Prior research demonstrates that many citizens are unable to perceive differences between the two major political parties. In order to investigate whether candidate behavior in campaigns contributes to this perception, we test implications about partisan constraints on campaign rhetoric drawn from the literature on parties and policy convergence. Our results suggest that candidates of different parties do not highlight the same issues or positions in their campaign advertising. We find that campaign rhetoric is strongly motivated by party even when controlling for constituency characteristics and other factors. Thus, there is convergence among candidates of the same party across districts and states and divergence between opposing candidates within districts and states. Our results are based on a detailed content analysis of more than 1,000 campaign advertisements aired by 290 candidates in 153 elections in 37 states during the 1998 midterm elections.
The interaction of political incentives and institutional structures significantly shapes the nature of presidential decision making. This interaction generates a unique effect–institutional responsibility–which substantially constrains presidential response to partisan and electoral incentives present in the policy‐making environment. After discussing institutional responsibility in the theoretical context of presidential decision making and political economy, the article illustrates this effect in the empirical context of economic policy making in the Eisenhower and Carter administrations. The article demonstrates that the interaction produces an institutionally generated incentive for responsible decision making that often works at cross‐purposes with other exogenous incentives for presidential behavior. In doing so, the article develops complementary notions of conditional partisanship and institutional responsibility.
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