A little justification goes a long way: audience costs and the EU referendum

Abstract

That governments may not always keep their election promises or that they change policy positions may be unsurprising. However, failed promises, backing down on threats or flip-flopping on policy positions may be associated with a loss in support. Bringing together literature on the politics of electoral promises, policy shifts and audience costs, we examine the conditions under which a political leader can back down on a promise, using the EU referendum in the UK as a case study. Based on a survey experiment conducted in the aftermath of the 2015 general election, we examine whether justifications grounded on electoral motives, internal and external opposition would have allowed then Prime Minister David Cameron to avoid paying audience costs for going back on his campaign promise. Our results indicate that domestic audience costs might have been manageable, with only slightly more than a quarter of the participants in our study punishing executive inconsistency regardless of the justification employed. Of particular interest for European Union scholars, justifying backing down due to opposition from other EU member states is particularly effective in mitigating domestic audience costs.

A Matter of Life or Death: A Survey Experiment on the Perceived Legitimacy of Political Decision-Making on Euthanasia

“…This usually refers to the fairness of decision-making process used by public authorities but may also concerns other aspects such as fair consideration of all the relevant information on the issue and impartiality of public administration. Previous studies have examined how the provision of justifications affect the perception of political actors (Banducci et al, 2018;Levendusky and Horowitz, 2012;Robison, 2013). According to this line of research, justifications can help alleviate negative reactions from changing opinion or going back on campaign pledges.…”

“…In systems where decision-making powers are delegated, it should also matter what political actors are involved in the decision-making process (Warren and Gastil, 2015;Grönlund and Setälä, 2012). And even when political decisions do not meet the expectations, decision-makers can soften the blow by carefully justifying why a specific decision was taken (Banducci et al, 2018;Chambers, 2003;Levendusky and Horowitz, 2012;Pitkin, 1967;Robison, 2013).…”