Cracks in the Opposition: Immigration as a Wedge Issue for the Reagan Coalition

Abstract

The absence of a core means that a majority coalition can never choose a policy that will keep it safe from minority appeals to its pivotal members. In two dimensions, strategic minorities will always be able to offer pivotal voters attractive policy concessions. We argue that this instability of multidimensional politics explains why minorities raise wedge issues and how wedge issues result in partisan realignment in legislative politics. Applying agenda-constrained ideal point estimation techniques to immigration debates, we show that the Reagan coalition-pro-business and social conservatives-has been vulnerable on the wedge issue of immigration and that parties have switched their positions on immigration over the last three decades. We use the uncovered set as the best-fit theoretical solution concept in this legislative environment, to capture the limits of majority rule coalitional possibilities and policy change in the two-dimensional absence of a core. Political conflicts are waged by coalitions of inferior interests held together by a dominant interest.The effort in all political struggles is to exploit cracks in the opposition while attempting to consolidate one's own side. (Schattschneider 1960, 69-70) A s Schattschneider noted 50 years ago, a common minority party strategy is to split the opposition using wedge issues, in search of pivotal members who can make their minority party a majority. The primary contribution of this article is to extend the spatial model of majority instability and partisan realignment to understand wedge issues.

Exploiting the Cracks: Wedge Issues in Multiparty Competition

“…Hence, by highlighting a wedge issue in order to attract disaffected voters from other parties, a party may simultaneously alienate some segments of their core constituents (Jeong et al 2011;Strøm, Budge, and Laver 1994). Indeed, Carmines and Stimson (1989: 188) argue that the way in which former Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater used race as a wedge issue was a "gamble by a politician who could already anticipate defeat" and "probably did the 1969 Republicans more harm than good".…”

“…A threat arises when preferences are distributed over two, or more, dimensions, as no party position can ever beat all possible alternatives in a two-way vote, and as such, every party platform is vulnerable. This vulnerability stems from the fact that in a two-dimensional space, winning coalitions must consist of voters and politicians who are in conflict on at least one dimension (Jeong et al 2011). When an issue that is partially or entirely unrelated to the leftright dimension is mobilized, this creates tensions for parties that compete on the left-right dimension (Marks and Wilson 2000).…”

“…As much as President Kennedy tried to downplay the issue, pressure from the civil rights movement eventually led the Democrats to sponsor the Civil Rights Act. Consequently, not only the votes of many disgruntled southerners were up for grabs, but the issue also caused considerable disagreement within the party (Jeong et al 2011).…”

“…The second perspective is party-centered and focuses on potential for internal divisions within parties on an issue where party leaders and activists or different factions of a party may hold different views. According to both of these perspectives, the ultimate goal of the strategic use of wedge issues is partisan realignment, a situation in which voters of the majority coalition change their loyalty on the basis of the issue and defect to the minority party (Carmines and Stimson 1989;Hillygus and Shields 2008;Jeong et al 2011).…”

“…Established political parties have long-standing links to constituencies and issue agendas that structure the positions that leaders and activists take on given issues. Party positioning on the left-right dimension links parties to voters and unites various factions within the party and guides their responses to new issues (see Pierce 1999;Jeong et al 2011). Due to these constraints, new issues that enter party competition may jeopardize parties' internal cohesion and carry a degree of risk.…”