Mystifying but not misleading: when does political ambiguity not confuse voters?

The purpose of political campaigns in democracies is to provide voters with information that allows them to make “correct” choices, that is, vote for the party/candidate whose proposed policy or “position” is closest to their ideal position. In a world where political talk is often ambiguous and imprecise, it then becomes important to understand whether correct choices can still be made. In this paper we identify two elements of political culture that are key to answering this question: (i) whether or not political statements satisfy a so-called “grain of truth” assumption, and (ii) whether or not politicians make statements that are comparative, that is contain information about politicians’ own positions relative to that of their adversaries. The “grain of truth” assumption means that statements, even if vague, do not completely misrepresent the true positions of the parties. We find that only when political campaigning is comparative and has a grain of truth, will voters always make choices as if they were fully informed. Therefore, the imprecision of political statements should not be a problem as long as comparative campaigning is in place.     

Is all PR good PR? How the content of media exposure affects candidate popularity

Existing evidence shows that media exposure is associated with increased political popularity, but we know less about how the electoral effects of media coverage may vary with the content of the coverage. By collecting hundreds of thousands of media articles, which we then sort by content using automatic topic modelling, we build a unique dataset of political candidates, their popularity, and the quantity and type of media exposure that candidates receive. Analysing this dataset, we find that media attention is, indeed, an electoral asset. Further, and crucially, we find that voters reward politicians for politically relevant exposure, while non-political exposure is ignored, or even penalised. Consequently, this is good news for how democracies work; voters hold politicians accountable based on relevant information. The findings are of relevance to students of media, political behaviour, parties and political competition, as well as normative democratic theory.     

Elite perceptions of mass preferences in The Netherlands; biases in cognitive responsiveness

Abstract. Several studies have shown dissimilarities between political leaders and voters in terms of political attitudes and policy preferences. Though many explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, the knowledge factor has been overlooked. The basic question of this paper is how knowledgeable politicians are of the political opinions of their voters as well as of the general public. Forty-six national Dutch politicians were asked to estimate the percentage of the public at large and of their own voters who agree with specific political statements. These estimates were then compared with the actual distribution of opinions. Though using a rather strict criterion it has been found that politicians tend to give inaccurate estimates of the public's support for various political issues. The inaccuracy does not differ between members of the government and members of parliament, but politicians of parties in office appear to perform worse than members of opposition parties. The data do not support the hypothesis about politicians' ability to correctly estimate majority and minority opinions, or to accurately localize their own voters relative to the public at large. Furthermore it is observed that politicians overestimate rather than underestimate differences in opinion between the electorate and their own voters. No difference is found in politicians'estimates of political issues which can or cannot be classified in terms of 'left' or 'right'. In addition, politicians do not judge their voters to be more right-wing than they actually are. Contrary to our hypothesis, Social-Democratic politicians are not more likely to show a 'conservative bias' in estimating their voters' preferences compared to politicians from the Christian-Democratic and Liberal parties. Finally, the relevance of our findings for political sciences as well as some normative consequences are briefly discussed.     

Do politicians anticipate voter control? A comparative study of representatives’ accountability beliefs

Representation literature is rife with the assumption that politicians are responsive to voter preferences because their re-election is contingent upon the approval of those voters, approval that can be won by furthering their desires or, similarly, that can be threatened by ignoring their wishes. Hence, scholars argue that the anticipation of electoral accountability by politicians constitutes a crucial guarantor of (policy) responsiveness; as long as politicians believe that voters are aware of what they do and will take it into account on election day, they are expected to work hard at keeping these voters satisfied. If, on the other hand, politicians were to think what they say and do is inconsequential for citizens’ voting behaviour, they may see leeway to ignore their preferences. In this study, we therefore examine whether politicians anticipate electoral accountability in the first place. In particular, we ask 782 Members of Parliament in Belgium, Germany, Canada and Switzerland in a face-to-face survey about the anticipation of voter control; whether they believe that voters are aware of their behaviour in parliament and their personal policy positions, are able to evaluate the outcomes of their political work, and, finally, whether this knowledge affects their vote choice. We find that a sizable number of MPs believe that voters are aware of what they do and say and take that into account at the ballot box. Still, this general image of rather strong anticipation of voter control hides considerable variation; politicians in party-centred systems (in Belgium and some politicians in Germany that are elected on closed party lists), anticipate less voter control compared to politicians in more candidate-centred systems (Canada and Switzerland). Within these countries, we find that populist politicians are more convinced that voters know about their political actions and take this knowledge into account in elections; it seems that politicians who take pride in being close to voters (and their preferences), also feel more monitored by these voters. Finally, we show that politicians’ views of voter control do not reflect the likelihood that they might be held to account; politicians whose behaviour is more visible and whose policy profile should therefore be better known to voters do not feel the weight of voter control more strongly.     

Strategic political commentary

I model the media’s role in transmitting information to voters in a strategic framework. Media outlets in which commentators speak primarily to voters of like type face strong incentives to reveal private information about political choices truthfully, while “mainstream” outlets observed by all types of voters face mixed incentives. Also, the number of preference-matched news outlets determines the informativeness of the mainstream media; a general increase in the number of news outlets does not necessarily improve the quality of information conveyed by the media. The model also rationalizes why commentators of a single political preference predominate in the mainstream media.     

Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions

Politicians routinely appeal to the emotions of voters, a practice critics claim subverts the rational decision making on which democratic processes properly rest. But we know little about how emotional appeals actually influence voting behavior. This study demonstrates, for the first time, that political ads can change the way citizens get involved and make choices simply by using images and music to evoke emotions. Prior research suggests voters behave differently in different emotional states but has not established whether politicians can use campaigns to manipulate emotions and thereby cause changes in political behavior. This article uses two experiments conducted during an actual election to show that: (1) cueing enthusiasm motivates participation and activates existing loyalties; and (2) cueing fear stimulates vigilance, increases reliance on contemporary evaluations, and facilitates persuasion. These results suggest campaigns achieve their goals in part by appealing to emotions, and emotional appeals can promote democratically desirable behavior .     

Laffer paradox, Leviathan, and political contest

This paper considers a political contest model wherein self-interested politicians seek rents from the public budget, while general voters make political efforts to protest against politicians’ rent seeking directly (for example, through voting in referendums such as the passage of Proposition?13) or indirectly (for example, through donating money to organized groups such as the National Taxpayer Union). We show that the political contest may ironically lead to the Laffer paradox; that is, rent-seeking politicians may intend to set the tax rate higher than the revenue-maximizing rate. For taming Leviathans, political protests may not be as effective as competition among governments.     

Politicians,Scandals, and Trust in Government

In this paper we examine the role that political scandals play in eroding regard for government and political institutions in general. We know that scandals can lower regard for individual politicians and government leaders. Yet, less is known about how scandal influences attitudes toward institutions and the political process. It has been widely assumed that such attitudes are influenced by factors that lie largely beyond the control of individual politicians. Using data from the U.S. and the U.K. we show that scandals involving legislators can have a negative influence on their constituent's attitudes toward institutions and the political process. One consequence of this finding is that, instead of looking for scapegoats in Hollywood or among the failings of voters themselves, politicians should first get their own House in order.     

Persistent rent extraction

Representative democracy does not necessarily eliminate political corruption. Existing models explain the survival of rent-taking politicians by ideological divisions in the electorate and/or informational asymmetries. The current paper demonstrate that rent extraction can persist even if voters are fully informed and ideologically homogenous. We show that in such an environment, voters may gain by persistently reelecting a rent-taker that limits his rent extraction. Such an equilibrium occurs when voters and politicians do not discount the future too heavily, and the share of honest candidates is relatively small.     

Why Vote with the Chief? Political Connections and Public Goods Provision in Zambia

Why are voters influenced by the views of local patrons when casting their ballots? The existing literature suggests that coercion and personal obligations underpin this form of clientelism, causing voters to support candidates for reasons tangential to political performance. However, voters who support candidates preferred by local patrons may be making sophisticated political inferences. In many developing countries, elected politicians need to work with local patrons to deliver resources to voters, giving voters good reason to consider their patron's opinions of candidates. This argument is tested using data from an original survey of traditional chiefs and an experiment involving voters in Zambia. Chiefs and politicians with stronger relationships collaborate more effectively to provide local public goods. Furthermore, voters are particularly likely to vote with their chief if they perceive the importance of chiefs and politicians working jointly for local development.     

Mapping the production of political communications: a model to assist in understanding the relationships between the production and consumption of political messages

High public interest today in political communications such as ‘spin’ and in political participation such as electoral turnout suggests that there may be value in exploring the processes by which political messages are produced and consumed, and their inter‐relationship with participation. It may be that what citizen‐voters think of message production influences how they consume political news and publicity (through observing and evaluating), and that the propensity to political participation is subsequently affected. This paper offers a model which traces the production of political communications, starting at their origins in the political class, and flowing via traditional political journalism or controlled media and new media to citizen‐voters who both observe and evaluate them (ie consume them) before, during and after making any political choices. It is hypothesised that the observation and evaluation of message production and content by political consumers influences both their types and levels of participation. Research of this nature into political organisations is relatively rare. Similarly, there is little evidence of investigations into other aspects highlighted in the model: attitudes of the political class towards political communications, the production of political communications before they reach the media and how they are received by the media, and their consumption by citizen‐voters in relation to the propensity to participate in politics. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Diffusion through Democracy

Many argue that international norms influence government behavior, and that policies diffuse from country to country, because of idea exchanges within elite networks. However, politicians are not free to follow their foreign counterparts, because domestic constituencies constrain them. This article examines how electoral concerns shape diffusion patterns and argues that foreign templates and international organization recommendations can shift voters’ policy positions and produce electoral incentives for politicians to mimic certain foreign models. Experimental individual‐level data from the field of family policy illustrates that even U.S. voters shift positions substantially when informed about UN recommendations and foreign countries’ choices. However, voters receive limited information about international developments, biased towards the policy choices of large and proximate countries. Aggregate data on the family policy choices of OECD countries show how voters’ limited information about international models shapes government decisions: governments are disproportionately likely to mimic countries whose news citizens follow, and international organizations are most influential in countries with internationally oriented citizens.     

Voting competitions with interested politicians: Platforms do not converge to the preferences of the median voter

We examine equilibrium voting strategies for elections with interested politicians facing uncertainty about voter pReferences. If politicians' utilities are defined over the set of strategies that voters select (instead of being dependent only on the probability of winning an election), equilibrium strategies will diverge (instead of converging to the median voter's pReferences) as long as politicians have different pReferences. We present conditions (i) for political compromise, and (ii) for politicians with different utility functions to merge into parties with complete strategic agreement.     

A political theory of intergovernmental grants

This paper formulates a political theory of intergovernmental grants. A model of vote-maximizing federal politicians is developed. Grants are assumed to buy the support of state voters and the ‘political capital or resources’ of state politicians and interest groups which can be used to further increase the support of state voters for the federal politician. The model is tested for 49 states. Similarity of party affiliation between federal and state politicians and the size of the Democrat majority in the state legislature increases the per capita dollar amount of grants made to a state. Likewise, increases in both the size of the state bureaucracy and union membership lead to greater grants for a state. Over time, the importance of interest groups (bureaucracy and unions) has increased relative to political groups (state politicians).     

Female representation and electoral clientelism: New insights from South African municipal electionss

Do citizens experience less electoral clientelism in polities with more elected female representatives? The current literature is remarkably silent on the role of gender and female political representation for electoral clientelism. Due to gender differences in issue priorities, targeted constituent groups, networks and resources, we argue that voters experience less clientelism in municipalities with a higher proportion of female politicians because either female politicians are likely to engage less in clientelism or women are less likely to be viable candidates in more clientelist settings. Through either mechanism, we expect all voters – and female voters in particular – to experience less exposure to clientelism in municipalities with higher female representation. We examine this idea using survey data from the 2016 municipal elections in South Africa – a country with high levels of female representation in politics but increasing problems of corruption and patronage in the political system. Our findings are consistent with the argument that municipalities with more elected female councilors have considerably lower rates of electoral clientelism and that this mostly affects whether female voters are targeted by clientelist distribution. These findings shed new light on how women's representation in elected political office shapes the incidence and use of clientelist distribution during elections.     

Electoral accountability in a country with two-tiered government

In democracies, elections are the primary mechanism for making politicians act in voters?? interests, but voters are unable to prevent that some resources are diverted to political rents. With two levels of government, the rents are reduced if voters require higher beneficial public expenditures for reelecting incumbents. Voters can also strengthen their power by holding politicians liable also for decisions made by the other level of government. When the incumbent at one level acts as a Stackelberg leader with respect to the other, there is no risk of this leading to Leviathan policies on the part of the incumbents.     

Do politicians’ preferences correspond to those of the voters? An investigation of political representation

This paper investigates political representation by exploring the relationship between citizens' preferences and the preferences of their elected representatives. Using Swedish survey data, the empirical analysis shows that voters and politicians have significantly different preferences for local welfare services, implying that voters do not elect representatives with the same preferences as their own. The results show that when comparing a politician of a certain age, gender, educational level and marital status, with a voter with identical characteristics, the politician still has preferences for a significantly higher level of spending on the locally provided services. Hence, our results indicate that the representation of different socio-economic groups does not necessarily lead to a larger degree of representation of these groups' agendas. Moreover, we find the observed difference to be largest for the least salient expenditure item. We do, however, not find any evidence for differences in preferences between the two groups being associated with a decline in trust for politicians among voters.     

Voters AS A Hard Budget Constraint: On the Determination of Intergovernmental Grants

Recent empirical literature has shown that the determination of intergovernmental grants is highly influenced by the political bargaining power of the recipient states. In these models federal politicians are assumed to buy the support of state voters, state politicians and state interest groups by providing grants. In this paper we provide evidence that the fiscal referendum reduces the reliance of states on matching grants received from the central government and thus the possibility of interest groups and state bureaucrats to obtain more grants. If referendums are available, voters serve as a hard budget constraint.     

Who Cares? Explaining Perceptions of Compassion in Candidates for Office

Although prior research establishes the important effect perceptions of compassion have on vote choice, no systematic research examines why some candidates are perceived as more caring than others. In an era where television and social media put candidates’ personalities front and center, the lack of research on this topic is problematic. In this article, I explain why voters view some candidates as more caring than others. I argue that voters view politicians as compassionate when there is a commonality to link them. A commonality demonstrates an empathetic connection, or the ability to understand another’s feelings. This, in turn, convinces voters that the politician is sympathetic, or willing to do something to help. Without an empathetic connection, claims of sympathy by politicians will be viewed with greater levels of skepticism. I generate a classification system for the sources of commonality that link voters with politicians, including shared experiences, shared emotions, and shared identities. Using three survey experiments, I show how candidates can build empathic bonds with voters and better their chances of election.

     

Polarization and correct voting in U.S. presidential elections

Although some political pundits have expressed concern that political polarization has a deleterious effect on voter behavior, others have argued that polarization may actually benefit voters by presenting citizens with clear choices between the two major parties. We take up this question by examining the effects of polarization on the quality of voter decision making in U.S. presidential elections. We find that ideological polarization among elites, along with ideological sorting and affective polarization among voters, all contribute to the probability of citizens’ voting correctly. Furthermore, affective polarization among the citizenry if anything strengthens, not weakens, the influence of political knowledge on voter decision-making. We conclude that to the extent that normative democratic theory supposes that people vote for candidates who share their interests, polarization has had a positive effect on voter decision-making quality, and thus democratic representation, in the United States.