Testing Spatial Models of Elections: The Influence of Voters and Elites on Candidate Issue Positions

This research tests spatial models of electoral competition using survey data on state legislative candidates' policy positions and ideology in eight U.S. states. Our data support several hypotheses: 1) candidates' issue positions do not converge; 2) party elites have more extreme positions than do candidates; 3) candidate issue positioning is a function of party‐elite issue positions and union involvement in the campaign, as well as constituency characteristics; and 4) when candidates rely heavily on elite resources during their campaign, elites become more important in shaping candidate issue positions.     

Still Causing Trouble: The Conservative Parliamentary Party

There have been relatively few backbench rebellions on the Conservative benches in the Commons since 2001, but division manifested itself on three significant occasions: over the Children and Adoption Bill (when the leadership insisted on applying a whip to a vote that many thought should have been 'free'), over Lords reform (where on a free vote a majority of Conservative MPs voted against their leadership's preferred position) and over Iraq (where the divisions were smaller than on the Labour side of the House but where there was a qualitative dimension to the rebellion). Most importantly of all, the events of October 2003, when Iain Duncan Smith was removed as party leader, showed how much power remained with Conservative MPs: they initiated the vote of confidence, in which they alone participated, and the emergence of Michael Howard as the 'unity' candidate meant that the grassroots were denied any role in the change of leadership.     

The visibility of agricultural subsidies and market illusions in the Common Agricultural Policy: Some evidence from farmers' views in Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom

Abstract.   This article demonstrates that the design and nature of agricultural support schemes has an influence on farmers' perception of their level of dependence on agricultural support. While direct aid payments inform farmers about the extent to which they are subsidised, indirect support mechanisms veil the level of subsidisation, and therefore they are not fully aware of the extent to which they are supported. To test this hypothesis, we applied data from a survey of 4,500 farmers in three countries: the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal. It is demonstrated that indirect support, such as that provided through artificially high consumer prices, gives an illusion of free and competitive markets among farmers. This 'visibility' hypothesis is evaluated against an alternative hypothesis that assumes farmers have complete, or at least a fairly comprehensive level of, information on agricultural support schemes. Our findings show that this alternative hypothesis can be ruled out.