Public images of political parties: A necessary evil?

The debate on citizen images of political parties is long standing, but recently it has taken on added importance as the evidence of party dealignment has spread across Western democracies. This article assembles an unprecedented cross-national array of public opinion data that describe current images of political parties. Sentiments are broadly negative, and this pessimism has deepened over the past generation. Then, we demonstrate how distrust of parties decreases voting turnout, contributes to the fragmentation of contemporary party systems and the electoral base of new protest parties, and stimulates broader cynicism towards government. Although political parties are the foundation of the system of representative democracy, fewer citizens today trust political parties, and this is reshaping the nature of democratic politics.     

Policy voting in U.S. House primaries

ABSTRACT

This paper uses exit surveys of voters in four House primaries to ask how well voters are able to use primaries for the purpose of giving policy direction to their congressional parties. The surveys found that nearly half of voters could not recall the names of any candidate and that 11% were uncertain or could not recall for whom they had just voted. The surveys also found that nearly 40% of voters could not offer a political evaluation – that is, a like or dislike having political content – about any candidate, and that fewer than a quarter could offer political evaluations of as many as two candidates. The surveys found no evidence of policy-motivated voting in three of the four primaries, but substantial evidence of it in one. Yet even in that one race, voters split their support among three candidates sharing majority voter opinion on the key election issue and thereby opened the way for nomination of a candidate not sharing majority opinion. The paper concludes from this evidence that voters in these House primaries, and probably more widely, made little use of them for the purpose of giving policy direction to their parties.     

Female leaders and citizens' perceptions of political parties

ABSTRACT

Do female leaders affect voters' perceptions of political parties' placement on the left-right spectrum? Using public opinion data on 269 parties in 35 countries between 1976 and 2016, I show that female-led parties are perceived as more moderate than male-led organizations, even when accounting for voters' prior beliefs about the party and the organization's stated policy positions. I then demonstrate that these results cannot be explained by the policy platforms authored by male- and female-led parties. The electoral manifestos produced by female-headed organizations are neither more left- leaning nor more moderate than those authored under male leaders. Together, these results provide important insights concerning citizens' (mis)perceptions of parties' ideological positions, party leaders' effects on voters behavior, the importance of gender stereotypes in politics, and the policy consequences of women's increased access to power.     

Beyond Welfare: Framing and the Racialization of White Opinion on Social Security

In this article I argue that the framing of Social Security in political discourse has associated it symbolically with race. The linkages are subtle and symbolic, and they serve to associate Social Security with whiteness in a mirror image of the association of welfare with blackness. In turn, these associations have racialized white opinion on the program. After discussing the theoretical mechanism by which issue frames can unconsciously associate policies with citizens' racial predispositions, I review the frames surrounding Social Security. Then, drawing on two decades of nationally representative survey data, I demonstrate the racialization of opinion among whites. Using a variety of measures of racial predispositions, I find that racially conservative whites feel more positively about Social Security than do racial liberals. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings for our understanding of racialized politics and for the connections between race, whiteness, and contemporary American politics.     

Media and the politics of belonging: Sudanese Australians,letters to the editor and the new integrationism

Nolan, Burgin, Farquharson and Marjoribanks focus on media as a significant site through which a politics of belonging is played out, focusing particularly on coverage of Sudanese Australians. To this end, they analyse letters to the editor that concern Sudanese Australians in three Victorian newspapers in 2007, a highly significant year in which this group became the focus of significant levels of (predominantly negative) media coverage. Through textual and thematic analysis, the authors demonstrate how such letters worked to reiterate and extend a politics of ‘integrationism’ that, without entirely departing from Australia's commitment to multiculturalism, has rearticulated the latter along neo-assimilationist lines. In doing so, they show how, in many letters, Sudanese Australians are problematized for their failure or refusal to ‘integrate’ in ways that involve an explicit or implicit process of racialization. In the process, the article also critically considers the important role performed by media in the politics of belonging, particularly through their reiteration and contestation of the politics of race and multiculturalism in Australia. Rather than simply a matter of reproducing a hegemonic politics, it shows how such processes, despite the marked limitations of their framing within a ‘race debate’, also serve to demonstrate significant fault lines in the politics of belonging.     

Identities, Interests, and Imports

There is increasing attention to the mass public in the politics of trade debate, yet we still know little about how Americans formulate opinion on trade. Scholars are puzzled by the ineffectiveness of traditional dispositional beliefs to account for trade policy judgment, while an emerging economic self-interest perspective contends that opinion on trade is based on material concerns. This article demonstrates how symbolic predispositions provide critical information shortcuts for Americans on trade in which the relationship between trade policy and economic self-interest may be unclear. Symbolic politics theory explains how citizens can rely on accessible symbolic predispositions, including conceptions of national identity, in an unfamiliar and evolving trade policy environment often subject to multiple and conflicting cues, limited political information, and changing economic circumstances.     

‘Strangers in their own land’: Powellism’s policy impact

ABSTRACT

In this paper, Solomos provides an account of the impact of Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on policy agendas about race relations and immigration. He argues that Powell’s intervention helped to shape policy frames around race and immigration in its immediate aftermath and beyond. By exploring the impact of the speech on the policy climate, his paper argues that perhaps the most important aspect of the speech is the way it helped to shape the policy agendas of both the Conservative and Labour parties, even as Powell himself was marginalized from mainstream politics. He concludes by suggesting that Powell’s intervention links up with contemporary debates and preoccupations about race and immigration.     

Rethinking Anti-Immigration Rhetoric after the Oslo and Utøya Terror Attacks

This article examines right-wing populism and populist rhetoric in Norway preceding the July 22, 2011 terror attacks at Utøya and in Oslo. It describes how the mainstream media, academics, and political parties have appealed to the public in an increasingly populist fashion and have spread fear about immigration, immigrants, and integration. It argues that while the populist right-wing Progress Party has adopted immigration and integration as its main cause and has gained support because of it, the Progress Party alone cannot be blamed for the widespread xenophobia in Norway. The media are also responsible for the way immigration, culture, and race have been reported, as are a wide range of politicians for formulating increasingly stricter immigration policies. In the aftermath of July 22 politicians became acutely concerned about their own anti-immigrant rhetoric and how it may have influenced the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. A broad consensus to address and change the language used in the immigration debate was agreed upon; more openness and more democracy was promised. Much has changed, but even more has stayed the same in Norwegian politics and attitudes to immigration and Islam.     

Conversion,Acquiescence, or Delusion: The Contingent Nature of the Party-Voter Connection

Normative theories of representative government posit congruence of opinion between the electorate and their representatives. However, not all political issues are equally salient, and agreement is expected to be greater on relatively salient issues. This paper employs balance theory to describe mechanisms which may produce congruence of opinion between voters and parties when an issue increases rapidly in salience. Panel data on Norwegian opinion during the debate on European Union membership are used to determine whether opinion congruence resulted from persuasion by political parties or policy voting by the electorate. Policy voters are found to differ systematically from voters who were persuaded by parties. Finally, the characteristics of parties which determine their success in persuading voters or attracting policy voters are evaluated.     

‘Party competition and dual accountability in multi-level systems’ the independence echo: the rise of the constitutional question in Scottish election manifestos and voter behaviour

ABSTRACT

Since the formation of the Scottish Parliament, the idea of Scottish independence increased in salience and popularity among Scottish voters to such an extent that it now constitutes the country’s defining political cleavage. Given that Scottish politics is increasingly organized around this constitutional question, support for either side of the debate among voters and elites drives political engagement, election turnout and public attitudes to other major issues. Although much popular and academic work has sought to explain the rise of support for independence, few scholars have explored changes in elite behaviour or its consequences for public opinion. From an elite-driven perspective, the increased salience of independence may be but an echo of elite and partisan attention. Developing hypotheses from this approach, we predict that voters identifying with parties developed stronger views on independence following increased attention in parties’ campaigns. We examine these hypotheses by performing computer assisted, unsupervised content analysis of Scottish Parties’ election manifestos. We then use estimates from a structural topic model to predict change in voter support for independence from the British Election Study. The theory and results suggest that increasing salience on alternative dimensions of politics likely closely relates to elite-driven choices in their election campaigns.     

From polls to votes to seats: Forecasting the 2015 British general election

This paper develops a three-stage method to forecast parliamentary election results from vote preferences in British opinion polls: (1) adjusting and aggregating vote-intentions from different polling organizations; (2) forecasting how public support for parties will change in the period before election day; and (3) translating, through simulations, the forecast of election day vote shares into seat totals while incorporating constituency-level information, including local vote-intention polls. Overall, this approach seeks to combine relevant national, regional and local information, and uncertainty about that information, to better reflect the fragmentation and diversity of political contexts found in the new era of five/six-party British politics.     

Do Politicians Racially Discriminate Against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators

We use a field experiment to investigate whether race affects how responsive state legislators are to requests for help with registering to vote. In an email sent to each legislator, we randomized whether a putatively black or white alias was used and whether the email signaled the sender's partisan preference. Overall, we find that putatively black requests receive fewer replies. We explore two potential explanations for this discrimination: strategic partisan behavior and the legislators’ own race. We find that the putatively black alias continues to be differentially treated even when the emails signal partisanship, indicating that strategic considerations cannot completely explain the observed differential treatment. Further analysis reveals that white legislators of both parties exhibit similar levels of discrimination against the black alias. Minority legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias. Implications for the study of race and politics in the United States are discussed.     

When Voters and Parties Agree: Valence Issues and Party Competition

There has been much talk of valence, consensus or competence politics but little theoretical explanation or empirical investigation of how this has arisen. In this article I argue that British political competition has become competence-based because the major parties and the electorate have converged on the dominant left–right dimension of British voting behaviour. As a result, commonly cited core vote explanations for party polarisation have only limited application. The electorate has converged on left–right issues, narrowing the policy space and the available positional strategies of political parties. A different pattern is found for the issue of Europe, and this is interpreted in light of possible causal mechanisms. The article offers a formal model for a rise in valence politics as parties and voters converge, and the implications are discussed for theories of party competition. I argue in favour of competence and salience-based theories of party strategy in place of a reliance on traditional spatial models.     

Regional Place and City Space: How Metropolitan Configurations Influence Central City Policy Responsiveness

The debate between proponents of metropolitan consolidation and polyarchic fragmentation poses many conflicting arguments, offers varied hypotheses, and reaches multiple conclusions about the effects of political structures and institutional arrangements on democratic governance. Despite varied and widespread attention to the topic, however, little resolution has been offered to appease either side. Additionally problematic is that implicit in both of these schools of research is the assumption that efficiency, whether achieved in fragmented or consolidated settings, is the prime preference of the citizenry. In this article, I specifically pursue the following research question: How do jurisdictional and metropolitan configurations influence the responsiveness of urban governments to public opinion? My findings illustrate that not only is considering the effect of metro place on city space a necessary and important pursuit, but a broader conceptualization of citizen preferences is of critical importance to scholars of urban politics, especially when assumptions about public opinion motivate choices about institutional sizes and structures.     

Party Power: Approaches in a Field of Unfilled Classics*

Much current research into the working of liberal democracy tends to emphasise and concentrate on the corporate channel of influence. The linkage to centres of power provided by political parties has not received sufficient attention. There is a need for more research into the operation of parties as linkages between grass root activists and national elite politics. Studying party democracy is to study internal distribution of power, and the article turns to the debate on community power studies for guidelines on how to approach empirical research on intra-party democracy.     

Do mayors matter? Reverse coattails on congressional elections in Brazil

In federal democracies, parties often invest in local politics as a strategy to improve their performance on upcoming national elections. In this study, I use the concept of reverse coattails to investigate how winning local elections affect upper-level electoral dynamics in Brazil. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD), I show that parties in Brazil boost their national performance, earning more votes on House elections in districts where their members control local offices. I discuss how access to ‘‘pork” controlled by co-partisan House members and mechanical information gains explain these effects. Additionally, I use a Bayesian LASSO algorithm to address data sparsity in RDD designs, and to demonstrate the existence of pro-large party bias on the coattail effects. By disentangling the various effects of winning local elections, this paper contributes to a greater understanding of how parties build electoral strength in fragmented democracies.     

Party policy diffusion in the European multilevel space: what it is,how it works,and why it matters

ABSTRACT

Almost since the end of World War II, transnational cooperation among political parties has been a common feature of European politics. This paper makes the case for studying transnational partisan cooperation in the European multilevel space, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of “party policy diffusion.” At the heart of the paper is a conceptual discussion of party policy diffusion in the EU. Specifically, we look at the (1) aims that lead parties to learn from or emulate parties in other countries; (2) the mechanisms through which this may work; and (3) the wider implications of this practice both for domestic and European politics. Drawing on this conceptual discussion, the paper then goes on to offer leads as to how the phenomenon of party policy diffusion can be studied in the European multilevel space. To this end, we briefly point to possible ways of testing hypotheses about party policy diffusion using spatially explicit modeling strategies such as spatial regression models and exponential random graph models for transnational party networks.     

Xenophobic Rhetoric and Its Political Effects on Immigrants and Their Co‐Ethnics

Though political scientists generally understand the origins of native‐born reactions to foreigners, less is known about how anti‐immigrant contexts trigger a political response within immigrant groups. I address this question by studying the connection between xenophobic rhetoric and Latino politics. I claim that xenophobic rhetoric raises the salience of ethnic identity and impugns its worth. This identity threat leads high‐identifying group members to engage in political efforts that assert their group's positive value, whereas low identifiers shun political opportunities to bolster their group's devaluation. I test these claims with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative opinion survey of Latino adults. In light of xenophobic rhetoric, I find that relative to low identifiers, high‐identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and increasingly supportive of policies that emphasize ingroup pride. These results clarify xenophobic rhetoric's role in amplifying the influence of ethnic identity on immigrant politics.     

Party Brands and Partisanship: Theory with Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Argentina

Scholars disagree about the nature of party attachments, viewing partisanship as either a social identity or a rational maximization of expected utility. Empirically, much of this debate centers on the degree of partisan stability: findings of partisan fluctuations are taken as evidence against the social‐identity perspective. But drawing such conclusions assumes that the objects of identity—parties—are fixed. If we instead allow party brands to change over time, then partisan instability is consistent with a social‐identity conception of partisanship. To demonstrate this, I develop a branding model of partisanship in which voters learn about party brands by observing party behavior over time and base their psychological attachment to a party on these brands. The model suggests that convergence by rival parties, making their brands less distinguishable, should weaken party attachments. I test this implication using a survey experiment in Argentina and find evidence consistent with the model.