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This article addresses the variation of anti-corruption and anti-elite salience in party positioning across Europe. It demonstrates that while anti-corruption salience is primarily related to the (regional) context in which a party operates, anti-elite salience is primarily a function of party ideology. Extreme left and extreme conservative (TAN) parties are significantly more likely to emphasize anti-elite views. Through its use of the new 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey wave, this article also introduces the dataset.

The ideological and issue positions of parties are known to shape citizens’ political attitudes and voting behaviour. One important way to obtain estimates of parties’ positions is to ask experts to place parties on salient ideological dimensions. The Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) has been collecting such estimates for democracies in Europe and elsewhere. CHES Canada adds to this project by providing estimates of party positions and characteristics of Canadian federal parties and provincial parties in Ontario and Quebec. This note introduces this new data source, clarifies how the data were collected and illustrates how the data can be used to (comparatively) study party politics in Canada.

Ideological polarization between political parties is essential for meaningful electoral competition, but at its extreme can strain democratic functioning. Despite a widespread recognition that multiple divides structure contemporary party polarization in Europe, its prevailing conceptualization and measurement remain one-dimensional. To resolve this tension, we introduce a novel, multidimensional approach to party polarization. Our main focus is on whether different ideological divides reinforce or crosscut each other. We calculate the effective dimensionality of a policy space using the correlation matrix of parties’ positions, which accounts for how the dimensions interrelate. Using both artificial data and positional estimates from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (1999–2019), we highlight the advantages of our approach and demonstrate that it is better able to capture the relationship between party polarization and mass partisanship. This study has important theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications for our understanding of polarization and democratic representation in a changing political landscape.

In latent scaling applications, such as the positioning of political parties, differential item functioning (DIF) may occur because of measurement issues or because of substantive differences in the association between latent and manifest variables. While the first source of DIF has received considerable attention, the second has not, although it is of potential interest to comparative scholars. In this research note, we introduce a novel hierarchical Bayesian item response model that allows us to disentangle different sources of DIF. Drawing on the 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), we highlight how the same issues are unequally politicized across Western Europe, and how some issues are less ideologically determined than others. Our model can be adapted to alternate settings, allowing researchers to shine a light on variation in, e.g., ideology, issue politicization, or party competition.

This dissertation develops a unified framework for studying political contestation in advanced industrial democracies. It contests a notion widely held in the literature that political parties continuously change their policy positions, arguing instead that parties are ideologically quite constrained at the dimensional level. Building on insights from a variety of literatures, including spatial modeling and sociology, it advances a novel theory that accounts for the role of salience for party change by distinguishing between a party's primary and secondary dimension.The first study shows that a party's reputation and long-term ideological commitments limit positional flexibility on its more salient dimension, while short-term strategic policy shifts are possible on issues outside of its core agenda. The second study explores a party's incentives to obscure its policy preferences on certain issues. It analyzes how party leaders deliberately create uncertainty about where their party stands on the issue of European integration. It shows that three distinct blurring strategies—avoidance, ambiguity, and alternation—all increase expert uncertainty about party positions, but that their effectiveness is conditioned by party-level characteristics. The third study further enhances our understanding of second dimension politics by examining the variation in the economic positions of European regionalist parties. It uses a combination of public opinion and expert-level data on voter and party positions to analyze the constraints on the strategic behavior of these parties on the left-right dimension.

Parties continuously change their position in a competitive environment. Their motivations to do so, however, are highly contested. A recent study has suggested that the internal balance of power between party leaders and activists might be the driving force behind whether a party responds to shifts in the mean voter position or the mean party voter position, respectively. Extending a pooled time-series analysis of 55 parties in 10 European democracies between 1977 and 2003, this paper seeks to test these findings by accounting for several additional party characteristics and environmental incentives. The results show that while the original explanation holds up in some circumstances, some qualifications are in order.

Background Extracellular vesicles derived from human induced mesenchymal stromal cells (hiEVs) constitute a promising cell-free therapeutic option for osteoarthritis. To facilitate transition to the clinic we evaluated the therapeutic effects of hiEVs for osteoarthritis treatment. Specifically, we compared the efficacy of hiEVs collected from serum-containing and serum-free, PurStem (PS), media in an osteoarthritis mouse model. Methods hiEVs were administered via intra-articular injection in a destabilization of the medial meniscus (DMM) mouse model, with or without hydrogel to determine added value of localized application and controlled hiEV-release. Fluorescence imaging was used to monitor the retention of IR780-labeled hiEVs in the joint cavity. Therapeutic effects were evaluated by scoring of damage as well as expression of Mmp13 and Col2, catabolic and anabolic markers respectively, in joint tissues. Subchondral bone changes were assessed with Micro-CT. Results Fluorescence imaging confirmed that hiEVs remained localized at the injection site without systemic migration. HiEVs demonstrated significant protective effects against joint tissue degeneration in the osteoarthritis DMM mouse model as evidenced by reduced damage scores, decreased Mmp13 expression, and increased Col2 expression independent of the medium used for hiEV collection. The hydrogel alone also showed beneficial therapeutic effects, illustrated by reduced damage scores, increased Col2, and reduced Mmp13 expression. These effects, however, were notably smaller than those achieved with hiEV treatment. Micro-CT analysis further showed that hiEV treatment attenuated DMM-induced subchondral bone sclerosis as reflected by normalization of the bone volume fraction and trabecular structure. Conclusions Together, our findings demonstrate that hiEVs from xeno-free conditions effectively prevent cartilage degradation and promote its repair. This paves the way for future clinical translation of hiEV-based therapies as a safe, scalable, and effective approach to treat osteoarthritis.

To evaluate the therapeutic potential of iopanoic acid (IOP), a thyroid hormone pathway inhibitor, in preserving cartilage and bone integrity in osteoarthritis (OA), using in vivo and ex vivo tissue models. In the DMM mouse model, IOP was administered through intra-articular (i.a.) injection, either alone or combined with a thermosensitive hydrogel to enable sustained release. Histological analyses included Safranin O/Fast Green staining and OARSI scoring. Immunohistochemistry was performed for COL2, MMP13, and CCDC80 to evaluate anabolic, catabolic, and hypertrophic markers. Micro-CT assessed subchondral bone changes. In the ex vivo studies, IOP was applied to lesioned human osteochondral OA explants. Matrix degradation and repair were evaluated by sulfated glycosaminoglycan (sGAG) release, Mankin histology scores, and RT-qPCR for cartilage matrix genes. Administration of IOP significantly reduced cartilage degeneration in DMM mice (P ≤ 1.0×10-4), characterized by increased COL2, and decreased MMP13 and CCDC80 expression. Notably, IOP also prevented pathological subchondral bone thickening. In human explants, IOP treatment led to a significant reduction in sGAG release compared to untreated explants on day 6 of the IOP treatment. Moreover, Mankin scores were significantly improved in IOP-treated compared to untreated explants, indicating reduced cartilage degradation. IOP demonstrates strong chondroprotective effects, reducing cartilage degradation and promoting repair in OA models. Its combination with a thermosensitive hydrogel amplifies therapeutic potential, offering a promising strategy for OA treatment. Next steps are to optimize delivery and validate early molecular effects.