Parties and Issues October 29, 2007. A Theory of Party Competition The Median Voter Theorem Assumptions about rationality Office seeking.

Parties and Issues

October 29, 2007

A Theory of Party Competition

• The Median Voter Theorem• Assumptions about rationality• Office seeking

Issues

• The first critical assumption is that the issue is unidimensional. – It must be separable from other issues, with

preferences defined solely on the basis of that issue.

– It should be divisible and scaled from lowest values of that issue or action to highest.

Creating the Issue Space

• Let’s assume that, like most college students, the biggest concern for this group of friends is price.

• Price is a continuous variable: we could have a restaurant whose average price of entrees is £3.26, or £7.91, or anything in between.

• The available restaurants are TGI Friday’s, Red Lobster, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Arby’s, and Boston Market.

Restaurants by Price

The MVT assumes that we have arranged the choices on a single ordered continuum (here, price). Think about where the restaurants would fall on this dimension. (click to animate)

Taco Bell

Arby’s Red Lobster

Boston Market

TGI Friday’s

McDonald’s

Personal Preferences

• We can assume our actors are rational, so their preferences are also assumed to be single peaked.– With single-peaked preferences, actors prefer points

closer to their ideal points over points that are more distant.

• Preferences:– Amy prefers a restaurant with low to moderate prices. – Bob has eaten fast food all week, so he’d prefer a

moderately priced restaurant for decent food. – Carl is running low on cash, so he’d prefer to spend as

little possible.

Amy, Bob, and Carl

C A B

Where will they eat, at restaurants priced like A, B, or C?

Carl prefers A to B.Amy prefers C to B.Bob prefers A to C.

If they vote C vs. B, C gets 2 votes and B gets 1. C wins.

If they vote C vs. A, C gets 1 vote and A gets 2. A wins.

If they vote A vs. B, A gets 2 votes and B gets 1. A wins.

Who Wins?

• On the previous slide, A beats any other choice in a pairwise vote. This is because A is the median voter: Amy tips a 1-1 plurality tie into a majority.

• Because of this, Amy’s ideal point is the predicted outcome.– Here, this means McDonald’s.

Taco Bell

Arby’s Red Lobster

Boston Market

TGI Friday’s

McDonald’s

C A B

A Policy Example

Downsian model of party competition

L R

Parties and Voters as Rational Actors

• Assume parties are rational actors that want to get elected (the don’t care about issues)

• Parties will formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections to formulate policies.

• Assume that issues can be placed on a single dimension

• Assume that voters preferences are normally distributed (single peaked utility function)

• Assume that voters choose the party to whom they are closest to on the issues

Predictions

• Under plurality rules, parties will converge to the median voter.

• If preferences are normally distributed, parties will adopt similar policy positions (but they won’t be identical---more on this later)

• For this to happen, voters must understand where candidates stand on issues; candidates must communicate this information to electorate

Example of Spatial Competition

Median Voter

Party A Party BParty C

Num

ber o

f Vot

ers

Bi-model Distribution

Median Voter

Party A Party B

Num

ber o

f Vot

ers

Why parties do not adopt identical positions

• Concern about “third” parties• Reputations• Uncertainty• Electoral system—recall that predictions

about convergence assume plurality rules. What happens under PR?

The Development of Ideologies

• Scarce resources creates tension among social groups

• When these groups are well defined this tension prevents any one political ideology from strongly appealing to all groups simultanously

• Thus each party can woo only a limited number of social groups

• Ideologies remain different only is so far as none is demonstrably more effective than the rest (uncertainty)

Implications

• Candidates move to middle of spectrum, because voters support candidate with view closest to own, and only one wins.

• Two party systems tend to be “stable” in the sense that both stake out positions near the “center.”

• Lack of choice

What are issues? Can you list some of the most important ones which concern UK political parties

today?

Importance of Issues

Criticisms

• Assumption of an ordered dimension• Equitable weighting given to each policy issue, ie.

environment and healthcare at the same importance level as terrorism and racial policies—a mismatch when considering that most voters distinguish each issue’s relative importance.

• Political parties generally hold more extreme issue stances than their constituents (e.g., Dalton 1985; Holmberg 1989; Iversen 1994).

Real-life Complications

• Ideology matters: politicians care about more than just winning elections.

• Personality: voters care about more than just issues.• Leadership: politicians do not simply respond to

voter’s preferences.• Voter participation: may be affected by relative

difference in candidates• Special Interest groups form powerful lobbies.

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Example of Party Positions from NZ

Directional Theory• Directional theory emphasizes a dichotomous

view of issue placement. According to this model, voters do not utilize a continuum of policy positions in evaluating candidates.

• Instead, the voter focuses on the candidate’s agreement or disagreement with his or her policy preference.

• Directional theory emphasizes the intensity and monotonic nature of preferences. The more extreme stance is more likely to arouse support from voters on the same side of the issue.

Predictions

• Parties will take extreme positions and avoid the centre

• Voters are more likely to support parties that take more extreme positions

Voter Utility under the Directional Theory

• Utilities for these candidates would be 1 x 2=2 and 3 x 2=6.

• Thus under the second candidate, who is interpreted as to be more intense on the issue, would be more attractive to the voter even though both candidates are equidistant from the voter and both are in the same direction.

Valence Issues• Whereas the spatial model of competition depends on

the relevance of position issues.• Valence issues are those where there is no

disagreement. • Those issues, on which parties “are differentiated not

by what they advocate but by the degree to which they are linked in the public‘s mind with conditions or goals of which almost everyone approves or disapproves.“ Stokes, Donald 1992: Valence Politics in Kavanagh, Dennis (ed.): Electoral Politics, Oxford, p. 143.

• Parties will then emphasize place an emphasis on valence as opposed to taking positions on issues

Valence Examples

• An issue that is uniformly liked or disliked among the electorate, as opposed to a position issue on which opinion is divided.

• Economy• Corruption by public officials• Crime, • Education• Poverty

Limitations

• can become position issues once specific policies are proposed

• Unemployment is uniformly seen as bad, but there are important differences of opinion on how it should be tackled.

Theoretical assumptions of a confrontational approach

• All issues are generally confrontational and not valence in nature

• Parties take up a range of explicit positions on each issue

• Party positions can be divided into pro and contra

• Hence party positions are independent on relative emphases of different issues

Theoretical assumptions of the saliency approach

• “Parties talk past each other“ (Riker 1993: 4) rather than talking about the same things.

• Party strategists assume that voters are in favour of one course of• action...but they also assume that voters belief one party is more • competent on handling an issue compared to the other parties• Parties “own“ a set of issues• Parties emphasize in electoral campaign their “own“ issues• Ideological differences between parties are based on saliencies of

different issues, not on taking a position in the same issues

Spatial Theory based on a Confrontational Theory

• Recommended strategy to win elections• Parties have to adopt their ideological position

according to the distribution of voter‘s preferences

• Very often a race to the “median voter“ is assumed

Concept of Issue Ownershipbased on Saliency Theory

• Parties should emphasize their own issues• On Valence Issues party strategists should

undermine the credibility of their rivals• Position Issues should be created in policy

areas where the rivals are not able to define a position

Political Parties & Party Competition

• Why do political parties exist everywhere?

• Can we have electoral politics with no parties?

• How does the electoral system shape the number & kind of parties?

• What happens to the parties when we change the electoral system?

• What kind of parties do we have in the UK under our current system? How do they work?

Parties as the answer

Parties are organizations which:

1. Articulate and package ideas & interests2. Recruit candidates for office3. Campaign on identifiable positions4. Structure the electorate into recognizable blocks5. Organize and operate governments & oppositions

The Number of Parties

Winner take all systems

Rewards large parties

Penalize small parties

Encourage parties to amalgamate

Leads to 2 parties dominating competition

Proportional systems

Parties get what voters give Allows more parties to win Provides chance for new

parties

Leads to multi-party competition

Party Competition Dynamics

2- Party Competition

• Simple choice between 2 similar parties with incentives to minimize their differences

• Elections tend to determine government

• Debate and bargaining over issues and policies takes place inside ‘catch-all’ parties

Party Competition Dynamics

Multi-Party Competition

• Wide choice among (ideological) parties with explicit positions

• Elections allow expression of preferences

• Political bargaining takes place between parties in the legislature

Electoral system change -> Party system change

the New Zealand example:

BeforeBefore AfterAfter

Electoral Electoral systemsystem

PluralityPlurality Mixed-ProportionalMixed-Proportional

# parties# parties 2 Big (Lab / 2 Big (Lab / National)National)

2 Big & 5 Small2 Big & 5 Small

Party stylesParty styles Broad appealBroad appeal Broad appealBroad appeal

Specific interestsSpecific interests

Personal machinesPersonal machines

ElectionsElections Chose governmentChose government Reflected preferencesReflected preferences

GovernmentsGovernments 1-party majority1-party majority Multi-party Multi-party parliamentary parliamentary coalitionscoalitions

Some Questions

Does it matter how many parties we have?

Do we want an electoral system that makes it easy for new parties to grow?

Is multi-party or 2-party competition better for BC?

How should candidates be chosen, and by whom?