Perceptions of Partisan Ideologies: The Effect of Coalition Participation

Recent scholarship in comparative political behavior has begun to address how voters in coalitional systems manage the complexity of those environments. We contribute to this emerging literature by asking how voters update their perceptions of the policy positions of political parties that participate in coalition cabinets. In contrast to previous work on the sources of voter perceptions of party ideology in parliamentary systems, which has asked how voters respond to changes in party manifestos (i.e., promises), we argue that in updating their perceptions, voters will give more weight to observable actions than to promises. Further, coalition participation is an easily observed party action that voters use as a heuristic to infer the direction of policy change in the absence of detailed information about parties’ legislative records. Specifically, we propose that all voters should perceive parties in coalition cabinets as more ideologically similar, but that this tendency will be muted for more politically interested voters (who have greater access to countervailing messages from parties). Using an individual‐level data set constructed from 54 electoral surveys in 18 European countries, we find robust support for these propositions.     

Government versus Opposition at the Polls: How Governing Status Affects the Impact of Policy Positions

We argue that governing status affects how voters react to extreme versus moderate policy positions. Being in government forces parties to compromise and to accept ideologically unappealing choices as the best among available alternatives. Steady exposure to government parties in this role and frequent policy compromise by governing parties lead voters to discount the positions of parties when they are in government. Hence, government parties do better in elections when they offset this discounting by taking relatively extreme positions. The relative absence of this discounting dynamic for opposition parties, on the other hand, means that they perform better by taking more moderate positions, as the standard Downsian model would predict. We present evidence from national elections in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, 1971–2005, to support this claim.     

Coalition type and voter support for parties: Grand coalitions in German elections

While scholars have generally acknowledged that coalition governments are less accountable to voters than single party majorities, surprisingly little differentiation is made among different types of coalition governments. In this paper, we examine voter support for two very different types of coalition governments: those with a single large party and a junior partner and grand coalitions—governing coalitions between two large but ideologically dissimilar parties. We argue that grand coalitions differ from the more typical senior–junior partners in terms of the ability of individual parties to respond to their constituencies. We test this argument using survey data from four German Election Studies (GES), before and after each of the two German grand coalitions (1965, 1969, 2005, and 2009), which provide a unique opportunity to compare voter support for grand coalitions to those of the more typical senior–junior party model. We find evidence that voters responded to grand coalitions by moving away from their traditional voting patterns, and increasing their support for parties outside of the grand coalition, although this effect varies by the number of alternative parties.     

Party competition and citizens' political attitudes in the American states

Democratic theorists argue that vigorous competition between candidates/parties is essential for democracy to flourish because it engages citizens' political interest and ultimately makes elected officials more accountable to their constituents. Using data on citizens' perceptions of government responsiveness to their political opinions from the American National Election Studies and the Ranney measure of party competition for control of state government, we examine the effects of competition on citizens' political attitudes from 1952 to 2008. Our analysis reveals that citizens feel government is more responsive to them when there is greater competition between the two parties for control of government in their state. However, this relationship is confined only to citizens who identify with the party that controls government in their state. We also find that the relationship between competition and efficacy is strongest among citizens with lower levels of education and income. These results suggest that vigorous competition for control of state government can have important implications for citizens' political attitudes.     

Opposition party policy shifts in response to no‐confidence motions

No‐confidence motions (NCMs) are attempts by opposition parties to publicise the government's failings in a salient policy arena, and previous research has shown that they often negatively affect citizens' evaluations of governing parties' competence and damage their electoral prospects. Yet currently there is a lack of understanding of how opposition parties respond ideologically to these NCMs. It is argued in this article that opposition parties should distance themselves from the government challenged by NCMs to show that they are different from the incompetent government and to compete for the votes that the government is likely to lose. Using a sample of 19 advanced democracies from 1970–2007, empirical evidence is presented that NCMs encourage political parties to move their positions away from the government's position, especially in the presence of reinforcing negative signals about government performance. These results have important implications for our understanding of opposition party policy change, for the economic voting literature, and for the spatial and valence models of party competition.     

Changing Issue Ownership through Policy Communication

Issue ownership has been an important concept in the analysis of party competition for several decades. Traditionally, issue ownership has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties are advantaged by different political issues. However, several recent studies have reported change in voters’ perceptions of parties’ issue ownership. To investigate the changeability of issue ownership and how it can be altered, this article investigates the impact of parties’ communication attempts through a web-based survey in Sweden. Two major political issues are in focus: employment and healthcare. The results show that parties can indeed improve their ownership by communicating on an issue. Indications were also found that the effects decrease as other parties simultaneously communicate on the same issue, and when those who receive the messages are ideologically distant from the party. However, in several cases results are weak. Many important conditionalities therefore remain to be explored in future studies.     

The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing

Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly likely to fulfill their pledges, and significantly more so than parties that do not enter government executives. We explain variation in the fulfillment of governing parties’ pledges by the extent to which parties share power in government. Parties in single‐party executives, both with and without legislative majorities, have the highest fulfillment rates. Within coalition governments, the likelihood of pledge fulfillment is highest when the party receives the chief executive post and when another governing party made a similar pledge.     

Throwing the rascals out? Problems of accountability in two‐party systems

This article critically examines the concept of ‘accountability’ as it is understood in two‐party systems and majoritarian democracy – namely the ability of voters to remove governments that violate their mandates or otherwise perform poorly. Voters’ capacity to ‘throw the rascals out’ is one of the main normative appeals of two‐partism and the single‐member plurality (SMP) electoral system. However, this article uses a spatial model to show that in at least two types of situation voters are left in a bind when confronted with a mandate‐breaking governing party: (1) when both major parties undertake unexpected non‐centrist shifts in opposing directions after an election, leaving centrist voters with an unappealing choice; and (2) when a governing party that had won an election on a non‐centrist platform undertakes a post‐election shift to the centre, leaving its more radical supporters dissatisfied. In each case, voters have four imperfect options: punish the governing party by throwing the rascals out, but in doing so vote for a party that is ideologically more distant; abstain, and withdraw from the democratic process; vote for a minor party that has no hope of influencing government formation, but which might detach enough votes to allow the ideologically more distant major opposition party to win; and forgive the governing party its mandate‐breaking. All of these options represent accountability failures. The problems are illustrated with two case studies from two‐party systems: the United Kingdom in the mid‐1980s and New Zealand in the period 1984–1993. In both instances, many voters found it difficult to ‘throw the rascals out’ without harming their own interests in the process. The article concludes that accountability may sometimes be better achieved if voters can force a party to share power in coalition with another party in order to ‘keep it honest’ instead of removing it from government completely, as can happen in multi‐party systems based on proportional representation. Thus, although two‐partism based on plurality voting is normally regarded as superior to multi‐partism and proportional representation on the criterion of accountability, in some instances, the reverse can be true. The article therefore undermines a core normative argument advanced by supporters of majoritarian democracy and SMP.     

Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy

Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voter preferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfaction depend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentality moderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross-national survey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with a chance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality has no such effect.     

How partisan affect shapes citizens' perception of the political world

We explore how partisan affect shapes citizens' views of party ideology and political competition. We argue that voters' affective ties to parties (both positive and negative) lead them to perceive the ideological positions of those parties as more extreme. Further, when voters are "affectively polarized," i.e., they strongly like some parties and dislike others, they are more likely to view politics as high stakes competition, where ideological polarization is rampant, participation is crucial, and electoral outcomes are highly consequential. Using cross-national survey data covering 43 elections in 34 countries, we show that partisan affect indeed impacts perceptions of party ideology and that affective polarization alters beliefs about the nature of political competition.     

Everything to Everyone: The Electoral Consequences of the Broad‐Appeal Strategy in Europe

Parties often tailor their campaign message differently to different groups of voters with the goal of appealing to a broader electorate with diverse preferences and thereby winning their votes. I argue that the strategy helps a party win votes if it can convince diverse groups of voters that the party is ideologically closer to their preferred positions. Using election data from nine Western European democracies, I first show that parties gain votes when they appeal broadly. Analysis of individual‐level survey data suggests that voters perceive broadly appealing parties as ideologically closer to their own positions, a finding that identifies a plausible mechanism behind the aggregate positive effect of this strategy on party election performance. These findings not only help explain the behavior of some European parties, but they may also offer a potential recipe for electoral success in multiparty democracies.     

How do voters perceive ideological congruence? The effects of winning and losing under different electoral rules

The degree of ideological congruence between citizens and their elected representatives is an important feature of democratic systems of government. A long tradition of literature has examined the ideological linkages between citizens and governments, often drawing attention to the differences (or lack thereof) in congruence across different types of electoral systems. Previous research has largely relied on aggregate-level measures of ideological congruence, such as the ideological distance between the position of the median voter and the government. We turn our attention here to how congruence relationships are perceived by individual voters, and how the perceptions of congruence may vary across electoral system types. This individual-level measure of ideological congruence is important in that individual-level, rather than aggregate-level, congruence has been shown to influence other outcomes such as citizen satisfaction with democratic performance. We expect electoral “winners” – those who voted for a party that entered government – to perceive greater ideological congruence between themselves and the government compared to electoral “losers”. We expect this effect to be stronger in majoritarian systems where political competition takes place primarily between two parties, than in proportional systems where electoral losers are more likely to receive a proportional share of representation. We test these expectations by estimating random-effects regressions of perceived individual-level congruence using data from 54 elections held in 23 democracies included in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). The results provide consistent support for our expectations. Electoral winners in all types of electoral systems perceive greater ideological congruence between themselves and the government, and this effect is stronger in majoritarian systems.     

Competition and interaction: Party ties to interest groups in a multidimensional policy space

Political parties and interest groups play a vital role in incorporating societal interests into democratic decision-making. Therefore, explaining the nature and variation in the relationship between them will advance our understanding of democratic governance. Existing research has primarily drawn attention to how exchange of resources shapes these relationships largely neglecting the role of contextual conditions. Our contribution is to examine whether parties’ structured interactions with different categories of interest groups vary systematically with the pattern of party competition at the level of policy dimensions. First, we argue that higher party fragmentation in a policy space makes organisational ties to interest groups more likely, due to fears of voter loss and splinter groups. Second, we expect higher polarisation between parties on a policy dimension to make ties to relevant groups less likely due to increased electoral costs. We find support for both expectations when analysing new data on 116 party units in 13 mature democracies along nine different policy dimensions. Our findings underline the value of considering the strategic context in which parties and interest groups interact to understand their relationship. The study sheds new light on parties and interest groups as intermediaries in democracy and contributes to a new research agenda connecting interest group research with studies of parties’ policy positions and responsiveness.     

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Does pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties’ performance to their previous electoral pledges. It is argued that government parties are more likely to be rewarded by voters when they have fulfilled more pledges during the legislative term. Good pledge performance of a party is associated with the ability to maximise policy benefits (accomplishment) and to be a responsible actor that will stick to its promises in the future as well (competence). Analysing data from 69 elections in 14 countries shows that a government party's electoral outcome is affected by its previous pledge performance. A government party that fulfils a higher share of election pledges is more likely to prevent electoral losses. This finding indicates that voters react at the polls to party pledge fulfilment, which highlights the crucial role of promissory representation in democratic regimes. Surprisingly and in contrast with economic voting, there is no evidence that retrospective pledge voting is moderated by clarity of responsibility.     

Political competition,party polarization,and government performance

Lack of party competition may impair government efficiency. If the voters are ideologically predisposed to cast their votes in favor of one political party, they may reelect an underperforming incumbent. Party polarization may magnify this effect since the median voter faces a higher cost of selecting a better, but ideologically distant incumbent. Alternatively, if the electorate is evenly divided between parties, polarization may induce parties to invest more effort in improving their election prospects. The current paper analyzes efficiency in Norwegian local governments. Efficiency has been measured by means of panel data on government service output over a 10-year period. Electoral dominance has been measured as number of elections wherein one party bloc receives at least 60 % of the votes, measured over six consecutive elections. Party polarization is defined as the ideological distance between the two party blocs, and it is measured on basis of survey data on the ideological preferences of elected politicians. Lack of party competition reduces efficiency, the effect being stronger in governments where more party polarization exists. These agency losses are larger in high-revenue municipalities.     

Overlapping polarization: On the contextual determinants of the interplay between ideological and affective polarization

Previous literature has distinguished two types of polarization: ideological and affective. However, little is known on how the interconnection of these two polarizations (which we call overlapping polarization) varies depending on the political context. Is affective polarization always associated with ideological polarization? What is the role of the institutional framework (i.e., democratic age and popular election of the head of state) and the party system (i.e., elite polarization and number of parties) in determining how wide this overlap is? This article examines the contextual determinants of overlapping polarization by using information from the four first CSES waves. According to our analyses, the individual-level positive effect of ideological polarization on affective polarization is stronger when the party system is ideologically polarized and in older democracies, and is weaker in presidential democracies and when the number of parties is higher.     

Democratic Performance of Parties and Legitimacy in Europe

This article analyses the development of legitimacy across 20 European democracies (1990–2010). The claim is that the democratic performance of parties affects levels of legitimacy. A conceptual and empirical discussion is presented to establish this relationship. Democratic performance is characterised by trusting parties to be responsive to the electorate and responsible in government. Legitimacy is defined as a composite measure representing satisfaction with parties, compliance with the rule of law as well as voter turnout and willingness to protest. The responsiveness of parties appears less representative on public concerns and governmental responsibility appears closer to party interests than to the general interest. Hence, a ‘democratic deficit’ seems to have emerged across Europe, manifested by more electoral volatility, new parties and alternation in government and lower survival rates of governments. This negatively affects trust in parties, parliament and government efficacy. Hence, party behaviour has not strongly contributed to political legitimacy since the 1990s.     

Multi-level muddling: Candidate strategies to “nationalize” local elections

Comparative literature has identified how political parties at subnational levels strategically refer to the performance of parties or policy issues at national level to varying degrees. Building upon these studies on multi-level electoral dynamics, the article demonstrates how individual legislative candidates, and not just parties, selectively adopt what we call “cross-level electoral appeals”(CLEAs): campaign messages which emphasize issues, performances, and actors in levels of government other than that which the candidate or party is seeking office. Advancing existing conceptualizations of nationalization, we posit that there are mainly three types of such CLEAs, those in which local candidates: 1) praise or criticize a specific national policy or 2) performance of the national government; or 3) emphasize personal linkages to national-level parties or politicians. The article investigates the potential factors which lead to more frequent CLEAs by observing candidate manifestos for local legislative elections in Japan. We use an original dataset from a sample of prefectures differently affected by specific national policies, candidates affiliated to parties differing in organizational centralization and from districts varying in seat magnitude as well as incumbent party popularity. To test hypotheses about national and local level party popularity as well as district-level variables on the frequency of such appeals, the article analyzed the data set using the novel methodology of not just counting, but also measuring the surface area of specific appeals in candidate manifestos. Through regression analysis, we find evidence of national government party popularity leading to more frequency of local candidate CLEAs. We also find that local candidates who are more dependent on the party vote (i.e. those in smaller district magnitudes and in centralized party organizations) are more prone to certain types of CLEAs.