systematised information about
candidates and parties, and by providing voting recommendation based on the
congruence of political attitudes between a voter and a party. Voting assistance tools
were mainly developed by academic institutions to inform voters about the policy
positions of political parties, and to promote programmatic competition between
parties.
The analysis of the use of the Manobalsas voting advice application in Lithuania
suggests that parties might be able to manipulate the results of the tool by adopting
non-ideological (ideologically unconstrained) populist policy positions. The
remarkable success of a non-programmatic party in the Lithuanian Manobalsas
system demonstrates that VAAs might be advantageous to non-ideological populist
parties which are most flexible to adjust to the attitudes of an "average" voter.
Keywords: Voting Advice Applications, post-communist democracies, political
parties, elections
Author Notes: This article was written as a part of the project on "Democracy in
Knowledge Society: The Analysis of Challenges and Possibilities (E-democracy),"
carried out by Vilnius University in cooperation with Kaunas Technology
University and Mykolas Romeris University. The project was funded by the
Lithuanian State Science and Studies Foundation. The original draft was presented
at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops 2009, Workshop 20 "Parliaments, Parties,
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and Politicians in Cyberspace," 14-19 April, Lisbon. The author would like to thank
the participants of the workshop and two anonymous reviewers for helpful
comments.
Recommended Citation:
Ramonaitė, Ainė. (2010) "Voting Advice Applications in Lithuania: Promoting
Programmatic Competition or Breeding Populism?" Policy & Internet: Vol. 2: Iss. 1,
Article 6.
DOI: 10.2202/1944-2866.1027
http://www.psocommons.org/policyandinternet/vol2/iss1/art6
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Introduction
In recent years many European countries have witnessed the burgeoning of
online voting assistance tools (usually referred to as Voting Advice
Applications—VAAs). These nonpartisan analytical devices assist voters by
offering systematised information about the policy preferences of political
parties, and providing voting recommendations based on the congruence of
political positions between a voter and a party. Congruence is measured by
comparing the answers of the user of the tool to an online questionnaire and
the positions of the parties. VVAs have been widely used during electoral
campaigns in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and other
countries. They are becoming increasingly popular among voters and in
some countries they turned into one of the most important players in the
electoral campaign (Walgrave et al., 2009). Therefore, there is a strong need
to explore the impact of the VAAs on the outcomes of elections and their
effects on the functioning of democracy.
Voting assistance tools were mainly developed by academic
institutions to inform voters about the policy positions of political parties, to
increase the transparency and accountability of politicians. They are
supposed to help voters to make an informed decision during elections and
to lower the transaction costs in the context of “information overload”
Consequentially, they are expected to have a positive effect on voter turnout.
(Thurman and Gaser, 2009; Fivaz and Schwarz, 2007). Voting advice
applications, therefore, are most popular in countries with highly fragmented
party systems and/or complex electoral systems (e.g., the Netherlands,
Switzerland) where voting decision is indeed costly. In the age of partisan
dealignment and decreasing partisan identification (Dalton, 1996), the
demand for such cost saving devices has risen in other countries as well.
The second important aim of VAAs is to emphasise the
programmatic differences of political parties. Against the backdrop of
“mediatization” and personalisation of politics (Swanson and Mancini, 1996;
Poguntke and Webb, 2005; McAllister, 2007) VAAs are commended as
“they focus peoples’ attention to party programmes and to policy issues,
thereby compelling parties to discuss substance instead of personalities,
images, and campaign events” (Walgrave et al. 2006). The central idea of
VAAs is to enable a voter to choose his representative on the basis of
proximity of political beliefs and policy positions. It is argued that voting
assistance tools, serving as a purely informative rather than persuasive form
of advertising, lead to “better” voting decisions (Fivaz and Schwarz, 2007).
The facilities provided by VAAs to voters and the pressure they
bring upon parties to disclose their policy positions are particularly attractive
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in post-communist countries with unstable and fragmented party systems
and floating identities of political parties (Lewis, 2000; Jungerstam-Mulders
2006; Enyedi, 2006). As deliberate avoidance of ideological identity and
striving for maximum programmatic flexibility seems to be the dominant
competitive strategy in post-communist Europe (Innes, 2002), voters are
faced with an enormously difficult challenge to make an informed and
rational voting decision. In this context, the voting assistance tool seems to
be a particularly promising campaigning instrument.
While the first VAAs were launched in the 1990s, they have only
recently started to draw scholarly attention. Although many political
scientists have been involved themselves in the process of developing VAAs
in their countries, the scientific debate on the theoretical assumptions
underlying the design of VAAs, the reliability of their recommendations and
their effects on electoral competition, is very limited. Most scholars focus on
the demographic characteristics of the users of VAAs and the effects of
voting advice on user’s electoral behavior (Walgrave et al, 2006; Ladner et
al., 2008; Wall et al., 2009; Ruusuvirta and Rosemaa, 2009). Some
interesting research has been done on the accuracy of party locations in
VAAs (Wagner and Ruusuvirta, 2009) and on the effects of statement
selection for the output of VAAs (Walgrave et al., 2009). The research
suggests that VAAs might produce invalid results due to some limitations of
the underlying logic of their design and/or inappropriate selection of issues.
This article analyses the results of the Voting Advice Application in
Lithuania. A voting assistance tool called Manobalsas (“Mano balsas” means
“My vote” in Lithuanian) was developed for the Lithuanian parliamentary
elections of 2008 by three leading universities in Lithuania.1
The article
identifies who are the winners and the losers of the application, and explores
why the tool gave advantage to some parties over others. The article reveals
some unexpected negative consequences of the application of the voting
assistance tool on democracy. The article suggests that the output of
supposedly impartial voting assistance tool might be strategically
manipulated by political actors and that VAAs might be most advantageous
to non-programmatic political parties.
The article begins with a short overview of voting advice
applications developed in different European countries. Then the functioning
of the Manobalsas tool is presented in detail and its effect on partisan choice
is discussed using the data from an online survey of Manobalsas registered
users. Next, the profiles of the main Lithuanian parties are presented and
their actual performance in the Manobalsas system is analyzed. Finally, the
1
See http://www.manobalsas.lt.
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paradoxical success of a non-programmatic party in the Manobalsas system
is explained exploring the policy positions of Lithuanian parties drawn from
the answers of the candidates to the Lithuanian parliament to the Manobalsas
questionnaire. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of the
underlying logic of VAAs enabling the strategic manipulation of their results
by opportunistic non-programmatic parties.
An Overview of Voting Advice Applications
The idea of a voting assistance tool based on issue-matching was first
implemented in the Netherlands in 1998 (Fivaz and Schwarz, 2007). Since
then, the number and popularity of these kinds of tools has grown steadily.
The VoteMatch system, based on the original StemWijzer voting test in the
Netherlands is applied in Germany (Wahl-O-Mat), Switzerland (Politarena)
and Bulgaria (Glasovoditel). Kieskompass (Electoral Compass) based in VU
University in Amsterdam developed an application for the 2006 elections in
the Netherlands, the 2007 parliamentary elections in Belgium, the 2009
parliamentary elections in Israel, the 2009 elections in Portugal and for the
US presidential elections of 2008.2
Swiss Politools – Political Research
Network has developed one of the most sophisticated voting assistance tools,
Smartvote3
. It was first offered to voters in 2003. The Smartvote method is
also used for the Politikkabine system in Austria, Koimipasva in Bulgaria
and Holyrood in Scotland. Some other online voting assistance tools have
been developed in the USA, UK, Finland and other countries.
Several international initiatives were developed for the 2009
European Parliamentary elections. The Florence-based European University
Institute (EUI) launched the EU Profiler in cooperation with the Amsterdambased
Kieskompas, and the Zurich-based NCCR Democracy/Politools
network (Trechsel and Mair, 2009). The Profiler is available in all national
languages of the EU and allows users to compare their policy preferences
with the positions of national as well as European parties.4
The EU Profiler
combines the methodology of Smartvote and Kieskompas. Another
European-wide voting assistance tool was developed by VoteMatch.5
Even though different voting assistance tools use different
methodologies, they all function in essentially the same way. After
answering an online questionnaire on policy preferences or political beliefs
2
See http://www.kieskompas.nl.
3
See http://www.Smartvote.ch.
4
See http://euprofiler.eu/.
5
See http://www.votematch.net.
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users are provided with a party match, i.e. with a list of parties and/or
candidates in decreasing order of congruence between the positions of the
user and a political party or candidate. Some of those issue matching
systems allow users to indicate which topics or statements in the
questionnaire are more important for them and then use some kind of
weighting procedure in the calculation of the congruence score.
The tools, however, differ in the way results are counted and
presented, and in the way the information on the party positions is collected.
There is a difference between voting assistance tools based on party
programs and other party official electoral documents, and those based on
the answers of individual candidates to the questionnaire. In the latter case,
the voter can see the match between their political stance and the individual
candidates of different parties. The position of a party is calculated from the
scores of individual candidates of the party. This methodology is used in the
Swiss Smartvote and the Lithuanian Manobalsas tools. In both systems, the
user can choose to receive a voting recommendation for the list of parties or
for individual candidates in their electoral district. For the party list score,
both tools use the mean value of all candidates of the party.
Some of the most sophisticated voter assistance tools provide a
visual analysis of the results. For example, Kieskompass (Electoral
Compass) presents the results in a traditional two-dimensional map with an
economic left-right scale and scale of social liberalism versus social
conservatism. The user can see his own position on the map and the position
of the parties/candidates based on the answers to all questions or on selected
topics. In addition to the traditional two-dimensional political map,
Smartvote uses a multidimensional “smartspider” with eight axes
representing the most important political cleavages in the country.
Therefore, using these tools the voter not only gets a comparison of his own
and a particular party’s/candidate’s political stance (a congruence score), but
can also identify his own ideological position and compare the positions of
parties.
Some of these tools enjoy striking popularity among voters. In
Switzerland the Smartvote tool was used 255,000 times in 2003 when the
system was launched. This figure steadily increased and it reached almost
one million in the 2007 Swiss parliamentary elections (Ladner et al., 2008).
This comprises about 20 percent of the electorate and about 40 percent of
voters participating in the elections. In Belgium voting assistance tools
produced about one million voting recommendations which corresponded to
25 percent of the Belgian electorate, and in the Netherlands different voting
assistance tools produced as many as 2,600,000 voting recommendations in
2002. In Germany the Wahl-O-Mat system gave 3,600,000 voting
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recommendations in 2002 (Walgrave et al., 2006) and about five million in
2005 (Fivaz and Schwarz, 2007: 7).
Do voting assistance tools really make a difference on the voting
decisions of the electorate? The research of voting assistance tool users in
Switzerland and in Belgium came to different answers. After analysing the
online panel surveys of internet users, Walgrave et al. (2006) found a modest
effect of VAA on the Belgian voters’ final decision. Ladner et al. (2008), on
the contrary, claim that Smartvote has a substantive influence on voting
decision in Switzerland, stimulating voters to change or to reconsider their
political preferences or to split votes. Both studies, however, confirm that
politicians and journalists perceive VAAs as important elements of electoral
campaign that have an impact on voters’ decision.
The “Smartvote” type of voting assistance applications might also
have significant effects on parties. If the mass media is said to have
enhanced the role of party leaders, and decreased the role of backbenchers,
the Smartvote tool, in contrast, increases the visibility of other candidates in
comparison with party leaders during the electoral campaign. Moreover, it
reduces the capacity of party leaders to control the process of political
marketing, even if parties might provide instructions to their candidates on
how to answer questions. If the position of a party is derived from the
positions of registered party candidates, as it is in Smartvote and
Manobalsas, it has an impact on the image of a party and, potentially, might
lead to internal changes of policy and/or leadership in a party.
In countries with a mixed electoral system or panachage voting,
VAAs might also lead to increasing vote splitting. According to the results
of the survey of the users of the voting assistance tool of the 2007 National
Council elections in Switzerland, as many as 40 percent reported splitting
their vote. And the majority claimed that Smartvote influenced their voting
decision (Ladner et al., 2008). The researchers of the National Center of
Competence in Research (NCCR Democracy) claim that it could lead to a
weakening of political parties. Moreover, by using Smartvote, the MPs could
form ad-hoc coalitions, independent of party orders, or “candidates can even
form new, virtual parties based on profile congruence with other
candidates.”6
In addition, Smartvote technology could be used to increase direct
communication between parties and individual politicians and voters. If the
profiles of Smartvote users were made accessible to candidates and parties,
6
See the description of the project on „Smart-voting as a tool for electronic campaining“
available at: <http://www.nccr-democracy.uzh.ch/nccr/knowledge_transfer/
ip16/Project%2016.pdf>.
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they could be used to identify “sympathetic” citizens and to create
personalised communication channels among voters and representatives.7
Voting Assistance Application in Lithuania
The Lithuanian voting assistance tool Manobalsas was developed using
similar methodology to the Swiss Smartvote, adjusting it to the Lithuanian
political context. Manobalsas was introduced before the 2008 parliamentary
elections. Manobalsas invites voters to see which parties are closest to their
own political attitudes rather than providing an explicit voting
recommendation as the Smartvote tool does.8
Nevertheless, it was designed
in accordance with the electoral system in Lithuania.
In Lithuanian parliamentary elections, a mixed electoral system is
used: 70 MPs are elected by a proportional representation system in a
multimember district and another 71 members are elected in single member
districts by majority system. Moreover, preferential voting is allowed when
voting for party lists. Therefore, voters have two votes: one for a party list
and one for a candidate in a single-member district. In addition, they have
five preferential votes they can cast for candidates on a party list of their
choice.
After answering the Manobalsas questionnaire, the user is provided
with a party list according to the congruence of the answers of the user and a
party. Party scores are derived from the answers of the party candidates
registered in the system. The user then can check the congruence scores of
individual candidates of a selected party list or get a list of candidates in his
electoral district. They may also see the answers to the questionnaires of
individual candidates, the political profiles of the candidates including a
picture, biography, links to their websites (if available) and a link to the
online parliament monitoring tool (for current MPs only). Moreover, a
detailed analysis of congruence between a candidate and the user is
provided.
The questionnaire consists of 41 questions on different political
issues in Lithuania. The questionnaire was designed to incorporate and
depict the main political cleavages in the Lithuanian political arena. It
includes questions that are actively discussed by political parties and/or in
the public sphere. The arguments in favour and against every proposition in
the questionnaire were summarised and provided as additional support for
7
Ibid.
8
When presenting the tool in the media, the providers were emphasizing that the tool is
not supposed to give a commendation for a vote. It is rather an additional source of
information for voters.
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the users. The users could “manipulate” the questionnaire by omitting
questions that were not relevant to them and by giving a weight to the
questions according to the personal importance of the issue.
Manobalsas does not provide a visual interpretation of the results in
a two-dimensional political map since there is ambiguity and disagreement
between political scientists as to which dimensions are in fact most relevant
in Lithuania. Even though Lithuanian parties could be placed on the
traditional economic left-right scale and on the axis of social liberalism –
social conservatism, those two dimensions do not seem to represent the
political space in Lithuania very well (Ramonaite, 2009). In the first decade
of post-communist Lithuania, the structure of the party system was mainly
shaped by the dominant communist – anti-communist or East-West cleavage
(see Jurkynas 2001, Ramonaitė, 2003, 2006). Later, however, the importance
of communist – anticommunist cleavage began to wane and the socioeconomic
left-right dimension gained significance (Jurkynas and Ramonaitė,
2007). The liberal – conservative dimension differentiates the main
Lithuanian parties, but it has less impact on the actual pattern of electoral
competition of the parties. The left-right dimension in Lithuania appears to
subsume all three dimensions, as right wing parties in Lithuania are mainly
anti-communist and anti-Russian, pro-market and conservative, and leftwing
parties stand for a pragmatic rather than a principled policy towards
Russia, a socially-oriented economy and personal freedom on moral
questions.
In order to reflect the complexity of the political space in Lithuania,
Manobalsas adopted the Smartvote idea of using a radar or spider-web type
of graph for depicting the results. The spider-web in Manobalsas deploys the
political attitudes on eight axes: social welfare and equality, the free market,
anti-communism, a soft policy towards Russia, personal freedom of choice,
nationalism and tradition, self-government and decentralisation, and order
and centralised governance. The axes may be subsumed into three dominant
dimensions in Lithuania: ex-communist – anticommunist, economic leftright,
and social liberalism - social conservatism. The forth dimension of
authoritarian rule versus self-governance was somewhat artificial and it
appeared to be irrelevant as there were almost no differences between parties
or candidates on self-governance and decentralisation axis.
The questionnaire was sent by email to all candidates of the 2008
parliamentary elections. Before the elections, 333 politicians from 20 parties
were registered in the system (since there were some non-party candidates,
they were treated as members of one party list, therefore, 21 lists were
presented in the system). The participation rate of the candidates was much
better among the winning parties and especially among the winning
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candidates: 23 percent of all candidates, 30 percent of candidates of major
parties and 48 percent of the elected candidates registered in Manobalsas and
answered the questionnaire. This is somewhat surprising as the tool seems to
be especially advantageous for small parties (see Ladner et al. 2008 for an
analysis of the Swiss candidates’ participation in Smartvote).
The participation rate among major parties is presented in Table 1.
The Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats, the Liberals
Movement and the Liberal and Centre Union were the most active. These
three parties in general are the most active in using online political
communication (e.g. see Appendix 1 for the numbers of party members
having their own website or blog). Their attention to online communication
tools might be related to the profile of their electorate. These parties appeal
most to the educated urban electorate. According to the pre-election survey
carried out in March 2008, 78.6 percent of the potential voters of the Liberal
and Centre Union and 69.6 percent of voters of the Liberal Movement use
the Internet while the average Internet usage rate in Lithuania is 48 percent.
Internet use among voters of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian
Democrats is somewhat smaller (see Appendix 1), but the party put much
effort into online electoral campaigning in the 2008 parliamentary elections
in order to improve its image among young voters.
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Table 1. The use of Manobalsas by candidates of major parties in the 2008
parliamentary elections
Party Number of
candidates for
the 2008
parliamentary
elections
Number of
party members
registered in
the
Manobalsas.lt
system
Percentage of
candidates
registered in the
Manobalsas.lt
system
Homeland Union –
Lithuanian Christian
Democrats
142 59 41.5
Liberals Movement of the
Republic of Lithuania
101 31 32.7
Liberal and Centre Union 141 44 31.2
National Resurrection
Party
74 22 29.7
Lithuanian Social
Democratic Party
141 32 22.7
“Order and Justice” Party
(Liberal Democratic Party)
141 30 21.3
Labour Party 68 12 17.6
New Union (Social
Liberals)
138 24 17
Union of Lithuanian
Peasants and Peoples
125 15 12
Source: author’s own calculation. Data on the numbers of candidates of the parties drawn
from the website of the Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Lithuania
<http://www.vrk.lt>.
The online Manobalsas tool attracted much attention in the media and
among voters. During the August 2008 – October 2008 period, the website
was visited about 140,000 times. The number of actual users of the system,
however, was smaller: only about 60,000 voting recommendations were
given during the campaign of the 2008 parliamentary elections. This
corresponds to 4.6 percent of the voters in 2008 Lithuanian parliamentary
elections. This seems to be a very modest result in comparison with other
countries. Relatively low usage of the tool might be explained by the fact
that Manobalsas is not sponsored by mass media as it is in many other
countries (Walgrave et al., 2009), therefore it only enjoyed momentary
attention rather than continuous support from media. Moreover, it was the
first time a VAA was used in Lithuania and it was launched only several
months before the election.
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The online survey of Manobalsas registered users demonstrates that
Manobalsas was most popular among the young, better educated urban
population (see Appendix 2). The survey reveals Manobalsas had a modest
but significant impact on the voting decisions of the users. About 25 percent
of users affirm that Manobalsas made a considerable effect on their partisan
preference and 19 percent claim that the Manobalsas test influenced their
decision when choosing individual candidates (Table 2). Only 39 percent of
users state that the results of Manobalsas had no effect on their partisan
choice. The numbers for all Manobalsas users, however, would probably be
smaller, as the survey was carried out only among the registered users, i.e.
those who have registered on the Manobalsas system to be able to save their
results and/or to receive updates.
Table 2. The impact of Manobalsas on the voting decision of users
An impact of the Manobalsas.lt test results on:Impact strength
party choice candidate choice
1 (no impact) 38.48% 49.62%
2 15.24% 14.82%
3 21.50% 16.63%
4 16.35% 11.48%
5 (very big impact) 8.42% 7.45%
Source: online post-election survey of Manobalsas registered users, 2008 (N=1.710)
If the tool has an effect on the voting behaviour of the users, an
important question to ask is who are the winners and the losers? Do some
parties have an advantage over the others when voters take the results of
voting assistance tools seriously? These questions are addressed in the next
section of the article after a short overview of the development of the
Lithuanian party system.
Ideological Profiles of Lithuanian Parties and Their Performance in
Manobalsas
In the 2008 parliamentary elections in Lithuania, seven parties passed the 5
percent electoral threshold in a multimember district (see Table 3) and some
additional small parties gained seats in single-member districts. Only three
of the parliamentary parties – the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian
Democrats (TS-LKD), the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) and
the Liberal Movement (LRLS) – have an explicit ideological commitment
and are able to place themselves on the left-right axis. The Homeland Union
– Lithuanian Christian Democrats is a right-wing conservative anti-
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communist party with its roots in the national movement of 1988 – 1991,
Sąjūdis. The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party is a technocratic catch-all
party with a shade of Western style social democratic ideology and excommunist
pragmatism. The Liberal Movement is a liberal and anticommunist
party appealing mainly to the young people and the well-off.
Table 3. The results of 2008 parliamentary elections (percent of votes
received in a multimember district)
Party Votes (%)
Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats 19.7
National Resurrection Party 15.0
“Order and Justice” Party 12.7
Lithuanian Social Democratic Party 11.7
Labor Party 9.0
Liberal Movement 5.7
Liberal and Center Union 5.3
Source: The Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Lithuania
http://www.vrk.lt.
The ideological profile of the other two parliamentary parties – the
Liberal and Centre Union (LiCS) and the “Order and Justice” Party (TT) – is
much more complicated. Neither of them decisively identifies their position
on the left-right axis but they still might be defined as “programmatic”
parties with somewhat distinctive ideological profiles. The Liberal and
Centre Union balances between liberal ideology and romantic nationalism.
The profile of the “Order and Justice” Party is an odd mixture of populist
right – wing and pro-Russian orientations (Ramonaitė, forthcoming).
The last two parties – the Labour Party and the National
Resurrection Party could be described as “instant-catch-all parties” (see
Innes, 2002). Innes describes an “instant-catch-all” party as one that avoids
programmatic competition and adopts the identity that permits them
maximal programmatic flexibility.
The Labour Party (DP) was a winner of the 2004 parliamentary
elections with almost 30 percent of the votes in a multimember district. The
party was established by a well-known businessman in Lithuania. It is a
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catch-all party without any specific ideological or programmatic profile. Its
success in the 2004 elections was based on the popularity of its charismatic
leader Viktor Uspaskich and on its anti-establishment rhetoric (Jurkynas,
2005, Ramonaitė, 2006). After participating in a ruling coalition with Social
Democrats and getting entangled in some financial scandals it lost popularity
and received only 9 percent of the votes in the 2008 elections.
The National Resurrection Party (TPP) is a newcomer in Lithuanian
politics. While the party was established only several months before the
2008 parliamentary elections, it received 15 percent of the votes in a
multimember district and became one of the winners of the elections. The
party is led by a popular showman, the host of several television shows,
Arūnas Valinskas. Most of the parliamentary candidates of the party have no
experience in politics. They come mostly from the entertainment or business
spheres.
The party ran an ingenious electoral campaign breaking the
conventional rules of political rhetoric and using the popularity and image of
its members and leader (Jurkynas, 2009, Kavaliauskaitė 2009). During the
electoral campaign, the party did not present any electoral programme. The
electoral manifesto of the party consisted of 10 “commandments”,
explaining little about the goals of the party or its policy positions.
Surprisingly, the party not only avoided any ideological self-identification,
but also escaped traditional populist rhetoric. Instead, they focused their
electoral campaign on making a parody of political advertising (ideological
as well as populist) unmaking and subverting artificial political slogans and
deconstructing the reality of political simulacra (Kavaliauskaitė, 2009).
How successful were the main Lithuanian parties in the Manobalsas
system? Figure 1 presents the results of the first 13,400 users of the
Manobalsas system. The figure shows how often a party was presented as
the best match for the users of Manobalsas. The results are striking. The
National Resurrection Party is far advanced from the other parliamentary
parties. It sprang up as the first match in more that 20 percent of cases and it
had the best result among all 20 parties. Its average congruence with the
users score is 65 percent and this is also the best result among all parties.
The performance of other parliamentary parties was much worse.
The Liberals Movement is the second among the parliamentary parties and
the fifth among all parties according to the “best match” score but its result
according to the average rank is much worse. The results of the Homeland
Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats are rather good bearing in mind the
demography of the Manobalsas users and the conservative stance of the
party on questions such as family relations, abortion, professional army, etc.
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The performance of the Social Democrats was the poorest among all
parliamentary parties.
0,00
5,00
10,00
15,00
20,00
25,00
TPP LRLS TS-LKD DP LiCS TT LSDP
Figure 1. The frequency a party appeared as the best match in Manobalsas
(in percentages)*
Source: the Manobalsas database, N=13,418
Note: *Only parliamentary parties are presented in the figure. For the acronyms of
the parties see Appendix 3.
Figure 2 shows the differences in the distribution of the order of
priority among the “ideological” parties. It reveals that the Liberal
Movement has a secure ideological niche among internet users even if its
political attitudes do not correspond well to the beliefs of an average user.
The Social Democrats, in contrast, appeared most often in the middle of the
Manobalsas recommendation list. It implies that the set of political
orientations of the party is not competitive among Manobalsas users. The
results of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats are the
most evenly distributed.
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0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
TS-LKD
LRLS
LSDP
Figure 2. The distribution of the order of priority (from 1 to 21) in the
Manobalsas voting recommendation list among the “ideological” parties (in
absolute numbers, N=13,418)
Source: the Manobalsas database of N=13,418
The performance of the non-ideological Labor Party differs
surprisingly from the results of the National Resurrection Party (see Figure
3). It appeared on the top of the party match list only 636 times out of
13,418, while the National Resurrection Party was on the top 2,822 times.
What accounts for these differences? Why was the National Resurrection
Party much more successful than the “ideological” parties and why did other
non-ideological parties perform much worse?
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0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
TPP
DP
Figure 3. The distribution of the order of priority (from 1 to 21*) in the
Manobalsas voting recommendation list among the “non-ideological” parties
(in absolute numbers, N=13,418)
Source: the Manobalsas database, N=13,418
The Structure of Political Attitudes of Lithuanian Parties
The National Resurrection Party seems to have had an advantage over the
other parties since it had no constraints with regard to choosing the best
strategy as it is a new party without a history and without any ideological or
programmatic profile. Moreover, the leaders of the party could have had
more influence on the answers of its members as they have no political
experience or political reputation. As can be seen from Table 4, the standard
deviation of the answers of the party is much lower than that of other parties.
Since the party had no electoral programme at all, this suggests that the party
candidates might have received guidance by the party on how to answer the
questions.
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Table 4. Mean standard deviation of the answers of party members to the
Manobalsas questionnaire
Party
Mean StD
Labour Party 1.05
Liberal and Center Union 1.12
Liberals Movement of the Republic of Lithuania
1.16
Lithuanian Social Democratic Party
1.18
Party “Order and Justice” (Liberal Democratic
Party) 1.13
Party of National Resurrection 0.61
Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats
0.98
But what is the best strategy a party could use to manipulate the
results of the Voting Advice Application? In what respect do the answers of
the National Resurrection Party differ from the answers of other parties?
Exploratory factor analysis suggests that the specific feature of the beliefs of
this party is an absence of ideological consistency.
Political ideology is usually defined as an internally consistent belief
system (Converse, 1964, Merelman, 1969; Feldman, 1988; Jost 2006). The
main and the most important attribute of “ideology” is consistency or
“constraint” (Gerring, 1997). In other words, ideology is a coherent and
relatively stable system of ideas and values that are bound together rather
than a random collection of values and policy positions.
In general, the positions of the Lithuanian parties appeared to be
ideologically consistent as the socio-economic variables loaded together in a
single left-right factor; and most variables of morality and tolerance loaded
into the liberalism – conservatism factor. In addition, questions on the
country’s communist past and relations with Russia loaded into a
specifically Lithuanian “soviet – anti-Soviet” index. The National
Resurrection Party, however, does not fit into this pattern.
In contrast to the Labour Party, which adopted a moderate position
on most of the questions, the National Resurrection Party took a radical
stance on almost all issues. On most socio-economic questions the National
Resurrection Party took a radical left-wing stance, except on the questions of
social solidarity, i.e. it claims to stand for an extended welfare state and
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marker regulation, but it opposes the introduction of a progressive tax rate
and tax on real estate. Figure 3 illustrates the positions of the parties on the
questions of social welfare and the questions of wealth redistribution. While
the other parties have chosen a reasonable combination of those two
interrelated dimensions, the National Resurrection Party ignored the tradeoff
between more expansive social welfare and increased taxes, and
occupied a populist position.
Figure 4. Party positions on the dimensions of an extended welfare state and
social solidarity
Source: Manobalsas.lt
Note: for the components of the indexes see Appendix 4.
On the questions of morality and personal freedom, it took a radical
right-wing position as it opposed same-sex marriages and the use of nonLithuanian
place-names in the districts dominated by ethnic minorities. The
-2,00 -1,00 0,00 1,00 2,00
Social solidarity
-0,50
0,00
0,50
1,00
1,50
DP
LiCS
LRLS
LSDPLVLS
NS
TT
TPP
TS_LKD
Extendedwelfarestate
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party does not support the Christian Democrats or nationalist parties,
however, when it comes to the issues of abortion and military service, i.e.
the questions about traditional moral constraints and moral commitment to
the nation state. Such a populist position, however, is typical of some other
parties as well (see Figure 5).
Figure 5. Party positions on the dimensions of personal moral commitment
and intolerance to differences
Source: Manobalsas.lt
Note: for the components of the indexes see Appendix 4.
Finally, the National Resurrection Party together with the “Order
and Justice” Party subverted the logic of the ex-communist – anti-communist
political cleavage that had long been structuring the Lithuanian party system.
The party supports harsh lustration (i.e. vetting of individuals for links with
communist security services and exclusion of collaborators from certain
0,60 0,80 1,00 1,20 1,40 1,60
Intolerance to differences
-2,00
-1,50
-1,00
-0,50
0,00
0,50
Morale
DP
LiCS
LRLS
LSDP
LVLS
NS
TT
TPP
TS_LKD
Personalmoralcommitment
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public offices, see Letki, 2002, David, 2003), but, in contrast to other rightwing
anti-communist parties, it is much more pragmatic on the question of
relations with Russia (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. Party positions on the dimensions of harsh lustration and rigorous
policy towards Russia
Source: Manobalsas.lt
Note: for the components of the indexes see Appendix 4.
Why was the ideologically unconstrained orientation of the National
Resurrection Party so advantageous? To answer this question, we should go
back to the long-standing discussion on the capacity of the mass electorate,
the stability and consistency of mass political beliefs (see Converse, 1964,
2000, Axelrod, 1967, Feldman, 1988, Jost, 2006 among others) and the
relations between partisan preference and political attitudes (Campbell et al.,
1960).
-0,50 0,00 0,50 1,00 1,50 2,00
Rigorous policy towards Russia
0,50
1,00
1,50
2,00
lustracija
DP
LiCS
LRLS
LSDP
LVLS
NS
TT
TPP
TS_LKD
Harshlustrationm
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Partisan Preference and Political Attitudes: Reversing the Relationship
Voting assistance tools are developed under an implicit assumption that
voters (as well as parties) have stable and coherent attitudes on political
issues. Empirical investigation on the capacity of voters, however, does not
support this assumption. It has long been argued by political scientists that
voters are usually badly informed on political issues and their opinions are
not stable. As Philip E. Converse claims, “all data show that a small minority
of population is very well informed and attentive to events” (Converse,
2000: 350).
Moreover, exhaustive empirical research9
suggests that the majority
of voters exhibit a low level of ideological consistency in their attitudes.
Usually people tend to view each policy issue independently of the other and
only a small percentage of people are able to think ideologically (Axelrod,
1967). The ability of “ideological thinking” has been proven to be related to
an individual’s level of education and political involvement. Therefore, the
attitudes of political activists and elected politicians are usually much more
stable and intercorrelated in comparison with ordinary citizens (for an
overview of this discussion, see Merelmen, 1969, Jost et al., 2009).
Even though there is some evidence that the underlying structure of
mass political attitudes might be related to some personality characteristics
and existential needs (Jost et al. 2009) or might be based on core beliefs and
values, the dominant trend in political science claims that “political attitudes
and beliefs are organized into coherent structures by political elites for
consumption by the public” (Feldman, 1988: 417). Moreover, the parties are
claimed to be principal “opinion - forming agencies” supplying cues on
specific policy issues for poorly informed individuals (Campbell et al, 1960,
Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000).
It implies a completely different logic of democratic process in
comparison with the implicit logic of voting assistance tools. Traditionally
ideological packages were socially constructed by political elites and offered
to voters as political alternatives. Using a “Smartvote” tool, a voter, in
contrast, assembles a (most often incoherent) package of attitudes and
beliefs himself and then compares it with the help of modern information
technologies to the package offered by a party. As a consequence, if voters
are non-ideological, “Smartvote” voting assistance tools seem to be most
advantageous to non-ideological populist or opportunistic parties.10
9
Most research, however, is focused on American voters.
10
When analysing the structure of beliefs of American voters, Axelrod (1967) has found
that the only relatively coherent dimension of public beliefs is a “populist” dimension
consisting of supportive attitudes towards government aid to education, medical care and
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This might not be a particular problem in democracies with high
party identification among voters and a relatively closed “electoral market.”
However, “in conditions of persistent instant-catch-all competition,” which
is an attribute of post-communist countries (Innes, 2002), the use of
‘Smartvote’ type voting assistance tools might contribute to further
destabilisation of the party system. Moreover, if parties use the tool for short
term strategic electoral purposes, the application of the tool might reduce
rather than increase accountability of parties to the voters as they are not
likely to bother about or aim to keep their (inconsistent) promises.
Conclusions
In recent years, representative democracy has faced numerous challenges
such as a decrease in voter turnout, an increase in electoral volatility and the
erosion of party identification (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000, Norris 2002).
As parties are less and less able to “encapsulate” and to tie together their
supporters, voters are faced with the more and more complex task of making
a voting decision. Moreover, as electoral campaigns are becoming more and
more intense, voters are increasingly overloaded with information. If casting
a ballot becomes more complicated and time-consuming, however, the
motivation of the citizens to participate in elections tends to decrease.
Voting assistance tools seem to provide a smart and convenient
solution to the problem. They diminish electoral costs for voters as they save
time required for the collection of relevant information. Moreover, as they
are a purely informative and scientifically based form of electoral
advertising, VAAs appear to lead to more reasoned and responsible voting
decision by citizens. Focusing attention on the policy positions of parties,
voting assistance tools might reduce the importance of images and
personality traits in electoral campaigns. In addition, VAAs are expected to
increase the accountability of representatives.
This article, however, suggests that voting assistance tools do not
necessarily lead to a “better” voting decision or to better governance. The
VAAs are based on an implicit assumption that voters have consistent and
stable political attitudes, which has been empirically proven to be highly
disputable if not false. If, however, voters are not well-informed and do not
have articulate and coherent attitudes on many political issues, the results of
VAA testing may be misleading. Moreover, the use of voting assistance
government guarantees of jobs and demands for cutting taxes, firing suspect
Communists and avoiding foreign involvement. This dimension is surprisingly
reminiscent of the policy positions of the National Resurrection Party in Lithuania.
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tools might foster populism as it generates incentives among the parties to
follow the public instead of trying to convince them (see also Walgrave et al.
2006; Wagner and Ruusivarta, 2009).
The analysis of the use of the Manobalsas voting advice
application in Lithuania suggests that parties might be able to manipulate the
results of the tool by adopting non-ideological (i.e. ideologically
unconstrained) populist policy positions. The remarkable success of the
National Resurrection Party in the Lithuanian Manobalsas system
demonstrates that VAAs might be advantageous to non-ideological and nonprogrammatic
parties which are most able to adjust to the attitudes of an
“average” voter. If working out the best strategy of using VAAs is possible
and potentially applied by political parties, the tool appears to lose its
“purely informative” nature and thus, it could hardly lead to more responsive
government.
The purpose of this article was not to refute the positive potential of
voting assistance tools. Rather, it aims to point out the possible negative
consequences of VAAs, in particular in post-communist democracies with
unstable party systems dominated by non-programmatic parties. These
potential consequences should be carefully considered when thinking about
future development of the tool. Special improvements of VAAs might be
suggested to prevent the manipulation of the results by populist parties, e.g.
the introduction of automatic warnings for users when they choose
inconsistent policy positions, etc. The combination of the Voting Advice
Applications with online deliberative tools should also be considered.
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Appendices
Appendix 1. Lithuanian politicians online during the 2008 parliamentary
election campaign
Party Number of party
members with their
own website or blog*
Percentage of
potential parties’
electorate who use the
internet**
Liberal and Centre Union 11 78.6
Liberals Movement of the
Republic of Lithuania
13 69.6
Homeland Union – Lithuanian
Christian Democrats
12 49.2
“Order and Justice” Party (Liberal
Democratic Party)
1 35.1
Lithuanian Social Democratic
Party
2 46.5
National Resurrection Party 0 Labour
Party 3 35.4
Union of Lithuanian Peasants and
Peoples
5 36.4
New Union (Social Liberals) 5(14)* 58.6
Source: * author’s own calculations, **pre-election survey carried out in March
2008.
Appendix 2. Users of Manobalsas according to age (in percentages)
Age group percentages
Less than 18 2.34%
18-24 39.01%
25-30 21.40%
31-40 17.49%
41-50 11.17%
51-60 6.84%
More than 60 1.75%
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Users of Manobalsas according to place of settlement (in percentages)
Settlement
Vilnius 50.29%
Kaunas 16.37%
Klaipėda 3.92%
Šiauliai 3.22%
Panevėžys 2.87%
Alytus 1.93%
Other town 9.42%
Village 5.91%
Foreign Country 3.74%
Other 2.34%
Users of Manobalsas according to education (in percentages)
Education
Higher 77.02%
Secondary 16.14%
Secondary vocational 6.84%
Appendix 3. Acronyms and names of Lithuanian parties
Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats
Tėvynės sąjunga - Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai
TS- LKD
Labour Party
Darbo partija
DP
Liberal and Centre Union
Liberalų ir centro sąjunga
LiCS
Liberals Movement of the Republic of Lithuania
Lietuvos Respublikso liberalų sąjūdis
LRLS
Lithuanian Social Democratic Party
Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija
LSDP
New Union (Social Liberals)
Naujoji sąjunga (socialliberalai)
NS
“Order and Justice” Party (Liberal Democratic Party)
Partija “Tvarka ir teisingumas” (liberalai demokratai)
TT
National Resurrection Party
Tautos prisikėlimo partija
TPP
Union of Lithuanian Peasants and Peoples
Lietuvos valstiečių liaudininkų sąjunga
LVLS
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Appendix 4. The components and reliability of the indexes
Table 1. The components of the index of an extended welfare state
Do you agree that people should pay for most health care services? (reversed)
Do you agree that the majority of students should pay for higher education?
(reversed)
Do you agree that the government should reduce social transfers and devote this
money for training people, promoting entrepreneurship and investments? (reversed)
Cronbach’s alpha – 0.86
Table 2. The components of the index of social solidarity
Should Lithuania use a progressive tax system?
Should Lithuania introduce real estate tax?
Cronbach’s alpha – 0.76
Table 3. The components of the index of personal moral commitment
Do you support banning abortions?
Do you support substituting obligatory military service with a professional military
service? (reversed)
Cronbach’s alpha – 0.97
Table 4. The components of the index of intolerance to differences
Do you support the legalisation of same-sex marriages?
Do you agree that in Lithuanian regions with a majority Polish population the names
of geographic location should be written in both the Lithuanian and Polish
languages?
Cronbach’s alpha – 0.69
Table 5. The components of the index of harsh lustration
Do you agree that there should be restrictions for people who cooperated with Soviet
secret services to work in governmental and educational institutions?
Do you agree that people who were in the KGB reserves should not be allowed to
get important positions in the government?
Do you agree that Soviet archives should be accessible without restrictions?
Cronbach’s alpha – 0.87
Table 6. The components of the index of a rigorous policy towards Russia
Do you agree that Lithuania should demand Russia to provide compensation for the
harmful actions of the Soviet regime even if this would have a negative impact on
Lithuanian Russian relationships?
Do you agree that Lithuania should strongly support Georgia’s and Ukraine’s
membership in NATO?
Cronbach’s alpha – 0.74
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