| dc.description.abstract | What shapes the policy emphasis of political parties? As political competition in Western Europe has evolved, the role of issue competition has increased, and the content of parties’ agendas has become just as important as their ideological position. This thesis will attempt to further the understanding of how parties strategically adopt issues. More precisely, what leads them to adopt a broad catch-all profile. Six Norwegian parties will serve as cases. A secondary purpose is therefore to examine the issue attention of these individual parties, which will grant important insight into further research on the Norwegian party system. Inspiration is taken from Wolinetz’ model which added party types to Strøm’s theory of party behaviour. Several modifications are made to Wolinetz’s model, primarily, the addition of post-electoral potential. Parties’ policy-seeking, office-seeking and vote-seeking is measured by how they distribute attention to policy issues. To investigate the extent this can be explained by the interplay between a party’s party type and its potential to impact public policy after the election. Support for the revised model of behaviour is found. Party type seems to explain the breadth of policy profiles quite well. Catch-all parties emphasize a broad policy profile and a willingness to adapt their agenda frequently to shifting moods in the electorate, while niche parties are far more policy-seeking, stably emphasising their core policy issues. FrP, which was assumed to distribute their attention in line with niche parties, emerges as an exception. Post-electoral potential does however seem to explain this finding. An increased potential to impact public policy gradually increases parties’ vote-seeking and in turn office-seeking behaviour, as shown by their issue emphasis. While the thesis has an exploratory design, the uncovered empirical patterns are consistent with several of the model’s main aspects and should provide a useful starting point for future research. | eng |