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Partisan Preferences and Party Loyalty: A challenge to theories of party position
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APSA WORKING PAPER AUGUST 2005
“
If political parties are primarily concerned with ensuring that their ambitious office
seekers obtain power from the electorate, and if the ambitious office seekers depend
on the electorate to continue to realize their ambitions, then the place to begin to
understand contemporary partisan politics is in that electorate
”.
1
A great deal of the academic literature on party incentives arose during the 1970s and 1980s. This was a period in which British parties sought to differentiate themselves clearly using distinctive ideologies (McLean, 1982; Heath et al. 1985). The Conservatives occupied territory to the right and Labour occupied territory to the left. The conventional logic of Downsian (1957) competition, that parties would converge, was therefore challenged. A similar pattern emerges in the United States as Republicans and Democrats polarize at elite and mass levels (Abramowitz and Saunders, 1998).
Competing theories exist to explain these diverging positions. It is argued that rational parties have incentives to diverge because their own supporters, voters, or partisans are located in ideologically divergent territory (May, 1973; Kitschelt, 1994; Fiorina, 1999).
2
A party aiming
to maintain the support of its base and compete for swing voters should place itself between the centre or median and its supporters (Key, 1966; Hirschman, 1970; Robertson, 1976; McLean, 1982; Aldrich, 1995; Adams, 2001) or further right or left (Adams and Merrill, 1999). If a party’s vote diminishes to its base the centre of gravity of its available vote shifts accordingly. Therefore a party can be expected to find itself presented with a double whammy - unpopular and competing on less popular ideological positions. “Parties making no effort to break out of their electoral ‘ghettos’ can suffer serious decline” (Ware, 1987: 159).
In the period of competition in which the two main British parties occupied leftist and rightist positions it was thought that each benefited from motivated core voters and being equidistant to centrist ones. However, it is now broadly accepted that the main British parties have converged (Bara and Budge, 2001; Heath et al. 2001; McLean, 2002). By February 2005 the polling company NOP found that only 21% of their sample recognized a difference between the Conservatives and Labour (The Independent, 16.02.05). This perceived lack of difference may have been one of competence or style, or simply resulting from lower attention or knowledge, but it was probably also one of ideological difference.
In the 2001 wave of the
British Election Panel Study the association between the perceived distance between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party on a composite score of the difference between the placement of the two parties with responses to the question, ‘Do the Conservatives and Labour differ?’ was 262.62, significant at the p< 0.001 level.
3
This period of convergence
appears to contradict ‘core vote’ explanations of party divergence. How, therefore, might this convergence be explained?
One explanation is that fewer restraints upon Downsian convergence exist. It has been argued that the party base has become less influential with the decline of party membership and activism (see Panebianco, 1988). It has also been demonstrated that strongly identifying partisans are in smaller proportion (Aldrich, 1985; Heath et al. 1991; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002; Whiteley and Seyd, 2002). This pattern can be seen in Figure 1.
- Figure 1 about here -
1
Aldrich (1995:164)
2
I use the term ‘partisans’ throughout to refer to individuals who consider themselves supporters of a
party – specifically - those who identify with one party or another.
3
Pearson Chi
2
, degrees of freedom 186, N = 1795. An average index of distance was computed for all
5 scales (work-prices, tax-spend, nationalization-privatization, equalize incomes and EU unite) by subtracting the perceived position of the Conservative Party with the perceived position of the Labour Party. This variable was correlated with responses on the 4 level variable of ‘difference between the Conservatives and Labour where 1 = great difference, 2 = same difference, 3 = not much difference and 4 = don’t know.
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
2
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APSA WORKING PAPER AUGUST 2005
“
If political parties are primarily concerned with ensuring that their ambitious office
seekers obtain power from the electorate, and if the ambitious office seekers depend
on the electorate to continue to realize their ambitions, then the place to begin to
understand contemporary partisan politics is in that electorate
A great deal of the academic literature on party incentives arose during the 1970s and 1980s.
This was a period in which British parties sought to differentiate themselves clearly using
distinctive ideologies (McLean, 1982; Heath et al. 1985). The Conservatives occupied
territory to the right and Labour occupied territory to the left. The conventional logic of
Downsian (1957) competition, that parties would converge, was therefore challenged. A
similar pattern emerges in the United States as Republicans and Democrats polarize at elite
and mass levels (Abramowitz and Saunders, 1998).
Competing theories exist to explain these diverging positions. It is argued that rational parties
have incentives to diverge because their own supporters, voters, or partisans are located in
ideologically divergent territory (May, 1973; Kitschelt, 1994; Fiorina, 1999).
A party aiming
to maintain the support of its base and compete for swing voters should place itself between
the centre or median and its supporters (Key, 1966; Hirschman, 1970; Robertson, 1976;
McLean, 1982; Aldrich, 1995; Adams, 2001) or further right or left (Adams and Merrill,
1999). If a party’s vote diminishes to its base the centre of gravity of its available vote shifts
accordingly. Therefore a party can be expected to find itself presented with a double whammy
- unpopular and competing on less popular ideological positions. “Parties making no effort to
break out of their electoral ‘ghettos’ can suffer serious decline” (Ware, 1987: 159).
In the period of competition in which the two main British parties occupied leftist and rightist
positions it was thought that each benefited from motivated core voters and being equidistant
to centrist ones. However, it is now broadly accepted that the main British parties have
converged (Bara and Budge, 2001; Heath et al. 2001; McLean, 2002). By February 2005 the
polling company NOP found that only 21% of their sample recognized a difference between
the Conservatives and Labour (The Independent, 16.02.05). This perceived lack of difference
may have been one of competence or style, or simply resulting from lower attention or
knowledge, but it was probably also one of ideological difference.
In the 2001 wave of the
British Election Panel Study the association between the perceived distance between the
Conservative Party and the Labour Party on a composite score of the difference between the
placement of the two parties with responses to the question, ‘Do the Conservatives and
Labour differ?’ was 262.62, significant at the p< 0.001 level.
This period of convergence
appears to contradict ‘core vote’ explanations of party divergence. How, therefore, might this
convergence be explained?
One explanation is that fewer restraints upon Downsian convergence exist. It has been argued
that the party base has become less influential with the decline of party membership and
activism (see Panebianco, 1988). It has also been demonstrated that strongly identifying
partisans are in smaller proportion (Aldrich, 1985; Heath et al. 1991; Dalton and Wattenberg,
2002; Whiteley and Seyd, 2002). This pattern can be seen in Figure 1.
- Figure 1 about here -
1
Aldrich (1995:164)
2
I use the term ‘partisans’ throughout to refer to individuals who consider themselves supporters of a
party – specifically - those who identify with one party or another.
3
Pearson Chi
2
, degrees of freedom 186, N = 1795. An average index of distance was computed for all
5 scales (work-prices, tax-spend, nationalization-privatization, equalize incomes and EU unite) by
subtracting the perceived position of the Conservative Party with the perceived position of the Labour
Party. This variable was correlated with responses on the 4 level variable of ‘difference between the
Conservatives and Labour where 1 = great difference, 2 = same difference, 3 = not much difference
and 4 = don’t know.
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION
2
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